I looked more closely at the research I cited here a couple of days ago which claimed, in essence, that gossip is good.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
In a curious move, the authors broaden the definition of gossip far beyond “primarily negative evaluative commentary about absent individuals” and “baseless trash talk” to include “chit-chat”, “idle talk”, and “self-disclosure” among other things.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
So, talking about yourself is part of this study’s definition of gossip.<\/p>\n\n\n
I fail to understand the reasoning behind redefining the term “gossip”, studying it, and then declaring this new definition to be a social good.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I am pretty certain that the Bible does not have “self-disclosure” in mind when it roundly and repeatedly condemns “gossip”. What the Bible says about gossip – and what terms it uses for the phenomenon – would make for an interesting “deep dive” into Scripture.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I might have to take on that project when I get the time since I have seen firsthand the incredible destructive power of gossip – of the “negative evaluative commentary about absent individuals” kind. And it seems like a sin that is commonly winked at by most Christians. (Is that because we all enjoy it so much?)<\/p>\n\n\n
Beyond redefining gossip, the gossip study also downplays the amount of gossiping (as traditionally understood) that we tend to do: “in daily life, \u201csocial policing\u201d has been estimated to comprise a mere 5% of naturally occurring private conversations.”<\/p>\n\n\n
Considering the researchers also cite 16,000 as the number of words most adults speak in a day’s span, the math works out to 800 words a day spoken against other people behind their backs.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
(For reference, this entire post consists of roughly 300 words.)<\/p>\n\n\n
Does that match with your own experience?<\/p>\n\n\n
Doesn’t the Lord expect us to bring that number of critical words down closer to zero?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I looked more closely at the research I cited here a couple of days ago which claimed, in essence, that gossip is good.\u00a0 In a curious move, the authors broaden the definition of gossip far beyond “primarily negative evaluative commentary about absent individuals” and “baseless trash talk” to include “chit-chat”, “idle talk”, and “self-disclosure” among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8768,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8767\/revisions\/8768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}