Rumor mongering is the spreading of unverified information, often to create confusion, misunderstanding, or hostility. It frequently involves gossip and can lead to misinformation that undermines trust among individuals or groups. People spread rumors for various reasons: personal advantage, attention, or the desire to manipulate others.
Good communication promotes understanding and strengthens relationships. Yet even in the field of communication, misunderstanding is often cultivated—and this remains a cause of unending conflicts across the world. Such malevolence is primarily driven by rumor mongering, which mixes truth with falsehood to stir up animosity. Wickedness in human affairs is therefore not always obvious evil; it is often a deceptive mixture of good and evil.
Evil is the opposite of righteousness, just as darkness is the opposite of light. But pure evil is easily recognized. The greater danger lies in confusion—a mixture of righteousness and evil—which becomes the foundation of misunderstanding and quarrels. Without confusion, evil has little power because it can be identified. Therefore, we must understand what wickedness truly is. A commitment to truthful information helps us avoid it.
Consider a fiery furnace used for smelting iron. It is useful when handled properly, but dangerous when handled carelessly. This is a scientific fact, sustained by natural law. It illustrates an important spiritual truth: Satan’s wickedness is not always presented as extreme evil, which would be obvious. Instead, he works by mixing righteousness with evil.
Satan is often caricatured as a demonic figure with wicked eyes, fiery teeth, and horns. But such images are false and actually serve to hide his real nature. Children’s stories sometimes depict Satan as a fierce, red-eyed ogre sucking blood from humans. While it is true that Satan is associated with evil and affects humanity, Scripture presents him quite differently: as an angel of light.
“For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve” (2 Corinthians 11:13–15 NIV).
As a spirit being, Satan cannot be seen physically except through the effects of his work, using human beings as vessels—just as God also uses human beings as vessels. Physical illustrations cannot accurately portray his personality. A deeper understanding is needed before concluding Satan’s existence and appearance. The most important fact about Satan is that Scripture consistently portrays him among religious but untruthful people.
The chief description of Satan is falsehood, which by itself is neither righteousness nor evil, and on its own it is not necessarily attractive or deceptive. But falsehood becomes dangerous when it makes wickedness appear good by appealing to the desires of the physical body. This is why Satan’s schemes are so difficult to defeat: they carry the appearance of goodness. It is like mixing sugar with poison—the sugar traps the victim into consuming the poison.
The apostle Paul accurately described Satan’s ministers, who are mistaken for true Christians. They use the same trick used against our first ancestors, Adam and Eve. Purely ugly things do not necessarily portray Satan’s character. By using fear and myths, some people are trapped into talking more about “Satanism” than about the deceptive nature of Satan. The critical truth is that Satan is falsehood—not fear and myth—as opposed to truthfulness. Jesus always described Satan for what he truly represented.
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?” (John 8:42–46 NIV).
When an objective thinker understands this reality about Satan, it becomes easier to avoid his traps—traps that suggest a mixture of truth and falsehood. Satan’s native language is falsehood, twisting God’s word into something else. The word “native” indicates the source of origin. A liar cannot be from God, but from Satan, whose native language is lies. The degradation of humanity reflects how far humanity has fallen.
Christians face a particular problem: while they can be used by God, they can also be used by Satan at another point. Peter was used by God to reveal Jesus as the Messiah in Matthew 16:16, yet shortly afterward Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:23), showing that at that point Satan had used Peter, who had earlier been used by God. To understand falsehood, we must recognize the gradient approach Jesus used in dealing with humanity. At the lowest gradient is falsehood—the cause of conflicts that can escalate into calamities such as war.
Language provides many instances of permissive communication that allows falsehood to cover up sins. For example, suppose you schedule a meeting for 8 o’clock the following morning. The business associate responds with a wishy-washy answer: “I will try to make it.” He may indeed come as scheduled, but only on rare occasions are such communications trustworthy. The word “try” grants no guarantee that the meeting will materialize.
One would be unwise to assume the meeting will happen based on such communication. Failures in government or corporate organizations can often be traced to wishy-washy arrangements. Successful businesses subscribe to concrete promises and clear arrangements. In a precise sense, falsehood is the alteration of time, place, event, or form. Even the slightest change in these four components produces falsehood that is harmful to humanity.
Truth is the exactness of time, place, form, and event. Therefore, for a problem to be a problem, it must contain a lie—an alteration of one of these four components. The matters of truth can best be described in workable solutions in science. It is foolish to assume that problems can be solved by telling lies; lies only aggravate them, even if they temporarily provide comfort.
On the next gradient, falsehood results from insufficient information. Inadequate information leads to conclusions based on falsehood. Foolishness, then, is found in the inability to evaluate data. A wise person never tires of evaluating information. Such a person stays abreast of the latest information for workable innovations. Imagine a business enterprise that prefers to send letters by post even in the current digital age; that business is threatened with extinction. Any information considered truthful is judged by its workability—the principle of the greatest good for the majority.
The evaluation of information is therefore vital. This reveals good education as the primary vehicle for providing valuable information. The next gradient involves falsehoods designed to cover up one’s previous mistakes or to obtain unwarranted benefits. This includes conmen selling worthless products. Money swindlers are professional liars who survive by receiving undeserved benefits, and this includes much of the corruption found in governments today.
