Gossip looks really good in church clothes. Maybe more than any other sin, it cleans up nice. It can present itself in a number of Sunday outfits. It can dress up like heartfelt concern for others. It can seem like a personal invitation to confidentiality and closeness with the one receiving the gossip. It can even put on the clothing of a prayer request.
Gossip is mentioned in a few lists of interpersonal sins, grouped with things such as strife, quarrels, deceit, and slander (Romans 1:29; 2 Corinthians 12:20). It is linked to the primal sins of idolatry and ingratitude. Perhaps the most colourful depiction is found in Paul’s advice to Timothy on a problem in the church he was pastoring.
Young widows were using their time and energy not for the building up of either the household of faith or a household of their own but rather ‘to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not’ (1 Timothy 5:13).
