Ted was walking through a grocery store with Tim. They started talking about Sports and how some teams were having a hard time winning and other teams were dominating in Football. As Ted, picked up some Fuji Apples, he glanced over at a lady who reminded him of one of his friends named Sally. He then turns over to Tim, and says, "Have you heard that Sally cheated on her boyfriend, and they aren't even married!" Tim, looked over to Ted with a stern look, saying, "I am sorry Ted, but I do not want to talk about this. Can we talk about some more positive stuff?"
What Ted did was called Gossip, and it is a terrible thing to do! Gossip is negative talk about any person whether you know them or not. You see we can talk about the performance of a single player or a team, but when it gets down to information that very few people know about, or about negative information that the other person can't confirm that it is true or not then it is Gossip. Gossip can be about anything negative, when you start thinking about it.
You see, the Bible also talks a lot about gossip and how deadly it can destroy relationships, whether your in the business world or not. And also, another very negative thing is called Holy Gossip. Holy Gossip is when you ask people to pray for a specific person and you tell them the specific reasons why they should pray for them in a negative way. Its like this. Please pray for Greg because he is abusing his wife and hitting his children. This is very negative! Instead, you can say, "Please pray for Greg because he is going through some problems in his life, " or something like that.
Ephesians 4:29
New King James Version (NKJV)
29 Let
no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for
necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.
