It's, admittedly, a click-bait-y title. But it's actually an accurate way to think about the potential consequences of the theme of this post. I'm not writing about the killing of the life of a teacher, but rather the killing of his or her reputation and/or his or her effectiveness. There is a thing that any of us can do which effectively renders an educator as if they weren't even alive.
It's the thing known as gossip.
I'm also, admittedly, borrowing this title from a friend of mine who preached a deeply convicting sermon a few years ago that he called, "How to Kill Your Neighbor." His main text was Leviticus 19:16, which goes like this: "You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor." Slandering (which is essentially the same thing as gossip, spreading uncorroborated news, misrepresentation, deliberate omission at one's expense, etc.) is a sin which acts against the life of our neighbors. It is a crime akin to murder — the murdering of one's good name and of their ability to maneuver in society without a marred reputation.
So all I'm doing here is taking Mike's well-formed biblical argument and putting it into a specific context — the context of the Christian school. Aside from the fact that bearing false testimony is inherently sinful, I want to provide 3 reasons why it is utterly destructive in the school environment.
1. A school is a relatively small and tightly-contained bubble.
Parents drive there twice (or more) a day. Teachers spend all day there. Regular volunteers show up. A school is essentially the same people clumping together in the same place for the same reason day after day. It's similar to a local church in this sense, and so the same catastrophic consequences of gossip and slander are a very present threat to the school as they are to the church. So we would do well to take biblical warnings against such speech very seriously:
Ephesians 4:31 — “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.”
Colossians 3:8 — “But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.”
1 Peter 2:1 — “So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.”
One of the reasons why a local assembly or organization must safe-guard itself against these sins of the tongue is because of the poignant destructiveness of an evil tongue. James teaches us this:
“And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”
James 3:6-8
Putting a few drops of deadly poison into the ocean won't do much. But putting them into a small container will. A single gossip in a pool of a million people may not do a huge amount of harm per capita. But a single gossip on a floor of a few, or in the context of a classroom of 20 families, or within the walls of a front office — such a "small" fire can spread to disastrous proportions fast. This is not to say that you should just be sure to do your gossiping in a large-enough context, but rather that you should recognize that this sin is particularly destructive in a close-knit community like a Christian school.
2. Ethos is vital for effective teaching.
Distinguishing between the elements of logos (content/logic), pathos (emotion/feeling), and ethos (credibility/authority) in communication is important. Effective communication relies most heavily upon logos (i.e. what is taught must be true), but it is necessarily complemented by proper emotion (don't be giddy when teaching on the Holocaust) and proper ethos (the teacher is the room's authority and expert). And one of the horrible effects of gossip is that it destroys an authority's sense of credibility in the eyes of those they are to teach or lead.
I've personally witnessed this to be true in relation to my roles at churches and schools alike. Many of you reading this will be able to resonate with it, too. You can tell when someone has lost faith in you and is looking squinty-eyed at everything you say and do. You've effectively lost the ability to do your job when this happens. When another person had spread something inaccurate about you that tarnishes your credibility, it's almost impossible to move forward with your audience (or at least with those who suspect something's wrong with you).
The reality of destroyed credibility in the eyes of peers/students is one of my most-loathed unfortunate commonplaces of education. I know of a teacher who struggled for years to try to recover what was wrongly destroyed in an instant by a group of complaint-mongering parents. Rumors were spread to families and students before teacher and administrator could do anything about it, and then an almost insurmountable task of teaching misinformed students was embarked upon. Without a solid reputation in the eyes of students and families, a teacher cannot effectively do what they have been asked to do.
3. Especially at a school, gossip is betrayal.
I want this point to sink in, so I’ll be dramatically brief:
Teaching is trench-work. It's hard and has little sense of reward in the moment. And when a fellow trench fighter acts against your reputation so as to make it all the harder for you to slog your way through the year, it feels like absolute betrayal (because, well, that's what it is).
As a conclusion I'll borrow from Pastor Riccardi's thoughts on this topic; instead of walking away thinking about how bad gossip is, let's focus on how good it is to speak rightly about each other:
Instead of falsehood, we ought to speak truth to our neighbors. We ought to occupy our thoughts and conversations with the truth of God’s Word, heeding Paul’s exhortation to dwell on whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, any excellence and anything worthy of praise (Phil 4:8). Our hearts and our minds ought to be occupied with the glories of God revealed in Christ and His great salvation. And, being filled with the Spirit of Truth, we ought to overflow in speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (Eph 5:19; cf. Col 3:16–17). Praise is becoming to the upright (Ps 33:1). “Truthful lips will be established forever, but a lying tongue is only for a moment. Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil, but counselors of peace have joy” (Prov 12:19–20).
May we who have so much to praise God for, so much truth to delight in, be preoccupied with what is lovely and praiseworthy rather than what is base and corrupt. May we embrace the way of wisdom and put folly far from our house. May God keep His people from acting against the lives of their neighbors, and may He always and in every place vindicate the cause of righteousness.