“See my tie, see my tie shin up a drainpipe. I’ll have a double Bacardi and a Kaliber shandy. A lass with a Calor gas heater can seek a man’s coriander, but she came on a Honda.”
Does that sound familiar? If you’ve spent any amount of time in a Pentecostal or charismatic church, it probably does. This post is all about speaking in tongues, or glossolalia to use its technical name.
If you listen to most “speaking in tongues” as practised in Pentecostal and charismatic churches, it is usually an unintelligible babbling made up of pseudo-words or even disjointed sounds with a lot of repetition. This is regarded by Pentecostals (of which I used to be one) as the initial evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Unfortunately for that point of view, speaking in tongues has been recorded in other religions as well, including some shamanistic religions and voodoo. Is it evidence of the Holy Spirit in those cases? I would think not.
As I understand it, the word “tongue” in the New Testament generally refers to a language. A real language, not an ecstatic babbling. That is why there is so much emphasis in the Bible on interpreting what is said “in tongues”. The gift of tongues, to me, is an ability to speak languages other than one’s own by the power of God. Certainly in the most famous incident of speaking in tongues, when the Holy Spirit was first given in Acts chapter 2, the people from all over the known world who were present each heard the believers speaking in their own language.
In the early years after I first began to follow Christ, I was part of a Pentecostal church. A lot of people kept telling me about the baptism in the Holy Spirit, this amazing “second blessing” in which I would be filled with the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues. I was not so much encouraged to seek for this as pressured into it, but either way it was something I desperately wanted, as I was told that it would take me to a higher level and enable me to live a more godly life. I wanted it so much, I regularly prayed and prayed for hours to receive this wonderful gift that I had been told was mine by right, and eventually one day I began to speak in tongues. Years later I gradually began to realise that what I was doing was more the result of wishful thinking, self-delusion and pressure from others in the church than real spiritual inspiration. At that point I stopped, but it took me a long time to reach that point. At first, for many years, I was convinced that I was speaking in other tongues by the power of the Holy Spirit and I am certain that many other Pentecostals and charismatics are similarly self-deluded, thinking that their speaking in tongues is the result of a miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit when really it may be just a product of their own desperate desire to do so.
I have met several Christians who spoke in tongues and were convinced that they were speaking Hebrew. Well, I studied biblical Hebrew for two years and have a basic knowledge of modern Hebrew and I can honestly say that although I have heard a great many people speaking in tongues, I have never yet heard anyone speaking Hebrew while doing so. I have heard monoglot English-speaking Christians speaking in tongues who included half-remembered snatches of the Welsh prayers their parents knew (as a Welsh-speaker, these things stand out to me). I have heard people speaking in tongues whose utterance consisted of one or two syllables repeated endlessly, such as “oolalalalalalalalalababala, oolalalalalalalalalalalababababalala.” I regard all these as suspect, though in my experience all these people have been totally sincere in their belief that they are “speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gives them utterance.”
To me, the touchstone that proves whether or not the gift of tongues is genuine is this: does the “tongue” have the characteristics of a real language, or is it perhaps recognisable as such by someone present who understands the language being spoken? If not, I would suggest that it is not genuine, in which case the real gift of tongues is rather rare these days. However, it is often counterfeited unknowingly by people who desperately desire this gift as proof that they have been filled with the Holy Spirit.
[The views expressed in the following video clip aren't necessarily my own, but I found it interesting enough to share on here.]
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7 comments:
Barry - I think you and I have had this conversation before; but since you posted this, I'll respond (sorry if I am repeating myself).
I do not disagree with anything you or the young woman have to say here. I do believe that 90% or more of what is characterized as "speaking in tongues" is learned behavior - a form of self-deception often motivated by the extra honor certain groups place on the "gift".
I also think the points the woman makes about the characteristics of "language" which are missing from most glossolia are valid issues to raise.
That being said, I also believe there is the "real thing", in part because I personally experienced it with no prior exposure or any cultural influence that would have predisposed me to do so. It happened in private while I was worshiping God alone after a week of meeting at a very conservative (and cessationist) Baptist church. At that point I had never been to a meeting where "tongues" were spoken, nor had I received any teaching on "tongues" other than that the apostles were enabled to speak in other earthly languages on Pentecost. My own experience had distinct words and what appeared to be sentences (although I had no idea what it all meant).
As a general statement, I believe that 90% or more of everything that people attribute to God are not Him; but that does not preclude that God does occasionally work in supernatural ways.
I've not come across a single person whose "tongues" were part of an actual language. All glossolalia.
www.goodnewsaboutgod.com/studies/speakingtongues.htm
Now which one of us at LST can take the credit for most of that transcription? I definitely remember the first part was Ian Aspin's, and I created another part on the end, but I got the impression that Ian had himself taken it from another source. My version is:
See my tie, see my tie, she'll have a chianti; I'll have a shandy.
Honda, Rhondda, doner keeeeeeeebab.
David, I think it's one part Ian, one part you and one part my own fertile imagination! :o)
When I was a member of a New Age cult we all spoke in tongues. We were all convinced that it was some sort of supernatural language. So when I became a Christian and encountered people who sounded exactly the same as my former cultmates, I was skeptical. It is so incredibly easy to delude oneself into believing that you are participating in some supernatural blessing that means you have been singled out by God for a gift. There's tremendous incentive to conform to the promoted norm, to demonstrate "evidence" of God's supposed blessing or infilling.
The mother of a very good friend was serving as a missionary in southeast Asia during the Viet Nam war. They were visiting another area where there was occasional fighting. Unfortunately, they had to flee. During this process, somehow this woman was separated from her group and ended up amongst a group of hill people, possibly Hmong.
Somehow she was suddenly completely fluent in their language even though she had never been to that area and had never heard their language before. I can't remember what she needed to communicate. But both she and the villagers were both amazed at her ability. When she made it to safety she could no longer speak or understand a word of Hmong.
That, to me, is speaking in tongues. There was a purpose even though I can't remember what it was. Being a missionary, I would guess that she viewed it as a chance to share the Gospel. Perhaps it was nothing more than simple survival. It was a life-threatening situation. It was clearly unnatural. And it ended as soon as the need went away. Never again has she had an experience like that. She's in her 70s or 80s now.
But I tend to believe that virtually all, if not all, tongues is the result of a person's desire to have an experience or to conform.
I once asked an AOG pastor why it was that someone could give a message in tongues for 5 minutes and it would take at least 20 minutes to interpret. His answer was that the language of the angels is far more efficient. I could believe that if there was the slightest indication that anyone speaking in tongues is doing anything other than engaging in inane babbling.
It may be worth looking into the difference between glossolalia and xenolalia which are often confused - and seem to be so here. There is no suggestion that glossolalia is an actual language.
Personally I think it may well be babbel that disengages our mind which normally controls our communication. Perhaps this is our way of communicating to God not through our minds constructing words, or even through sounds, but through our innermost being, and babbling with our mouths removes the control of our mind from communicating with God. Direct Spirit to Spirit communication.
That is how I approach it.
Matt!
"Communication is the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information."
But when you don't know what it is you are communicating then you are not really communicating but... being used by someone. And I am afraid it is not God because God has created you as intelligent, thinking human being and not a tool.
God wants your reasonable, intelligent service (Rom. 12:1).
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