Whether you prefer “live and let live” or “live and let die” there is a lot of wisdom in knowing that one of the best personal policies you might have is to stay away from the gossipmongers and to not interject yourself into other people’s lives and problems.

There has been a lot of truth to that in my own life lately as it is not very hard to look around and see folks doing things that I would sure love to comment on. As the old saying goes “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.’ With the things I have been wanting to make comment on, there were very little nice things that could have been said, so I kept my mouth shut.

The thing is, if someone you know is messing up, doing stuff out of character, or simply doing things that you know aren’t right, do we have a responsibility to go to them and try to say something?

I did that recently. I know someone that is definitely messing up. They are doing things that will eventually come to light, and people will get hurt. So, I went to them and tried to let them know that the things they were doing in secret, were not so secret. The only thing that happened due to my intervention was that my “friend” turned on me. Instead of realizing that they needed to clean up their act, the instead dug themselves deeper and turned their back on me.

So, maybe I should have just minded my own business? Or not?

Matthew 18:15-17 says, “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

That New Testament verse totally contradicts the notion that you should just leave people alone and let them do what they are going to do, regardless. That makes things a little more complicated, don’t it? But, there is a right way and a wrong way to do things.

That verse does not say that we should rush to social media and put them on blast. It doesn’t say that we should fire up the rumor mill and make sure everyone in town knows that Jane Doe is messing around with so and so, or so and so has their mind somewhere other than home and family. It doesn’t say to go and make a Tik Tok video and criticize people that you are having issues with either. Nor does it say that we should remove people from our lives because we deem that they are not living up to our “moral code.”

One thing I am definitely sure of is that there is not one single person reading this that doesn’t sin. There is not one person around that doesn’t have something going on in their life that might not line up with rules we have to live by that our written in the best-selling book of all time, the Bible. I know I have my sins, and you know you have yours. There was only one person that ever lived a sinless life. So, maybe we all should do better. We all have room for improvement and perhaps we should focus more on our shady areas instead of throwing shade at others. I know some people that definitely need to fall back from throwing their fiery darts and move toward improving their own hearts.

I believe the day is fast approaching when what we have in our hearts will be judged and that our time in this ugly world is coming to a close a lot faster than some are ready for that day to come. It is time to get right.

In the end, we all only have one person to answer to when it comes to what lives in our heart, and He does not have a Facebook, Insta or TikTok account.