Watch Your Tongue and Save a Forest

Fire is wonderful when it’s controlled. When it’s not, it brings pain, destruction, disaster. Easy enough to understand, and usually we take care to keep genuine flames in control.

We’re not always so careful with other kinds of fire – especially the kind in our mouth.

“Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze. And the tongue is a fire.”

The fire of gossip in particular can cause the beautiful forest of someone’s life to be destroyed even before it has a chance to grow. Here’s an example.

It’s early January. Jenny is a high school junior. She’s thinking of running for student government in March when officers are elected for the following school year.

On Friday night she goes out with David. He has a reputation for being a user, but Jenny doesn’t believe it. She soon discovers there’s a good reason for David’s reputation. But she’s strong, she delivers a strong “NO” right in his face, and she doesn’t date him again. That part of her story is over.

She runs for student government and get’s elected. Her senior year is a flurry of activity. She helps coordinate recycling efforts; heads a fund drive for expanding the computer lab; participates in a mentoring program; and establishes herself as a liaison to the City Council.

She doesn’t do all this to get noticed and rewarded, but it happens anyway – with a scholarship to an excellent university. Because of her experience in student government, she majors in Political Science.

Jenny’s college years are challenging and successful. Her senior high school year experience prompts her to get involved in similar activities on a college level. She graduates with honors and undertakes a two-year master’s degree program. There she meets Brian, and they fall in love.

Jenny receives her master’s degree, and she’s ready to bring exciting ideas to a career in government. She and Brian are also making wedding plans.

A very nice forest – and in many ways just getting started

But let’s rewind to that March weekend eight years ago. Same date; again, she says no to David’s pressure.

But this time there’s a classmate, Sarah, who doesn’t like Jenny. Her date with David, given his reputation, provides Sarah with an opportunity.

Sarah spreads the story that quite a bit happened on that ate. To feel okay about this, Sarah tells herself that it’s probably true because… well, she heard some things about other girls that David took out.

When Jenny is unexpectedly sick for a few days, the explanation among the gossip crowd is that she’s pregnant. When this gets back to Jenny, she’s shattered. Some people who are repeating the “Jenny and David” stories are her friends – or so she thought. “I heard she had an abortion” stories are starting, followed by “I heard it’s her second one” stories.

It’s enough to make her almost never want to be in public at school, no matter how false and slanderous the stories are. Of course, she has to attend school.

But she doesn’t run for student government. She’s afraid that putting her name a face in front of the school right now in an election campaign will simply provoke more malicious stories.

The rest of the story plays out like dominoes falling in reverse. Because she doesn’t run for office, she doesn’t spend her senior year in student government. She doesn’t get the scholarship, she doesn’t go to that particular university, she doesn’t end up with degrees in political science, and she doesn’t meet Brian.

The fire of gossip destroyed the forest that could have been and should have been, even before it had a chance to grow.

Yes, it’s a fictional example. But impossible? Improbable? Too big a stretch of the imagination? No.

How many real possibilities for good things in real lives have been wiped out by gossip? It’s a really unpleasant thought.

Imagine yourself as a heart surgeon. You are literally holding someone’s heart in your hand. Obviously you have the power of life and death here. If you deliberately crushed that person’s heart in your hand just because you didn't like him or her, you’d be a genuine monster.

Something very similar is at work when people gossip. Instead of a person’s actual heart, the person’s reputation is at stake, and the instrument of life or death is the tongue.

A person’s reputation is sacred. We need to respect it. To stain or ruin someone’s reputation is like taking life from him/her. It’s simply evil.

How may hurt feelings, broken friendships, bitter misunderstandings, and even violent confrontations could be avoided if there were no “whisperers”?

People don’t carry tales where there is no ear to listen to them. Quietly, let it be known, as much by example as by statement, that you don’t believe in or life harmful gossip. You don’t have to appear obnoxiously righteous to do that. Still, it’s a tough stand to make, an it takes a lot of believing in yourself in order to do it. But it might rub off. Maybe at least some of your friends will follow your example.

It could put out a lot of fires… and maybe save someone’s forest.


Article excerpted from A Catholic Teen's Guide to Tough Stuff by Jim Auer