Wanting to Install a Gossip Check

"...take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry."... James 1:19

***

Man, if only we as Christians lived by that verse, right?

Those have been my thoughts today ever since I heard on tv one more Christian in the public eye (read: easy target) point out that he'd been misquoted (again) by the Press. He held the proof in his hands and the rare hurt in his voice hurt me, too.

I don't know about you, but it's not enough for me just to have a spell-check in my blog. No, I want a gossip check, too. I want to click on an icon and have it zero in on anything which even resembles gossip. 

And then delete it.

I so do not want to be guilty of causing hurt in peoples' hearts and voices like the hurt I heard today. It's a hurt, a sound, which haunts me still and I cringe to consider parroting bad reports about specific persons in my blog without, first, checking out his/her side of the story. (If you catch me doing that in the future, please call me on it.)

Instead, may I remember the times I valiantly declared certain things were true years ago, yet now, I find those things, false. Or how how I madly ran with only half the story.

I want to mind my own business.

The Bible has much to say about both gossip and throwing stones--and it's not favorable, light-hearted or encouraging.

Well, even though gossip checks haven't officially been invented (have they?) I'm going to, from this day forward, run a manual one.

God help me.


******

"For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned." ... Matthew 12:37

"So if I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, gossiping maliciously about us. Not satisfied with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers." ... 3 John 1:10