Not Mine To Share

Someone confided in me. And I shared what they told me with somebody else.

That was a long time ago now, early in my adulthood. But I still think about it. Because that information was later used against both me and the person it was about.

Looking back, I can see I shared it out of frustration and anger. But it was deeply, deeply personal. The kind of thing I would certainly never want someone to share if it was about me. It was never mine to share. I never, ever should have shared it. And on top of that, I shared it with the worst possible person, who used that information for evil.

I don’t think the damage caused by that will ever really be healed. I still feel bad about it.

That’s the lesson that taught me when I should and shouldn’t share information. Although to be honest, I should have known better. I’m pretty sure I did know better. But I did it anyway.

But I’ve been seeing it everywhere. How it destroys. How it infects good people and good organizations. How it can go very wrong. And I just want to caution us all, but particularly my fellow Christ following women.

Now, I want to be clear. There’s a time and a place. Sometimes we genuinely want to help our loved ones with wisdom and advice. Sometimes we share out of frustration. We’re all imperfect and we’ve all done it. But I feel like a lot of us miss the plot. We miss what’s truly important because the enemy distracts us with business that is not our own.

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It’s mostly not even true

Here’s a big part of why gossip does so much damage. It’s mostly untrue, or at least lacking important contextual truth.

Sometimes we gossip because we don’t have the full information, and that full information isn’t ours to have. So we fill the gaps with our own assumptions about what happened. I’d caution that if you hear something, automatically know you don’t have the full story. Acknowledge that it’s none of your business. And shut it down.

Which is harder than it sounds. Because here’s the uncomfortable part nobody likes to admit.

Choice morsels. It tastes good. That’s why we lean in. And it doesn’t just pass through us, it goes down deep and it stays. Long after we’ve forgotten who told us, we’re still carrying what we heard, and we’ve already decided how we feel about a person we may have never really known.

I’ve watched truth get completely warped because things were passed around by people who had no business passing them around. What ultimately happened was deep hurt, lies spreading as the story took a completely different turn than reality, and reputations unnecessarily tarnished.

Henry van Dyke said it plainly.

True. Necessary. And God is listening either way.

Which brings me to the filter.

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The filter

I heard this on the Gospel for Life podcast and it has stuck with me ever since. Before sharing something about someone else, ask:

All four have to be true before we share. Not three out of four. If even one fails, the answer is no. Something can be true and necessary and even kind, but if you haven’t prayed about it, that’s still a no.

There are a couple of other questions I’ve started asking myself, and they cut right to the heart of it.

Would I mind if this person were standing right here? Am I willing to say this to their face?

And this one. If I have to insist that someone not repeat what I’m about to say, should I be saying it at all? Because that request is not a safeguard. It’s a signal. It’s the moment to shut it down instead.

I love that the Amplified version names spreading rumors right alongside lying. Because that’s what it is. And “we are all parts of one another” is the part that gets me. This was never just a personal sin. It wounds the whole body of Christ. The whole church.

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Just the two of you

Here’s what I keep coming back to. So much gossip trouble could be avoided if, instead of running to someone else to share something, we just went directly to the person involved and addressed it.

Just the two of you. Not the group chat. Not a mutual friend who happens to know them.

And here’s the part that convicts me. If it isn’t something you’d actually go to them about, then it probably isn’t a problem. It’s a judgment. Take that one to God instead.

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When someone trusts you with something

Sometimes people confide in us for support, for prayer, for advice. They share because they trust us.

And the moment we turn around and tell the next person, that trust is gone. Maybe for good. It doesn’t matter that we meant well, or that we only told one person, or that we asked them not to repeat it.

Whether that next person’s intentions are good, innocent, or evil, anything you share always has the possibility of getting out. I learned that one the hard way, and I’d rather you didn’t have to.

Go to them yourself. Don’t reveal what was never yours. Because the cost of breaking a confidence doesn’t stay with the person you betrayed. It follows you too.

Tattlers. People who inappropriately reveal secrets, or inform others of things that were never theirs to tell.

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The version we don’t want to talk about

Sometimes we’re guilty of initiating gossip about things we were directly involved in, skewing the details in our favor to minimize our own shortcomings or the mistakes we made. That’s slanderous and prideful. Sinning in more ways than one.

Often the motive is to make others look bad while elevating ourselves, even when we rationalize it as being for someone’s good.

And sometimes it doesn’t even feel like gossip when we start it. It feels like curiosity. Like being careful. Asking around about someone instead of just asking them.

That’s all worth running through the filter too, because we rarely think to hold our own version of a story, or our own reasons for asking, to the same standard we’d hold someone else’s.

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When it’s aimed at you

At some point, it will be. So what then?

Psalm 140 gave me language for this. Keep me, O Lord, from violent men. They sharpen their tongues like a serpent. Let the evil of their lips cover them. Let not a slanderer be established.

The takeaway I keep coming back to is this. Immediately take offenses to the Lord. Not to the next person. Not into a slow-building case shared with everyone who will listen. To Him. First.

Paul did the same thing. “Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done.” (2 Timothy 4:14) He didn’t campaign against the man. He named what happened and handed the repayment to God.

And then there’s this one:

Two things I take from that. That they would seek the Lord and be saved. And that God would be vindicated, not me.

