PUT AWAY EVIL SPEAKING

PUT AWAY EVIL SPEAKING

"Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking."
1 Peter 2:1, NKJV.

I often think how humorously wise the English language is. The word "gossip" is, of course, the evil speaker. The gossip is defined as a defamer, belittler or backbiter. Let us break those words down and kick them around a little bit.

First, the word "defame." Fame, of course is a high reputation somebody has and then along comes somebody and defames him. He just cuts the horns off, dehorns that fame and then we have the word "defame." That is a word almost funny and yet how terrible it is that there are persons who cannot allow another person to be well spoken of in their presence. They will say, "well, that is true but," and then start to defame the man. So, a defamer is somebody that destroys fame.

Next, the word "belittle." That is a fellow who is big, and a fellow comes along and belittle him. Nothing humiliates a person more than to be cut down to size by some bully. Even among Christians, there are those who get tremendous joy cutting someone down to size. They see somebody trying to do something - perhaps they are a little full of themselves - and they feel obligated to take that big person and try to make them as little as possible. Surely, some people need a little bit of belittling, but woe be unto the person who takes that responsibility on himself.

Then there is the word "backbite." I have always thought that God must have had something to do with creating that word. "Backbite" means to bite behind the back. If you try to bite anybody in front, you have to face their angry eyes and two fists; but it is quite safe to bite from behind, and so we backbite the back.

I am sure that if the envious, the defamers, and the backbiters were taken out of the average church there would be a revival overnight. We backbite, defame, belittle, envy and then piously blame our trouble on the liberals and the modernists. No liberal or modernist troubles the average evangelical church. Both would die because the air is too rare and they could not take it. Bring a modernist into an evangelical church and turn him loose awhile and he would soon hunt for cover because the atmosphere just is not conductive to modernism. He could not live in it. The air is too rare.

We cannot blame the modernists for the state we are in spiritually. We are to blame because we are guilty of guile, hypocrisies, envies, defaming, belittling and backbiting.