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Few sins feel as ordinary—and yet are as destructive—as slander, backbiting, and talebearing (see Westminster Larger Catechism 145). Because these sins often occur in casual conversation rather than in formal accusations, they easily pass unnoticed. Yet these sins of the tongue strike at the heart of Christian charity and peace.
Slander seeks to damage a person’s reputation through falsehood. Augustine warned that when Satan cannot devour a believer through open sin, he often turns to the subtler weapon of calumny—either by sullying a good name or by sowing suspicion in the hearts of others. He knew that a good name is fragile. Shakespeare captured the devastation well: To steal a purse is trivial; to steal a reputation is to impoverish the soul. Slander does not enrich the slanderer; it only ruins the slandered.
Backbiting differs slightly. It involves speaking unnecessarily of another’s faults, even when the information is true. Truth alone does not justify speech. Love stewards truth. Speaking what is true without necessity or charity violates the command to cover a neighbor’s sin rather than broadcast it. But a malicious heart and a slandering tongue often dwell together.
The ninth commandment exposes how seriously God regards these sins. Slander differs from false witness in setting: one occurs in ordinary life, the other in court. But the moral substance is the same—malice joined to falsehood. Matthew Henry pressed this further, warning that reputations are as vulnerable in conversation as lives are in the courtroom. What makes slander especially cruel is that it offers little chance for redress. A whispered accusation often travels farther and faster than a public defense.
We need to be warned against not only speaking slander but listening to it. To receive malicious speech is to participate in it. Slander wounds not only the accused but the hearer as well. Thus, the sin compounds. As Paul says, those who bite and devour one another risk being consumed by one another (Gal. 5:15).
Talebearing—what we commonly call gossip—extends this destruction further. Gossip traffics in information to which the hearer has no rightful claim. The gossiper becomes an unauthorized steward of another’s story. Often overlooked, however, is the guilt of the gossip-listener. But it is as foolish to believe every tale as it is sinful to spread one. Wisdom examines reports carefully and refuses to delight in scandal. Indeed, we should remember that a person who gossips to you will likely gossip about you.
Augustine was correct. Yet perhaps even more so in our day than in his, reputations are easily shattered. Information travels at light speed. Even so, Christians are called to be reputation repairers, not destroyers. To guard our tongues is to love our neighbor. To refuse slander—spoken or heard—is to resist the devil himself. Too often, however, Christians participate in Satan’s work. Brothers, these things ought not to be so.