If we have got problems with each other, or we think we see problems in our family of God's people, then what we must do is hasten to find out and to resolve them. It’s no different from keeping house. When you go to tidy a room in the house and you see something which is out of place, or needs to find the waste bin, you don’t throw it all over the place and make the situation a thousand times worse. That is how some people behave with fellowship problems. Instead of trying with earnestness and goodwill to get a proper understanding and resolution of the problem, they cast about all kinds of slander and make it much worse. You wonder sometimes whether they have been watching worldly soap operas. Are they trying to turn the church into a soap environment, with people backstabbing and complaining and full of suspicion? There will be problems among us, because we still have sinful traits, but there can be no malice, nothing said without first trying to find out about and solve the problem.
‘All malice and all guile’ – deceitfulness, dishonesty. It is certainly another factor in gossip. Every now and then Satan plants in a fellowship, an extreme case. Back to the 1970s we had a brother who was very personable, and very hospitable and accommodating, and he particularly liked to have people to his big home and garden, and have a kind of young people's meeting of his own. But what generally we didn't realise is that at that home there was a kind of culture of abuse: abuse of the church officers including the pastor, laughing and sneering at their idiosyncrasies or their every action, or their supposed feebleness and inadequacy. All this went on for some time, and of course many of young people who were in this climate were badly contaminated with foolish, fleshly, and critical attitudes. What are the motives for this behaviour? Well, there must be an awful lot of pride: ‘I want my circle who think my way.’ There were various problems and everything came to a head, and really the behaviour of this man and his family were quite outrageous, and the church put them out of fellowship, and everything was very much better day. It hurt a lot of people. Within two or three years we heard of a home counties pastor who had taken in this family, and they were doing exactly the same thing, and dividing that little fellowship with these same traits and these same ways. Is that person really converted? One would very much doubt it, though you always have to be cautious. People can sometimes be very backslidden, but one very much doubts that a converted person could behave like this. But we can all behave like this to a limited extent, with unworthy suspicions. Sometimes it's pride. The mechanism that is in action is this: I pull down others, because it somehow boosts me up. I think lightly of him, and of her, and of him. I criticise this one and that one. It’s all self-boosting. It’s serving my own ego.