Psalm 101:5a

⁵ Whoever secretly slanders his neighbor,
Him I will destroy;
The one who has a haughty look and a proud heart,
Him I will not endure.

 Following the statement, “a perverse heart shall depart me; I will not know wickedness” is verse 5 which calls out two wicked things.  The first describes someone who slanders his neighbor.  This can cover a great deal of landscape. 

1.       There is the obvious, this is a direct conversation where someone speaks negatively for the sole purpose of demeaning or causing a perception of someone’s inadequacy.  Jesus said in Matthew 5:22, “I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.”  Yikes!  I believe I have put myself in danger too many times.  Many times I think I have a cause but when I really look at everything, I realize that I just need to be the right person.  Being the right person means thinking about people the way God does.  Who am I to determine that a person God created and breathed life into isn’t equal and doesn’t deserve Him?  Yet again, if I intentionally speak against someone with the purpose of harming them or causing others to think less of them, I am becoming my own authority in the matter.  Jesus, who endured suffering and death, has a completely different view of people than we do.  There are, of course, some people who are intent to do evil and they have no conscious about it.  Do they deserve our harsh words?  By our justification, absolutely, but our authority and our justification simply do not matter here.  Psalm 37:27-28 says, “Depart from evil, and do good; and dwell forevermore.  For the Lord loves justice, and does not forsake His saints”.  God loves justice and if He loves justice then justice will happen.  He will not forsake us, we are always on His mind because He loves us too.  We can rest in His promise that righteous justice will occur and we are not forgotten.

2.       There is the not so obvious.  Gossip.  There is the talk about others that does not intentionally want to hurt others but does hurt others because of its nature to cause perceptions about others.  Too many people have been hurt too many times among Christians from gossip.  Gossip is at its best the telling of half-truths; at its worst it is the spreading of non-truths.  The pain from gossip strikes to the heart of people.  We are already an insecure bunch and constantly concerned about what others may feel or how they may see us.  Throw in some hearsay and then the person can’t focus on fellowship, learning, accountability.  Their sanctuary, the place they go for spiritual healing, now is the focus of their pain.  Satan uses this tool mightily.

The answer here is that this person will be destroyed!  Let that sink in.  As written above, Jesus said the person is in danger of hell fire.  This reveals to me that there is a highway to the corruption of the heart and that highway is devaluing life.  I find this startling and it causes an immensely burdened heart.  I find myself almost unable to type when I consider how we devalue life in our culture.  Every day I read about Christians being slaughtered by Muslims because they are Christians, their lives mean nothing to the Muslims except for how they can use them to promote themselves.  Every day I read about refugees crossing the Mediterranean and dying because their ships sank or they are thrown overboard.  Then my wife reads from our local newspaper how a woman addicted to Meth killed six infants and hid them in her garage.  How is any of this possible except for the devaluation of life?  Devaluation of life is the exact opposite of God who creates and gives life.  He is life.  If Satan can cause any devaluing of life, he is on tract to create confusion and chaos.  We must be anxious to see if there are any areas in our own life where we devalue another.