The range of falsehoods is wide and difficult to capture in detail, but all falsehoods can be as corrupting as destructive lies. Wickedness is found in falsehood more than in any other horrible sin imagined. Falsehood exists even among those involved in the occult. The most serious of all falsehoods is rumor mongering. All wars, as terrible as they are, are fueled by rumor mongering. Rumor mongers have become professionals in propaganda.
Even in the corporate world, a highly successful organization can be destroyed by propaganda. People living in a world that does not evaluate information are prone to believe anything. A free press is important for spreading information, but it is also susceptible to spreading falsehoods. Scandalous news is more attractive to many than good news, so that a free press, while helpful in providing information, can also be viewed as dangerous.
A nation can be destroyed, just as an individual’s character can be assassinated, by unverified media reports. But this does not mean the free press should be muzzled; it should be promoted. People need information. Equally important is the evaluation of information. The current world is sustained by falsehoods, but as Christians we evaluate everything according to the teachings of Jesus Christ. If Satan is understood as a creature who exists, the source of falsified information justifies his existence.
While Satan can use demons to influence gruesome murders, falsehood appears to be at the forefront of such murders. Most domestic quarrels that rip families apart emanate from rumor-mongering. Those who convey falsehoods are often intermediaries who assume they are honestly passing on truthful information from their handlers, and they are not necessarily the originators themselves.
The originators of falsehood know what they are doing: they benefit from chaos. The scourge of Gukurahundi is a powerful example of the effects of rumor mongering. Lies claiming that Joshua Nkomo was supporting dissidents were readily accepted by people who could not evaluate the information. Those who accepted the lies then willingly committed atrocities. The claim that dissidents existed in significant numbers was intended to justify wiping out political opposition.
The whole scheme was designed to create a one-party state under the pretext that this was necessary to remove all dissidents. Those in leadership, advocating for a one-party state, knew there was no truth in such claims. But ordinary people accepted the falsehood as truth and became emotionally charged to commit crimes under the pretext of fighting dissidents. There was no demon to be imagined as influencing the Gukurahundi tragedy—only falsehood, instigated by those whose agenda was a one-party state.
A person cannot escape a problem without identifying its cause. It is usually people with inadequate information—but plenty of rumors—who are manipulated into perpetuating violence, based on falsehoods. Such people are willing to commit murder under the belief that they are being patriotic. Therefore, the only wrong thing about this world can be traced to falsehoods. In his ministry, Paul encountered similar problems: lies peddled by a businessman named Demetrius, who valued his business more than God, as recorded in Acts 19:23–41.
Demetrius profited from manipulating ignorant people into purchasing idols. The welfare of those people was not his concern; his only interest was profit from idol carvings. He peddled lies to secure support and incite violence against Paul and his companions. It took the courage of the city clerk to quell the lawlessness.
The works of Satan were manifested through Demetrius, who was used by Satan through his love of money. If the truth had been made available to ordinary people, Demetrius could not have caused such confusion. The sad thing about falsehood is that those who peddle lies are often protected by the very people who suffer from those lies. Truth-tellers are the ones who are victimized, just as Jesus’ crucifixion was intensified by those who shouted in approval.
Lack of education is the easiest channel through which misinformation promotes wickedness. An uneducated person is quick to denounce what they do not understand, thereby estranging themselves from truth-tellers. The key method of eliminating ignorance is education. But Satan has infiltrated education too, so that true education has often been replaced by mere schooling, whose aim is to acquire a certificate rather than the ability to apply what is learned.
Where rumor mongering is spread, the actual peddlers are often protected; they are assumed to be good people in most societies. It is those who stand for truth who are persecuted instead. In the case of Demetrius, however, God used a sane person—the city clerk—to calm the situation. This world desperately needs people like the city clerk of Ephesus, even if such people are few.
It takes only one or two people of integrity, rising to positions of authority, to change things for the better—provided they are willing to stand for the truth. There are always good people in any society who, at times, take a back seat and allow bad situations to prevail. Such people grieve God by their cowardice and inability to stand against an oppressive environment. The only formula for restoring order is to remove falsehood and teach people to advance truthful information only.
There is no other way to counter the work of Satan, who is the architect of deceitfulness in this world. Just as precision is used in science, truthfulness is the only means of establishing a workable environment. Rumor mongers appear to benefit from an oppressive environment for reasons that are currently unknown. However, scientifically speaking, no human being can ever produce a quantifiable benefit from advancing falsehood.
Andrew Masuku is the author of Dimensions of a New Civilisation, laying down standards for uplifting Zimbabwe from the current state of economic depression into a model for other nations worldwide. A decaying tree provides an opportunity for a blossoming sprout. Written from a Christian perspective, the book is a product of inspiration, relieving those who have witnessed the strings of unworkable solutions that have led to the current economic and social decay. Most Zimbabweans should find the book a long-awaited providential oasis of hope, written in a simple, conversational tone.
The Print copy is now available at Amazon.com for $13.99
Also available as an e-copy at Lulu.com for $6.99