5 Resolutions Worth Following...

Great wisdom from the Memoirs of Charles Simeon:

The longer I live, the more I feel the importance of adhering to the rules which I have laid down for myself in relation to such matters.
1st. To hear as little as possible what is to the prejudice of others.

2nd. To believe nothing of the kind till I am absolutely forced to it.

3rd. Never to drink into the spirit of one who circulates an ill report.

4th. Always to moderate, as far as I can, the unkindness which is expressed towards others.

5th. Always to believe, that if the other side were heard, a very different account would be given of the matter.

I wonder how much greater would be our joy and our fellowship if we were to commit ourselves to such simple rules.

Gossip

Ray Ortlund has an excellent (and convicting) post on gossip.

Gossip leaves a wide trail of devastation wherever and however it goes – word of mouth, email, blogging, YouTube. It erodes trust and destroys morale. It creates a social environment of suspicion where everyone must wonder what is being said behind their backs and whether appearances of friendship are sincere. It ruins hard-won reputations with cowardly but effective weapons of misrepresentation. It manipulates people into taking sides when no such action is necessary or beneficial. It unleashes the dark powers of psychological transference, doing violence to the gossiper, to the one receiving the gossip and to the person being spoken against. It makes the Body of Christ look like the Body of Antichrist – destroyers rather than healers. It exhausts the energies we would otherwise devote to positive witness. It robs our Lord of the Church he deserves. It exposes the hostility in our hearts and discredits the gospel in the eyes of the world. Then we wonder why we don’t see more conversions, why “the ground is so hard.”

Read the entire post HERE. It is worth your time.