Oct. 14, 2020

Slander and Gossip in the Church

Slander and Gossip in the Church

18: Check out this week as Pastor Plek answers a tough question on gossip and relationships within the church. 

Specific Questions below : 
1)How are we supposed to respond to Church gossip and slandering?

2) Everything that I’ve read says that when someone in the church hurts you, you ‘just have to forgive them.’ When we’re children and we hurt someone, the parents and sometimes other adults intervene and tells them not to do that and what they should do instead. But as adults, nobody ever corrects toxic/hurtful behavior (locker room talk that guys share about their sisters in Christ, social games that isolate/slander certain members of the church). Instead, the people who try to bring these issues to light are often silenced, shamed, and shunned. Even if the offender say all the right trigger words (words we associate with either repentance or to minimize the offense without taking reasonable action to prevent future harm), there is no accountability for ‘socially acceptable sin.’ How do we continue to be a part of the church, without engaging in the socially acceptable forms of sin to fit in (i.e. cutting someone down, soft-bullying certain people to be accepted by the majority)? 


3) As a female in the church, I have a hard time relating to the men (especially the young single men) in the church. There are some young men, who have isolated me and my other young women friends from engaging with the congregation outside of Sunday activities, because I won’t become eye candy, date, flirt, or entertain conversations that are implicit. Only when our standards appears to be relaxed or when we appear to entertain the idea of dating them, are we ‘allowed back I in’ (which I refuse to do.) Also, there are men who will not help a women when she is in need of help (like moving heavy furniture) unless she is a romantic interest (until she refuses him) or if he already as a woman at his side. Not all the men are like that, there are some who have helped me purely for altruistic reasons (whom I really respect and appreciate), but more often than not (especially in my age range), I’m treated poorly. How do I love the men in the church as my brothers in Christ, when they see women only as tools and expect women to treat their bodies as currency to be acknowledged? 


4) How do people who have been hurt by the church overcome cynicism toward the church, especially when they observe the same behaviors that have hurt them in the past being repeated?

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