These days, we don’t think much of careless talk, gossip or other forms of evil speech. Hollywood thrives on it. Sports news is filled with it. Politics gets its lifeblood from it. And too often, even our churches and synagogues are infected with it.
How often have you heard someone disguise gossip in the form of a prayer request? Or justify their mumbling complaints and jealousies against someone else with the simply rationalization, “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
If a hair fell out of our head every time we engaged in careless talk, we’d soon all be bald and in need of the services of Dr. Larry Shapiro.
B’midbar (Numbers) 12:1-16 shows us what haShem thinks of careless talk and gossip. There was nothing false in anything Miryam said to Aharon about their brother, Moshe. But she said it out of jealousy, out of disapproval of Moshe’s marriage to an Ethiopian woman, and her heart’s intent was not pure.
Adonai afflicted her, turning her skin and hair ashen white and banning her from the camp of the house of Israel for seven days before being allowed back in. It was a harsh, though apparently harmless, example of just how much haShem cares about careless talk.
One has to wonder how long TV gossip shows would have young, attractive starlets hosting them, how long most newspapers would be held together, and just long long most churches and synagogues would last if Adonai always afflicted those who engage in evil speech in such a manner, every time they did it.
I get the feeling, at the minimum, that the market for “color-safe bleach” would plummet.
Tags: careless talk, Dr. Larry Shapiro