So respond in love to those who have slandered you. Pray for them. Pray for a change of heart and true repentance. Praying for our enemies changes the bitterness in our own hearts when we do it. And sometimes letting people feel the shame of what they’ve done happens simply by responding with kindness instead of retaliation.

Sometimes the wisdom is discerning that an offense is one we need to overlook. And sometimes it’s one we need to confront. Pray for the wisdom to know which.

Because rather than giving a thing to God and trusting that He is the true judge and He will handle it, we keep simmering in past events, sharing with everyone we know how people have wronged us. That was never God’s plan for us. His plan is that we forgive and surrender it to Him so we can keep moving forward.

That’s a real boundary. Not judgment of someone’s soul, but permission to step back from a pattern that someone has shown, more than once, they won’t turn from.

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When it happens at church

This next part comes straight from that same Resisting Gossip series from Gospel for Life. Church members with concerns or criticism should go through the proper channels to raise them, instead of airing them publicly, so things can be addressed in a healthy, biblical way instead of stirring dissension or hindering reputations.

But I want to add something to that. Leaders, whether in a church or a church community, need to have healthy ways of making room for and responding to those concerns. Because if concerns aren’t handled well, that stirs dissension and damages reputations right back. The instruction to go through proper channels only works when there is actually a healthy channel to go through.

And even within those channels, we have to be thoughtful about who can and should be trusted with sensitive information. Conflicts of interest are real and they matter.

When you’re confronted with gossip at church, I heard it put simply, and I love the alliteration.

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Where I’m sitting in all of this

I’m processing a lot of this as a leader myself.

I want my group members to trust me with their concerns or problems, especially if they aren’t comfortable bringing them to the whole group. So I take group confidentiality seriously. I want to do better than what I’ve witnessed done elsewhere.

But I’m also learning and growing, and part of that means making mistakes. Like I already have. And part of it is taking responsibility when I’ve handled something wrong. Not pridefully refusing or defending against criticism, but listening. Taking responsibility. Apologizing when necessary. And remembering to treat everyone with love and respect.

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What it costs the ones who are watching

This is the part that scares me most.

We do this inside the church. In small groups, in the lobby, in the parking lot. And we forget who’s standing close enough to hear it.

Somebody new to faith. Somebody who walked in for the first time last week, still deciding whether any of this is real. Somebody who isn’t a believer at all and came because a friend invited them.

They’re watching how we treat each other. And if what they see is the same tearing down they could get anywhere else, why would they stay? We could be the reason somebody walks away from God entirely, and never even know we did it.

That’s Jesus, in the same chapter where He tells us to go to each other privately. Seven verses earlier. Same teaching, same concern, about how we handle one another.

And He isn’t only talking about children there. He means anyone with that new, tender, trusting kind of faith. The ones still finding their footing.

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We give the enemy too much credit

We just started a Spiritual Warfare series at church, and it landed on this verse.

My pastor, Samuel Laws at Brave Church, said something that stuck with me. One of the cheapest ways the devil attacks is by causing division and getting us to fight with each other. Which means we end up doing his work for him.

And that’s not just a figure of speech. When Paul teaches older women not to be slanderers (Titus 2:3), the Greek word he uses is diabolos. The same word Scripture uses for the devil himself. The accuser. When we slander someone, we’re quite literally taking on his job title.

Sometimes the trouble we’re in is self-inflicted, and gossip is exactly that kind. But I also think he uses people who are already causing trouble as a kind of combo move. He sows the division, we get caught in it, and it explodes outward and reaches everyone nearby.

Three verses later in that same chapter:

Don’t give him the foothold. Watch your words. Same chapter, same instruction, two different angles.

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So here’s where I’ve landed

Our words have the power to build up or to tear down. And so much of what we pass along was never even ours to carry, let alone to pass.

And as an imperfect person, I’m going to work on using these filters and standing by them in the future too. I have a higher responsibility to take care of my words and to take confidentiality seriously.

So the next time something is sitting right on the tip of your tongue, run it through the filter.

Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Have you prayed about it?

And if it doesn’t pass, let it stay between you and the Lord. He’s the true judge. He always has been.

A fire only burns as long as somebody keeps feeding it. And once it catches, it doesn’t stay where we set it down. It spreads where it wants to, and there’s no calling it back. The damage done to somebody’s name by words that were meant to harm is almost impossible to measure, and even harder to undo.

We don’t have to be the wood.

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Where this came from

A lot of what I wrestled with here came from people who said it better than I could. If any of this stirred something in you, go to the source.

Gospel for Life podcast, their Resisting Gossip series, four parts plus a bonus episode:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Bonus Episode

Thankful Homemaker: A Christian Homemaking Podcast, “Resisting Gossip: Using Words to Build Up”

Brave Church, Pastor Samuel Laws, “When You’re Under Attack,” part one of our Spiritual Warfare series

The book all of this points back to: Resisting Gossip: Winning the War of the Wagging Tongue by Matthew C. Mitchell. From what I understand, he builds the whole thing on Ephesians 4:25-29, the same passage that kept surfacing for me while I was writing this. That was not a coincidence.

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase through it I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure, I haven’t read this one yet myself. It’s on my list after everything I’ve heard about it. 🤍