You would not expect that Christian people would say bad things about each other. Christians claim to be followers of Christ and Jesus never said bad things of others. The sad thing is that Christians do sometimes say bad things about each other. At Jenny and Paula’s church, some of the kids gossiped a lot. Usually it was about silly stuff, but sometimes some of the kids were unkind to some of the other kids in the Children’s Sabbath School class, even though Sister Nora, the teacher, talked to them a lot about Christian unity and loving each other. Gossiping is not love; that is one thing the children knew. But, sadly, it happens.

One day gossip got started that was really terrible. Paula heard it from Susan. Susan waited until the Children’s Sabbath school class was over and whispered, “You know Jenny? Well, somebody at school saw her with an older boy and. . .” she continued to whisper things in Paula’s ear that simply could not possibly be true. Jenny was a good girl and the rumour suggested she was being very naughty with a boy. Well, Paula did not repeat the details but she told her brother Edward about it and she was very worried.

“Jenny is one of our closest friends and she loves Jesus with all her heart. This kind of rumour could ruin her reputation and hurt her really badly,” she said. But the rumour kept spreading and soon it got to Jenny. Then one day Paula saw Susan whispering in Jenny’s ear. It just crushed her inside to see what happened next. Jenny burst into tears and ran from the Children’s Sabbath School room and did not come to church for weeks.

Both Paula and Susan felt awful about it. But they did not say anything, even though they both imagined how Jenny was feeling, all alone at her house, thinking everybody thought she was such a sinful girl when she was not; the gossip was a big lie. That night Edward had a dream. It was really frightening and he woke up with a gasp and had to sit out in the living room with a glass of water to try to get it out of his head.

“I dreamed about the rumour that hurt Jenny last night, Paula,” he told his sister the next day.

“What happened in your dream?” she was wanting to know.

“Well, we were at church and the children were all whispering that rumour to each other. Suddenly, the rumour jumped out of the mouth of Susan and became a terrible beast. It had a huge round body and a tiny little head but huge lips on the front. Its fur was long and full of tangles and dirt and filth because it never cleaned itself. It had legs like a duck with big huge feet that were covered with nasty black fur and he could run really fast all over, spreading himself, the rumour to everybody he could hunt down.” Edward said, his eyes wide like he was dreaming it again.

“Then it started chasing all the children and if they could not run fast enough, he jumped on them and fell on them with his big nasty fat lips and put the rumour all over them so they could never get rid of it. Finally, it went to Jenny and when it got to her, it ate her completely up and she was gone and we never saw her in Sabbath School again.” He finished. Both Edward and Paula’s hearts were racing from the dream. While it was a silly animal the damage the rumour did was so scary because they knew the damage was real.

“We will lose Jenny if we don’t do something. We have to tell Dad.” Paula concluded. As soon as she said that, Edward knew she was right. When their father got home from work, they told him everything. As soon as he heard that Jenny had stopped coming to church he called their mother in.

“We can’t let Jenny get hurt like this,” he said. “I am sure Jenny’s parents don’t know why she won’t go to church.” Then he told Mother to call Jenny’s parents and tell them what was going on; they wanted to fix the situation and not just ignore it. Edward and Paula were grateful for their parent’s willingness to help them. Then their father called Sister Nora and let her know what was going on and why Jenny had not been at church for a few weeks. Sister Nora agreed to take care of matters and confront the rumour face to face the next Sabbath.

“This rumour about Jenny is false,” she told the Children’s Sabbath School class. “You all know Jenny is a good girl. Satan uses rumours to destroy the church and if we don’t stop Satan, he is going to destroy someone we love, like Jenny. We aren’t going to stand for that, are we?”

“NO” the children answered. Sister Nora then welcomed Jenny back to the class.

“The weapon that defeats rumours and the devil is love. We all owe Jenny an apology and we need to pray that she forgives us, that we forgive each other and that God keeps us honest and helps all watch out for each other that rumours don’t hurt our brothers and sisters again.”

The prayer ended the rumour and Jenny was as happy as ever.

“I had another dream last night,” Edward told his sister the next day.

“About the rumour?” she asked.

“Yes. The rumour with the furry feet walked into our Children’s Sabbath School class to attack more kids and it was faced with Sister Nora leading us all in prayer. It grabbed its chest and dropped dead right there on the spot. Then from its useless body, beautiful flowers started to grow and continued to grow until we couldn’t see the filthy beast at all, just the pretty flowers that grew from its body.”

So their Children’s Sabbath School class got stronger and grew closer because they knew what to do when God’s enemy tries to hurt someone in the church with a rumour. And now you know too, so if you see the rumour with the furry feet, you can kill him and share all the beautiful flowers that grow from his stomach with everyone in your class.

“The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly.” Proverbs 26:22

“We think with horror of the cannibal who feasts on the still warm and trembling flesh of his victim; but are the results of even this practice more terrible than are the agony and ruin caused by misrepresenting motive, blackening reputation, dissecting character? Let the children, and the youth as well, learn what God says about these things: ‘Death and life are in the power of the tongue.’

“The spirit of gossip and talebearing is one of Satan’s special agencies to sow discord and strife, to separate friends, and to undermine the faith of many in the truthfulness of our positions.” –The Adventist Home, p. 440–441

“Cultivate the habit of speaking well of others.” –The Ministry of healing, p 492