Article November 17, 1980 Issue

Are you ever a busybody?

KATHERINE JANE HILDRETH

Have you ever thought how strongly Peter must have felt about not being a busybody, to have spoken of it along with murder and theft? He encouraged his readers to rejoice over whatever they suffered in the name of Christ. But then he cautioned them, "Let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters." I Pet. 4:15;

When I first came to that passage, I skipped over it. Surely it didn't apply to me, I thought. I wasn't a murderer, or a thief, or an evildoer. And I had always prided myself on not being a busybody! But then one day I realized I was being (and had often been) a busybody of the worst sort: a mental one.

I talked to no one this particular day. But my time was nevertheless full of mental "conversations," fretting about what other people were doing. I spent several hours on how a fellow church member should run her committee; then an hour or so on how my neighbor should discipline her children; then several more hours on what a friend should do about her marriage.

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