Speaking In Tongues

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I like that

He was truly an unappreciated prophet.

That was quite good for you

I went to a grammar school and got taught Latin as a kid. That makes about as much sense as speaking in tongues.

All this and jelly too

TP posted this elsewhere, but it seemed relevant.

Imagine falling for this horse dookie.

I want to clarify that it really bugs me when religious and religious/political leaders use these types of practices to control people. I’m picking on that even more than believing in the practice itself. I, myself, have had some wacky beliefs. Anyway, the emotional manipulation can be off-the-charts with this stuff sometimes. Paula White and her ilk…

I guess another issue is that people rarely have one irrational set of beliefs. A lot of people that “speak in tongues” are also into faith healing which causes real demonstrable harm. They may be more susceptible to falling for anti-science conspiracy theories and the like, but I suppose that doesn’t have to be the case. It does seem to be part of the culture, though, from what I have observed.

Why would a god have people engage in this practice when there are much better things he could be doing? There are currently children starving to death and being slaughtered. Why not do something about them rather than make people look like raving fools? (Well, I always did like Korn, but that’s not the point.)

So how do you know if it's tongues and if it's not

And thank you for your input as well

Is it just a Christian thing

I probably am "picking on it" more than you intend to, but with a somewhat similar angle about how it's used for control.

I think it was Voltaire who said those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities and fundamentally, that's the core problem. Something like speaking in tongues might seem superficially harmless, but it's part of a process of indoctrination that's intended to shutdown critical thinking, making one more susceptible to whatever indoctrination that follows.

So yes, the way they use belief in the ridiculous in order to weaken critical thinking deserves to identified and ridiculed.

Ridicule is a natural and healthy response to the ridiculous. Blind faith can make a person engage in all sorts of dangerous and stupid behaviours and it should never be off-limits to poke fun at the ridiculous. We shouldn't be intimidated away from pointing out absurd beliefs, lest we all ignore the naked emperor because it would be impolite to point out that he's f*****g naked or to mock those insisting his clothes are actually gorgeous.

Facts don't care about anyone's feelings.

100%. I don't want to generalize beyond reason but the kind of Evangelical/Charismatic ministries I'm familiar with also don't only speak in tongues but also do faith healing and prosperity gospel. Both of those (which often overlap) are very dangerous scams.

The faith healing scam causes people to die. We can talk about the pastors who fake heal people on stage, but I want to give another dimension by giving some impressions I got from my former workplace: There are people who refuse medical treatment because they believe that God has healed them. The belief system encourages people to see illnesses and the like as something spiritual as opposed to something concrete. People deep in this belief often see the names of diseases to be something like an enchantment that should not be spoken and they can whisk away spiritually. They distrust and perhaps even blame doctors for using the word when speaking to them.

This is not just from work, though. I also lost a family member to this. In his later years he fell from the more liberal kinds of Christianity I was raised in into this radical tongue-speaking Charismatic, faith healing, prosperity gospel nonsense. He believed in faith healing and thus did not get into doctors until it was too late.

Excuse me if I seem a bit heated and rude in this discussion, but it's very personal to me.

Prosperity gospel, which as I said intertwines with faith healing, I have a whole another big issue with. As we probably all know, it preys on especially older people and saps all of their money away with "seeds" and the like. And when I saw that it is intertwined with faith healing, I mean that people donate tons of money to these ministries in hopes that they will be healed. And when I say "tons" I mean unspeakable amounts. These people are simultaneously led to feel very entitled to things after donating, but they also don't ever hold the ministries accountable for their prayers never being answered. Also, this is me going a bit off on a tangent, but I do think that this entitlement they feel (to God), oddly enough, makes them not care about the assistance that the government or a hospital could give. I do not know if this is intentional on the part of the ministries that pedal these scams, or if it's just a side-effect, but either way I can draw a line directly to why these people end up very conservative fiscally. These people will scoff off their own struggles that could be helped by a better government, because they think that the struggles will eventually be lifted when they've donated enough or had enough faith. They see it all as an inherently spiritual issue, and they in turn very well may see people suffering as a result of lack of faith.

This is me going off with an impression that I alone got. I have not seen that in scholarship or anything, so please do take it with a grain of salt, but it is my take after my personal experience with these ministries and their followers. It's very scary. And as TwilightPrincess said, I do think it is all a package deal, and that includes the crazy MAGA ideology nowadays.

As a Lutheran and mainline Protestant, I'd sum up speaking in tongues either as a show put on by frauds like Paula White, or religiously induced hysteria resulting in ecstatic babbling.

Hi Babybird, my gifts were given to me as a 17 year old. I was told what I would be given this by a church minister by God, it came to pass. It is was verified and told to me by someone else senior in the church ministry. I saw later evidence of it myself that it had come to pass. So for some people they will be told in the church that they will be given this gift and why. May be some their spirit speaks to them to let them know as well or God shows them in another way, but will let them know I imagine by making it apparent. Later in my life God made it able to me to discern spirits and it became apparent to me but not informed but it was clear.

The gifts are for a Christian meant to uplift and support the believer in their faith walk and also to support others members in the church and the church itself.

Based on that people need to look if that gift they are using as a Christian for right purposes and if not why.

At the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples and they spoke in different languages around the world. Perhaps this is a form of Glossolalia as it is not unknowing is it.I have observed though as a teen in myself people using this gift in the ministry and using it and been given accurate revelations of God to someone after, so there is annointed but not all are.

False prophets Jesus said-things can fall into wrong hands and deviant spirits. We need to stay on the side of the Holy Spirit and don't let imaginations run away with us removing the drunk of wine that Paul talked of.

Last edited by RachObi on 24 Jun 2025, 6:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wow
I'm glad you've got your faith @RachObi

And thank you for sharing that with us

I know you have posted this Harmonie but is there another source more reputable from a news source BBC etc as I have searched and found nothing other social media on this.
I want to view it at a news source.

At least it is morer credible! it was still the language of science after Isaac Newton's time. I'm not surprised it died out though, if only there were so many versions, use by different classes of people.

Whilst translating my book, I tred to do a section of it in Latin, but it turned out to be a nightmare: change a word in one place, and other things changed in other paragraphs. Sure, translation software does the donkey work, but rewriting things to get a better result is still tough enough, without such scriptural gymnastics!