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“This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.” –– Luke 1:25
“Well, you know what I heard…” Seldom do those words introduce a constructive thought or an expression of admiration. Rather, those words are typically a prelude to the serial casting of aspersions, the salacious rumor, or a character assassination. “Well, you know what I heard –– she sued her twin sister over the estate … he was a druggie in high school … he’s in debt to the wrong kind of people … their house is a museum to dysfunction and that fence isn’t to keep others out, but to keep them in … I always knew she’d wind up in trouble … you can’t trust her … he’s a crook … that family is a boatload of crazy…
Speculation becomes rumor becomes assumption becomes reputation. In a small town, just the mention of a last name carries the weight of assumptions and reputations passed on from generation to generation, from century to century. If, tomorrow, I traveled to the town of my childhood and was introduced to a toddler with the surname, Darnell, I would instantly and unjustly thrust upon him the weight of the rumors borne by his forebears over 50 years ago. Immediately, the synapse fires and you go there, there being not what you know now, but what you heard and assimilated years before. It is presumption at its worst. No one should have to bear the brunt of ingrained community characterizations.
We are too quick to equate rumor with character and the consequence is often cruelty. A disastrous downside of social media is the Pandora’s box of cruelty, rumor, and innuendo it has opened. There seems to be a gleeful rush to contribute blows in the pummeling of those tagged by rumor or insinuation. It has certainly influenced the suicide rate and contributes mightily to national and global dysfunction. It is estimated that a third of people aged 18-29 get their news, not from a vetted, regulated news source, but from TikTok. Just three years ago, it was 9%. Plus, it has long been obvious that people of all ages are sucked into the rabbit hole of confirmation bias, trusting unvetted voices with no accountability, who create or exploit the rumor and claim it as truth, knowing it will get the clicks and return a profit.
So, isn’t it interesting that in the advent of a Savior, there are two key figures in the narrative who have been the victims of community gossip? Elizabeth, unjustly labeled and stigmatized just because she had not given birth to a child by a culturally imposed deadline. Mary, too, was the unfortunate recipient of a community’s murmuring judgment, her neighbors drawing conclusions without knowing the details of the actual story. It is hard to outrun a rumor.
As a John Irving character observed, “Rumors aren't interested in the unsensational story; rumors don't care what's true.” Yet, subjected to community cruelty, Elizabeth and Mary did not recoil from the unique callings with which they had been entrusted, and in time a Redeemer and his chief witness were born to a world so prone to cruelty and so in need of redemption. Their strength in adversity became our good news. May their witness and the promise of this season inspire us to discard the rumors, and instead, spread the truth of God’s self-giving.
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