Beware the Imaginative Story-Teller

            I have a friend who is a physician. Several years ago, he was called to the hospital for an emergency on the morning of the change to daylight savings time. The case required emergency surgery. While making preparations for surgery, he observed that the clock in the surgery area had not been set to the new time. He commented that the correct time needed to be on the clock. Someone accepted the responsibility of calling maintenance to come and reset the clock.

            At some point during the morning, the maintenance man showed up to reset the clock. He needed a step-stool or ladder which he had failed to bring. When my friend finished surgery, he noticed again that the clock had not been reset. He was told that the maintenance man had gone to get a ladder. Finished with the case, my friend left the surgery area to make rounds. The maintenance man soon returned to set the clock. As he was setting the clock, it slipped out of his hands, fell to the floor with a crash, and the face of the clock was broken. The clock with the broken face was reset and placed back on the wall.

            This story sounds simple enough. A clock was set to the correct time, but in the process of setting the clock, the maintenance man dropped it, and the face was cracked. Nothing more and nothing less happened. Except there was something else at play in this situation—the creative imagination of someone in the surgery area. By the time my friend finished rounds, a very imaginative story was circulating through the surgery area and the recovery room. It seems the story went something like this. My friend had been perturbed that morning because the clock in the surgery area had not been set for daylight savings time. He had ordered someone to get maintenance to come immediately and reset the clock. When he finished surgery, he discovered that the clock had not been reset. He flew into a rage, jerked the clock off the wall, and threw it onto the floor shattering the face. Upon learning of this amazing story, my friend tracked down the source of the story and confronted the imaginative story-teller. The story-teller confessed her sin. She was caught and exposed. Funny thing happened after that—the truth never succeeded in dismissing the imaginative tale of the rage-filled doctor and the shattered clock.

            This story reminds me of a game we used to play in my kindergarten class at First Baptist Church, Gaffney, South Carolina. My teacher’s name was Mrs. Oliphant. Sometimes she would decide that we would play a game during morning circle time. The game was very simple. She would whisper a secret saying into the ear of a child sitting next to her. This child would then whisper the secret saying into the ear of the child sitting next to them. The saying would make its way all the way around the room. When the last child had received the message, they would tell the secret. Mysteriously, the secret saying was vastly exaggerated beyond anything that anyone had heard. You see, Mrs. Oliphant, in her great wisdom, always chose something quite simple. For instance, if I were sitting beside her when this game started, she might whisper in my ear, “You are wearing blue socks today.” Yet, by the time this saying made it around the circle, it could become, “Bobby socked Stevie in the nose. Stevie’s nose bled and blood got all over his shirt. Stevie had to go to the hospital. Bobby’s mother gave him a spanking.” As the story moved around the circle, we never seemed to notice that it took longer and longer for the secret to be shared. When the game was over, everyone laughed about how the story evolved.

            At this stage of my life, I wonder if this game was not really intended to be a morality lesson of some sort. Whether it is with kindergarten students or adults, it is amazing how events grow into stories that take on a life of their own. Even more amazing we seem to lose our capacity to evaluate the stories we are hearing. With kindergarten students and adults, stories become so fantastic that we ought to be suspicious, but we keep retelling the story as if it were based on fact. Yet, the most perplexing aspect of this game is that no one seems to have the courage to trace down a story to discover the truth. No one goes to the characters of the story to ask them what really happened.

            I am deeply troubled by the power unfounded rumors or gossip gain. They distort the truth. They hurt people. They erode trust. They fracture relationships. For these reasons, the New Testament labels gossip a sin—a sin that ranks right up there with murder.

            There was a time when I believed that unfounded rumors died a natural death. I once believed there was no need to respond to them. This I once believed, but in recent years, I have learned that for far too many people unfounded rumors become the truth. I have also learned that even people who are usually good and fair-minded will retell rumors without attempting to know the truth. Even far more destructive, people make assumptions about other individuals and situations on the basis of rumor and not the truth.

            As a person who only has words to work with, I understand that I can get into enough trouble with the words I actually say. My difficulties are only intensified when someone distorts or misrepresents what I say.  Long ago, I gleaned some wisdom from Carlyle Marney who once said to his congregation in Charlotte, “I have learned in so many situations that what I said— you did not hear, and what you heard— I did not say.” Communication not only involves what one says, but also what one hears. If face-to-face communications can become garbled and misunderstood, why do we place any trust in rumors and gossip?

            At this stage I have simply resigned myself that rumors will always hurt, distort, erode, fracture, and undermine persons and human relationships. My prayer is that we are hurt, wounded, fractured, and undermined by what someone actually said about us, and not by what someone supposedly said. It is time to recover integrity in our speech and a desire to know the truth. For as Jesus said, “Only the truth can make us free.”