Busybody Christians

We have a problem in far too many churches.

They are full of busybodies.

A busybody is someone who continuously pokes their nose into the affairs of others, instead of attending to their own affairs.

Then they trade tales of other people’s faults and failings with other busybodies.

You find them liberally dispensing their opinion about what others are doing wrong (behind their backs), and pontificating about how the other person could do better if they only did what the busybody thought they should.

Hence, busybodies are usually gossips and slanderers as well.

They create a lot of sorrow in their wake, and, note this, are never a part of the solution.

But it may surprise us to know that the Apostle Paul commanded God’s people to not go around from house to house, trading tales, and acting like busybodies.

Instead we were to work hard, attend to our own business, and live a quiet and peaceable life in the sight of our neighbors.

Yet being a busybody is one of those socially acceptable sins that’s tolerated in far too many churches.

It’s hard to spot, rarely identified, and almost never called out.

It’s also destructive to our Christian witness in a pagan society.

Far too often, and often for the best of reasons, we end up being our culture’s public busybodies.

We condemn pagans for thinking, speaking, and acting like pagans, and tell the whole world about what we think about them.

We call it “being prophetic” or “taking a bold stand” but it’s really just being an opinionated, petty little busybody.

Busybodies shut down honest dialogues, sabotage genuine seeking, and erect barriers instead of bridges.

Their mouths are therefore ruinous in the long run to the life and faith and witness of the church.

But they justify it and consider it their moral duty to point out the wrong of others and tell others what they ought to be doing–not realizing they have no credibility at all.

As Jesus put it, “Why do you point out the speck in your brother’s eye when you have a log in your own eye?”

Our modern word for busybody is co-dependency.

Busybodies are people who take over the problems of others, who dispense pressure-filled advice to instantly fix and resolve all unresolved pain, and who fail to observe healthy boundaries.

They specialize in uninvited, personal space-invading, over-helpfulness that creates dependency in the one being helped and indispensability in the one helping.

These need-to-be-needed folks are often praised as compassionate when, in fact, they are compulsive fixers and toxic busybodies.

And the reason why is because they have never faced their own unresolved pain, but diverted themselves from honest self-examination by taking over the problems of others.

They take over the fights of other people, promote an “us vs. them” approach to life, and play the hero for others as the underdog’s champion.

They divide the world into villains and victims, then punish villains and pamper victims.

But it’s a sham.

When the people they put on a pedestal disappoint them, when the folks they’re trying to help don’t need them or say no to them, they turn against them in a heartbeat.

Thwarting their fixing is like taking an addict’s drug away from them–the mask of compassion comes off and their vicious, unresolved, toxic interior comes to light.

We often find them in heroic, all-by-myself positions of ministry leadership where all efforts to help them are sabotaged.

They always volunteer for too many ministries and therefore under-staffed churches and programs love them–until they burnout and disappear from the scene and cause the ministry to collapse.

Whether it’s the gossiping kind of busybody or the over-helping, heroic kind of busybody, our churches are full of these untreated, unidentified, sick souls.

They have no business advising, fixing, or leading others.  But they are often entrenched and difficult to dislodge.

It takes a brave church leadership to address the busybodies.

Great wisdom is needed identify these busybody symptoms, to gently and firmly redirect these folks to get help for their true, unresolved soul problems, and to repair the damage that unchecked busybodies have done.

But if we want to become credible again, if we want the gospel to become believable again, we have no other choice than to end the reign of the busybody in the life of the church.