What Others May Say

How often are we influenced by what others may say, be this the media or the opinions of other people?

I happened upon a website slamming a church I had thoughts of attending. I read the comments on the website aghast--so many people uniting together to warn people away, each one telling a personal tale of bad experiences. Yet, when I read some of the stories I thought, most of these deal with insinuations only, or interpretations of specific Pastor's sermons which I thought seemed to have been twisted. For example, someone would say, the church's financial fund is a problem, but there were no facts to back this up. I decided I would rather ignore what I read and decide for myself. But still, I find myself hearkening back to some of the words. I discovered that it is very difficult to ignore something one finds out about someone or an organisation, even if one might say one ignores gossip. Yet, are the statements truth or not? In the interim, I have discovered many other churches have websites warning against them.

I can say anything about anyone, especially if it's done in secret, and who can refute my allegations? Yet my words may spread and taint other people's views of the person or organisation. Perhaps what I have said has been in good faith, because I truly fear and wish to warn people away, or it could be said from an impure motive. This can happen to me too. It could happen to you.

Often there is an element of truth in what is said, for example, perhaps a person did have a bad experience with someone at the church mentioned previously, but it doesn't mean the entire church is like that. Or there could be a perception problem due to a cultural mismatch between both parties. When there are many saying the same thing, then one does need to be more aware that this might be truth and time will tell.

How does one deal with untrue allegations? Often there is not much one can do, besides to ignore what is being said and wait for truth to come to light. Sometimes you may not even know that allegations have been made, but you might see the symptoms of these in people's behaviour towards you. If you react badly to an untrue allegation, for example, by shouting that you are being bullied, then this might lend credence to the bully's allegations. I would suggest that if you suspect gossip, but don't know the content, then ignore this as you can only take action if you have something to take action against. If you do know what the content is, then perhaps a statement to the contrary might help, to say you deny what is being said. But don't act as if you are guilty, because people might think you are. In the church's case, I would recommend they post a statement saying that they refute the allegations and that they take exception to anonymous defamation, but then again, perhaps they don't want to give the website more visibility than it currently has by pointing this out.