Don't Be a Busybody by Benjamin Keech

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Mar 10, 1914

Don't Be a Busybody

By Benjamin Keech

Gossip Can Not Mingle with True Friendliness—Self-Conscious and Eccentric People—“Kindly Affectioned”

By BENJAMIN KEECH

DON'T be a busybody, except to keep the body busy doing good, profitable, legitimate work, preferably at home. This honestly pays better than peddling gossip and using the tongue the wrong way. Life is short, and the tongue is a fateful member. We want to learn to use it the right way.

We can not meet people with the same pure friendliness, after having maliciously talked about them. Indeed, our friends, with perhaps a few splendid exceptions, will not treat us with cordiality after learning that we have been stabbing them in the back with a deadly weapon.

With what confidence and happiness we might all proceed through life if we knew that our friends were talking kindly and not detrimentally about us! It is the sad knowledge that most people are on the lookout for things to gossip about, and are apparently overjoyed when they find them, that casts a deadening gloom over many sensitive souls. O, let us get out of that class, if we are in it!

"DEAL GENTLY WITH THE ERRING"

A man or a woman, for instance, commits some wrong. It may be the first offense, and perhaps only one or two persons know anything about it. Yet they hasten to pass the matter along as a choice bit of gossip, and in time an influence is wrought against the offender which may take long years to overcome. On the other hand, if the occurrence had been wrapped in a charitable silence, or at least, had not been gaily, gladly held up for the world to gloat over, the mistaken one might have progressed safely from the error, cured of any desire to repeat it.

Or perhaps — which is more to the point — the man or the woman did not really commit the error, but was only maliciously lied about, as quite frequently happens. Cruel, unspeakably cruel, is the tongue of the busybody.

MADE ODD, SELF-CONSCIOUS, AND ECCENTRIC

Many persons are made odd, self-conscious, and eccentric by this very treatment. It is difficult for these conscientious ones to appear at ease when they imagine that the lens of adverse criticism is directed constantly upon them. If they could only be treated according to the Golden Rule for a required length of time, what a tremendous strain would be lifted from their minds! Relief comes only through divine love.

In the enlightening First Epistle of John we read, “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer”; and discerning Christians know why — because hate kills, while love is life-giving. We do not have to aim a material weapon at a person to kill or cripple the good there is in him. Our suspicious, critical, hateful, malicious, revengeful, unforgiving, morose thoughts and speeches, resting upon him for years, may do an incalculable amount of mischief.

On the contrary, the gentle beams of divine love, kindness, charity, good will, forgiveness, compassion, and the like have a remarkably revivifying influence, calculated to purify and harmonize all error, not only in the recipient, but in the giver as well. We may not naturally like a person, but we can learn to love him in the divine way — that is, to think and speak only good about him, thus freeing ourselves from responsibility in helping to bring any error upon him.

When we recognize that all the error in the world comes through our wrong thoughts, speeches, and acts, we conclude that improvement can obtain only by a purification of those thoughts, speeches, and acts. How things brighten up when, through pure communion with God, we succeed in expelling error from our minds, and filling them with truth and love! This is the leading way to improve our health and keep well.

The Bible says: “Love one another.” “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another.” “Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” He who hates another — and a good many things partake of the nature of hate which are not generally recognized as hate itself — is the worst kind of law-breaker, because he breaks divine law. Even in politics, the wise reformer is he who does not hate people, but confines his energies to correcting unjust principles because of his love for the right.

Apparently good people do bad things, and bad people do good things, proving the truth that we should not judge, because we can not. A person may be actually bad, but we can never make the error less by fighting it with more error. “Overcome evil with good” is the rule. The hateful need love; the discouraged, courage; the sinning, salvation. All need purer hearts, minds, and wills, that we may prefer to see and talk about only the good in people and things.

Don't be a busybody. Our professional busybodies make cowards of us all.