* * * * * * * * * * * *

When a Vanderbilt University freshman was sexually assaulted last year, her life fell apart. She suffered frequent panic attacks, causing her to leave the school for the rest of the semester. But slowly she began her emotional recovery, moving back to Nashville, and returning to her studies.

Then the call came from one of her friends. The story of her assault had been posted on the Internet. At Juicycampus.com an anonymously written post named her and said, “Everyone thinks she’s so sweet, but she got what she deserved.” All of a sudden the entire campus knew about the 2007 attack.

Online gossip and harassment of adults is on the rise. Juicycampus, whose home page promises that “posts are totally, 100 percent anonymous,” covers more than 500 colleges and universities. And there are other such cyber-gossip sites, including gossipreport.com, rottenneighbor.com (where members can trash-talk their next-door neighbors), and autoadmit.com. (Source: Reader’s Digest, Dec. 2008, pp. 61-63.)

The Bible labels the person a “fool” who spreads defamatory messages about another. As children of God, we must eschew any role to be played in the field of gossip and slander -- whether that role be the speaker or listener of such.

You say, “I would never be a part of anything like the above mentioned cyber-slander.” We would hope not. But the fact remains that we must be especially aware of the slander ’traps’ of our day and age, for they are out there. The reality that our generation is the most communicative in history has only served to multiply the entrapments.

Consider: We don’t live in a day and age where, if one is enticed to repeat some gossip to his neighbor, he must literally walk over to his place and tell him. We live in the computerized age of email, where a backbiting note can go from Shelbyville, Kentucky to Melbourne, Australia in a matter of seconds. We live in an age of cell phones where, on a whim, a person can defame another with a call or a text message from their car. We are a people who like to talk, and talk a lot -- and that’s not always good. The next verse in Proverbs 10 offers the counsel, “In the multitude of words sin is not lacking, But he who restrains his lips is wise” (vs. 19).

Let the gossiper be reminded that his backbiting and slander damages (1) the one he talks about, Proverbs 16:26, (2) the one he talks to, Proverbs 18:8, and (3) he himself, Romans 1:28-32. It is a Satanic trait (Revelation 12:10; Job 1:9-11).

Don’t ‘play the fool.’ Speak words of kindness. If you would speak damaging words about someone, speak them about yourself. And don’t listen to gossip. (Hey, it takes a talker and a listener for this stuff to spread!) “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers” (Ephesians 4:29).