Scripture Passage: Proverbs 11:13 – “A gossip reveals a secret, but a trustworthy person keeps a confidence.”
Very few people can keep a confidence. Will Rogers said, “The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.” An old tale often told illustrates this issue. A nice man lived with a nasty problem: he talked too much about other people. He could not conquer his bad habit. Whenever he heard a story about someone he knew, he just had to tell his friends.
One day, he learned something strange about a businessman in town. Of course, he felt compelled to share it with his colleagues, who told their friends, who told people they knew. It spread around town until the unhappy businessman, the main character, heard it. He ran to the town rabbi and wailed that he was ruined! Nobody would want to deal with him after this. His good name and reputation were gone with the wind.
Now the rabbi decided to summon the man who loved telling stories. If he hadn’t started them, he might at least know who did. When the nice man with the nasty problem heard from the rabbi how devastated his colleague was, he felt truly sorry. He honestly hadn’t thought it was such a big deal to tell this story because it was true; the rabbi could check it if he wanted.
“True or not, it really makes no difference! You just cannot tell stories about people. This is like murder—you kill a person’s reputation.” He said a lot more, and the man who started the rumor now felt sorry. “What can I do to undo it?” he sobbed. “I will do anything you say!”
The rabbi looked at him. “Do you have any feather pillows in your house?” “Rabbi, I am not poor; I have a whole bunch of them. But what do you want me to do? Sell them?”
“No, just bring me one.”
The man was mystified, but he returned to the rabbi’s study a bit later, carrying a soft, fluffy pillow under his arm. The rabbi opened the window and handed him a knife. “Cut it open!”
“But, Rabbi, here in your study? It will make a mess!”
“Do as I say!”
And the man cut the pillow. A cloud of feathers erupted. Many of them flew out the window in a big, swirling, whirling trail. The rabbi waited ten minutes. Then he ordered the man: “Now bring me back all the feathers, and stuff them back into your pillow. All of them, mind you. Not one may be missing!”
The man stared at the rabbi in disbelief. “That is impossible, Rabbi. The ones here are the ones I might get, most of them, but the ones that flew out the window are gone. Rabbi, I can’t do that, you know it!”
“Yes,” said the rabbi, nodding gravely. “That is how it is: once a rumor leaves your mouth, you do not know where it ends up. It flies on the wings of the wind, and you can never get it back!” He ordered the man to apologize to the person he had spread the rumor about and to the people he had told the story to.
That is what the man did. In the end, he became a good man who overcame a nasty problem.
What about you and me? Can we keep a secret? “For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” (Luke 8:17)
© Dr. Paul Pettit
