Chattering Tongues

As Christians, followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are taught to be non judgemental, be forgiving and not to condemn our brother. But few of us ever put these teachings into practice. We love to chatter about each other forming judgements one upon another. We are very adept at finding reason to condemn each other. And we are blinded to the scope of the damage our nattering can cause. Take note of Churches were attendance is low, or there is trouble within the ranks of the leadership, there we will find chattering tongues! When we were of the world we had our likes and dislikes of other people and those we disliked we nattered about incessantly. We didnt care much whether what we said about them was true or not, just as long as we could cause other people to hate them also! This way we had in the world we have brought into the Church. Forgiveness, help and prayer are sorely lacking. In the Church however we appear to be even worse at it than when we were of the world. In the world friends and family were usually exempt from our wagging tongues. In the Church it seems that our attitude has changed and anyone is fair game! We have little concern for the damage we might do to the person we natter about, nor the damage we might cause to the Church! If the party nattered about should be hurt, or embarrassed and leave our midst we are quick to judge them saying, It must be true, why else would they leave? We dont take notice of the others that leave at the same time disgusted at our nattering and hypocrisy. We are only concerned whether or not we can find enough juicy tit bits to natter on each Sunday at our meeting places. And we are not shy of colouring the facts to make our tit-bits more juicy for the nattering!

Indeed, some of us will even fabricate stories just to bring another down who we see as having attained a higher level than ourselves! We teach in our places of worship scripture that tells us to love one another. To forgive, pray for and uplift each other, yet still we natter! When the general congregation see the way we carry on, many leave the Church altogether disgusted at our carry on! These people who leave see us as a bunch of un-loving, unforgiving, trouble making, power hungry hypocrites always singing our own praises. And if someone should find anything to natter on about us we are quick to cry foul! How like the Pharisees we are. We strut about in our finery and sing our own praises before others. We carry on like old women with nothing better to do than to sit about gossiping about others! And we think that we are righteous, holy men and women of God! Jesus told it like this in Luke chapter 18: verses 9 14: To some who were confident of their own righteousness He told this parable: Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed out very loud about himself, God I thank You that I am not like other men, robbers, evil-doers, adulterers or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get! But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to Heaven, but beat his breast and said, God have mercy on me a sinner! I tell you, this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God! For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled. And he who humbles himself will be exalted! What He was telling us was to be careful of what we do and say. Chances are that those we put down with our wagging tongues will enter Heaven before us and we will be humbled before them! We say that we dont judge others, but when we do this thing, we are laying judgement upon them and saying to the world I am better than they! When we chatter about others what we do in the eyes of those who hear us is to lower their respect for ourselves! We

have not shown our brother any love or compassion. We have not sort after the truth and, bearing that the rumour holds up, quietly counselled him and tried to help him overcome his sin. That he might not be shamed before others and caused to flee the Church! No! We would rather bandy our juicy tit-bits back and forth with no real knowledge as to their validity. And all too often we cause the object one of our nattering to leave the Church in disgust. Even losing faith altogether. And what of the others who have left us in disgust? Will we also tag them as lost souls because they have left our midst? Jesus warned us not to drive anyone out of the Church or cause them to lose faith, yet we do it on a regular basis! We loudly proclaim our innocence as the cause of their leaving and wail for the sake of our loss! We are a hard headed people, we children of God. We hate to do what we are told, or the way we are told. We always have to change things to suit ourselves! We have been told in scripture to judge in accordance with scripture that which we hear and see from others that it be righteous. But in Mark chapter 7: verses 1 6 we are told not to judge lest we be judged! The judgement that Jesus was talking about was, when we see what we perceive as sin in others and natter about it one to another, not only do we judge them but also condemn them. We should be careful lest our chattering send us to the same place we have sent our brother when we placed our judgement on him with our chattering tongues. Others will start looking at us and begin to natter about what they see as sin in our life. In this way we are judged as we have judged. The teachings of Jesus tell us that none of us have the right to judge while yet we have sin in our own life! And not one of us is without sin, for all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God! Yet, knowing this, still we maintain our holier than thou attitudes. If someone should point out some fault in our own life, we cry foul play and go on the defensive. We point out what Jesus said about sin and our relationship to it. When

we feel that we have vindicated ourselves before our accuser, we revert back to deriding others for their sin. What hypocrites we are. A nest of venomous vipers! By what comes out of our mouths and the things we do, we are more like disciples of the Pharisees than disciples of Jesus! We would have done the Pharisees proud! Like the Pharisees, we love to stand tall before men and hear them praise us as wondrous servants of God! Woe to anyone who should say anything to humble us, or take away our glory! Even when the Son of God came and tried to bring us humbly before the Father, we didnt like the humble part and nailed Him to a cross for it! We dont like to be humble. We love to have our glory and sing our own praises, even if that glory sung is at the cost of another who we crucify with our chattering tongues!