Are you Gossiping? Nine questions to ask yourself.

Question of the Week:
Concerning your many conversations with others, how do you know when it is OK to share information and when it could be useless or destructive to do so?

Response:
Kevin A. Miller (Is This Gossip? 9 questions to help you decide) provides some great questions to ask yourself before you share information with others:

1. Am I telling this to someone who can do something about the problem by helping the person or offering discipline or correction?
2. If not, am I telling this to someone who is wise enough to help me sort out my feelings and courageous enough to make me do the right thing: to confront the person or to confess where I was at fault?
3. Is this news approved for sharing?
4. Am I breaking a confidence? If so, is it only because the person is endangering someone's life, including his or her own?
5. Am I willing to say from whom I got this information so the information can be checked for accuracy?
6. When I say this, does it break my heart?
7. Have I taken the time to examine my life and confess to God how I also sin like that?
8. Am I praying for the person?
9. Would I feel comfortable if someone were saying this about me?

"With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be" (James 3:9-10).

taken from Pastors Weekly Briefing from Focus on the Family.