Friendship Killers

"Gossip separates the best of friends."  Prov. 16:28 (NLT)


The primary purposes of this blog is to strengthen friendships by helping the reader to understand the eternal significance of the relationships in our lives, and by exposing the fatal mistakes we makes that kill friendships. Having given attention to the value of friendships in previous posts I thought it was time to turn my attention to the thing that really drove me to start this blog in the first place: friendship killers.


Friendship killers are those fatal actions we take (or fail to take) that can signal the end of a relationship and bring about a lot of pain, misunderstanding, and deeply hurt feelings. As I have said earlier - when a friendship is lost there can be a lot of pain, this should not be unexpected given the eternal nature of friendships.


In over 20 years of ministry and counseling to families and individuals I can say that gossip ranks among the deadliest of all the friendship killers out there. Scripture even tells us in Proverbs 16:28 that gossip has the power to separate even the best of friends. If you are over 10 years old I'm sure that you can think of too many times in your own life when this has proven to be true. Gossip is a friendship killer!


As powerful as gossip is to kill even the best of friendships, we have to understand that it's power comes from us. We are the ones who listen, and we are the ones who pass along what we hear. We are the ones who feed the flames of gossip until it grows into a raging fire that burns out of our control. When the fire is over we find the chard remains of friendships and reputations. 


Just as we give gossip it's power we can also starve it and put out the flame. If we refuse to listen then gossip will lose it's strength, and if we refuse to pass along what we hear then it is weakened further. We really have the power to defeat gossip if we can face the fact that it is a friendship killer and not just some harmless talk or information passed along "for prayer."


The best way to defeat gossip and therefor preserve friendship is to apply the "one simple rule." Jesus said, "love your neighbor as yourself," but you may know it better as "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."  So when a piece of juicy information comes your way about a friend, when you are tempted to listen and pass it along, just put yourself in the shoes of the one being talked about and ask yourself what your friend would want you to do in that moment. Safe to say they wouldn't be hoping that you believe the gossip and tell everyone who will listen, chances are they would be devastated that people are talking about them and would want you to believe the best about them and not be a part of spreading the gossip. Isn't that what you hope your friends will do when they hear something about you? Don't you hope they will believe the best about you and defend you, to come to you directly and trust what you say? Do you want them to have your back? If that is what you want from your friends then that is what you must give them.


If we would all live by this one simple rule, then gossip will have claimed it's final friendship victim.