Time To Catch Those Small Pestering Church Foxes
by Stephan Joubert
It ended up not dying out with the dinosaurs. Like clock work it still happens in the church today - I’m talking about those nameless letters that still land on churches’ desks. Oh, and all the gossiping behind people’s backs. We still have the a nasty habit of tearing someone down when they are not present. Some do it in public under an alias, and other do it secretly behind closed doors under their own names. The damage is still the same. On some level, it has become almost virtuous to gossip about others. It’s as if these people develop a new “verbal freedom” when they start critiquing and breaking down other people, in their speech or in their writings online, their tongues becoming machine guns.
A friend of mine once said that he tried to pray under a alias, but he quickly realized that it doesn't work. Indeed! God is Light and He acts in Light. Within His territory transparency and honesty reign the day. Here, stabbing someone in the back is as discarded as yesterday’s news. God’s people live in His Light. They don’t shred people with destructive talk, sending anonymous letters or emails.
What do we do with these nameless letters? Well, I learned from my son-in-law Pierre to quickly nip it in the bud. Recently, when he had to preach at a church, he found a nameless note on the pulpit where he was criticized for using a few English words in his previous Afrikaans sermon. Pierre decided to read the sharply worded letter to the congregation. He shared that Christians don’t treat each other that way. We talk privately with each other when something that someone else does bothers us. We do not write sarcastic letters and anonymously leave them on the pulpit.
Gossip must be rooted out as well. I recently witnessed someone criticize a well-known person on Facebook who apparently wasn’t very friendly toward her in public, causing someone else to immediately defend the integrity of said well-known person. This is what believers do for each other. We defend each others’ good name. We stand in the gap for each other. We cover each others’ backs’. That is how we prevent those pestering small foxes from destroying God’s vineyard here on earth.