Friendship and Hospitality 3

"We are not to give unnecessary publicity to our brother's sin. 'He who covers a transgression seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates friends' (Prov 17:9). The one who talks unnecessarily about another's sin seeks to estrange him from the rest of his friends, just as he and the gossiper have already been estranged from one another. More friendships are destroyed in this way than in any other. More churches are destroyed by this one error than by any other. Because this is a very serious and constant danger, I and many others have a great and continual fear that it might spring up in our own congregations, and thus we make it a point to warn against it regularly from the pulpit.

Instead, we should just have the courage to speak to one another plainly and in love for:

"Part of loving one's neighbor is telling them the truth. A.W. Pink once said, 'The man who loves me the most is the one who tells me the most truth about myself.'"

From Steve Wilkins book, Face to Face: Meditations on Friendship & Hospitality.