I love well-written and artfully illustrated children’s picture story books. One of my favorites is a 1987 edition we have of Hans Christian Anderson’s It’s Absolutely True! Anderson, famous for his children’s fairy tails, was a Nineteenth Century Danish author.
Though I highly recommend you read the story for yourself, I don’t think I’ll spoil it for you by telling you the gist of it. It is worth reading over and over again.
In a farmyard, a very dependable and respectable hen fluffed her feathers as she came to roost and a little feather fell out. She made a joke about plucking out more and then went to sleep. A nearby hen could not sleep until she had passed on the news that one of the cluckers in the henhouse intended to pluck out her feathers to make herself look better. This got passed on as invariably happens – from hens to barnyard owls to other winged creatures until it made the news all around the community and finally came back to the original farmyard.
By the time the news had gotten all the way back around, it had mushroomed into a tall tail indeed. Five hens, it was reported, had plucked out all their feathers trying to compete for the rooster and then had pecked each other to death. Even the original hen did not recognize the story – fortunately. Anderson writes that this is the way “one feather can easily become five hens.”
Now is Anderson writing this only to warn about how rumors get started? A story like this could be considered harmless as long as no one passes a law forbidding hens from pruning. But a deeper warning lurks underneath. The hen who could not sleep for the disturbing thing she had overheard was doing a grave injustice to the original hen, even if she did not attach that original hen’s ID to the story. Add the identification and you have a gross violation of the 9th Commandment.
It is called gossip. But gossip with or without the intent to do harm, invariably does, for it paints a picture of a person, correctly or not, that is independent of that person’s ability to verify. The last six of the Ten Commandments are all about not causing harm to others, and gossip is one of the worst ways to harm. We moderns believe in this principle so strongly we’ve even enshrined it in our laws as “innocent until proven guilty.” Unfortunately there is no way to enforce a law against gossip, something which the Scriptures paint as one of the vilest of sins.
We have a new term for it these days, particularly as fits the barnyard scene above. Triangulation. A triangle by definition has three points or angles. I hear something from you and I go to a third party about it. You have just been triangulated. Most times, though malicious intent is not involved, grievous harm results. It may not look like it at first, but like so much dust in Northwest China, layer upon layer of tidbits accumulate and soon you have packed clay hundreds of feet thick.
Sometimes the triangulation is as innocent as sharing prayer requests out of concern for others. As with Anderson’s story, the prayer requests get passed on and in the transmission are augmented or altered here and there until they are hardly recognizable to the original person. Even harmless facts can accumulate in a very harmful way.
Jesus presents what we often call the “Matthew 18 process” as a surefire way to stop triangulation. Paul echoes this idea in explaining about observing communion. When you have a problem with a brother or sister, go back directly to that person and sort it out. Even physical sickness can result if you don’t.
Funny thing, we Christians have been known to preach against smoking and dancing and drinking and cussing and gambling. I wonder if all the people harmed by those practices add up to those harmed by gossip. Sit on that for a while and see what hatches.
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