Mark 14:69 "And the maid saw him, and began again to say to the bystanders 'This man is one of them.'"

Why do we feel the need to "report the news?" So many of us seem to want to be the "first to the story;" to want to tell others every and any salacious or incriminating detail about someone else as soon as we know it. This is one of the main problems I see with social media, in addition to the vanity and self-promotion it engenders; it makes this "reporting on others" too easy and too widespread.

The maid is exhibiting this behavior here. She didn't have to point out to everyone that Peter was one of Jesus' apostles. Peter posed no threat to her or to the group. The events of Jesus' arrest may have led the maid to believe that Jesus and His followers could be a threat, but an honest evaluation of the situation would have told her there was nothing to fear here. When she first saw Peter, he was warming himself in the courtyard. She spoke to him directly, obviously not in fear of him, and he denied knowing Jesus and moved away from her. (Mark 14:66-68) When she saw him again, she told the bystanders that Peter was one of Jesus' followers. Why did she feel it necessary to do this? It wasn't out of fear, since she showed no signs of being afraid of Peter. It seems to me it was this weird feeling of wanting to be the first one to "report" or call out others, even when they've done nothing wrong.

We all seem to have this to some degree, but we should learn to suppress it, and avoid things, like social media, that encourage us to engage in it. Trouble starts this way, an "enemy" is identified and then others take it on themselves to root out and identify anyone associated with that enemy. If anything negative comes of this behavior, people say they were only reporting the facts. But why did they feel the need to? What were they trying to accomplish? It seems like a form of attention seeking, at the expense of sometimes ruining the reputations or even lives of others.

Who knows what this group would have done to Peter if he had not denied knowing Christ. I'm sure that's what what Peter was thinking, too! While it is no excuse for Peter's denial, especially since Jesus told him, and all of us, that we would be persecuted for His sake, it is a lesson to not be like the maid. We should try to resist the feeling of calling people out, even when our emotions are high. It forces people into a corner and usually creates a worse situation. It also adds to fear and distrust in the community, as we have seen very recently in our own history.