Tongues of Angels

Most of what I have said so far in my religious musings has been fairly standard in Christian theology. I have, perhaps, annoyed the outsiders, but not so much the insiders. That’s about to change, because I have some opinions regarding the more outlandish works of the Holy Spirit that will send a small cadre of Cunninghams into a tizzy.

For the layman, the Holy Spirit is the ever present helper/advocate given to believers upon the ascension of Christ. A card carrying member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit runs intercom for the Godhead-Three, along with Father and Son. It is this Holy Spirit that clarifies right and wrong for believers and evokes life change. He is the promise, almost a down payment of the future incorruptible existence of the elect.

There are several other things associated with the Holy Spirit. It is important, at this juncture, to point out a schism within the church; that between so called charismatics and, I guess, non-charismatics. The Charismatics are the ones whacking people on the head for healing, speaking in strange languages amongst themselves, and generally creating large quantities of noise. There are a few problems with this for me, and these disagreements is what classifies me as a non-Charismatic.

First, to speak in tongues is to have some heavenly energy piped through your body and passed along in divine language. There’s a problem here, namely that everyone in Charismatic churches does this, while no one in non-charismatic churches do. There are two explanations for this. Either, A, only people in Charismatic churches actually have the Holy Spirit, or, B, precedent. It comes down to a question of nature versus nurture. Is it because you have some different nature that makes you a conduit to these words, or is it because everyone around you does it and you’ve adopted these practices for yourself?

I occasionally mention the summer that I spent at a Black Baptist church in Pittsburgh, where I was literally the only white male out of about 400 weekly attendees. What I rarely mention is my summer at a hardcore charismatic church in Flagstaff. Every prayer was a cacophony of interjections, “amen, yes Jesus, oooh, thank you Jesus”, nothing wrong with that, but EVERYONE was doing it. And the same things. Why were they doing it? Because those are the things that one interjects in such situations. Further, there was rampant un-biblical tongue speaking. All would agree that to speak in tongues, even in the sense which I feel is erroneous (more in a second), requires a translator, lest it be useless. Lets just say there was an awful lot of useless jibber-jabber going on. And it all sounded the same, like a strange mixture of Hebrew and Native American tribal incantations.

Here’s my problem. In the New Testament, the Greek word for “tongues” is the same word that they use to describe when people are speaking in different human languages. For instance, and this should be a big red flag, when the Holy Spirit explicitly descends upon the crowd at Pentecost, they begin speaking in foreign languages that they do not know. It is quite clear on this.

Yet, elsewhere, we decide that tongues is to mean “tongues of angels”. Perhaps this phrase is what is problematic. When someone says that they had “the nectar of the gods”, do they mean it? Is French really the “language of love”? No. This is hyperbole meant to prove a point. When Paul muses that he might speak in the tongue of angels, he, I believe, is not implying that he’s going to speak Heaven’s language. He is pointing out that eloquence, without love, is useless. Further, when he says that we need a translator, he is speaking to a diverse audience where missionaries from all lands are floating around spreading the news in differing situations. An Aramaic sermon in Ephesus is about as useful to those listening as an Arabic math lesson at Johns Hopkins. Clearly Chinese would have been more useful to the student body.

Besides, what makes us think we even have the capacity to produce the sounds used in heaven? Does sound travel in compression waves there? Can our vocal chords produce these noise? Why should heaven be so similar that our language concepts and means of communication make sense there? One doesn’t communicate underwater the same way he does in the air, shouldn’t the eternal nether-land also be so qualitatively different?

I have only begun to investigate the tongue dilemma. Thus far, I am quite convinced that humans have hijacked Paul’s literary license and used it to drive far from the original meaning. Even if, even if Paul means to imply that humans have the capacity to speak angel-ese, I find it hard to believe that only certain alcoves of faith would have this privilege, and there would have it in overflowing abundance, while the rest of Christendom flounders, parched from scarcity of Spiritual outpouring.

The major problem here is that people never can tell when they’ve been programmed and when they’ve actually experienced something for real. I’m sure there are many here who enjoy that I’ve made that admission. In the same way that I get defensive when my faith is deemed ridiculous, those who proudly carry the banner of heaven-obonics fiercely oppose any criticism such as mine. I don’t particularly feel the urge to argue about it. To me, it is not a critical matter of the faith. I’m rather annoyed that those big-haired pastors who end up embezzling money from their churches are also the ones who employ the most egregious brainwashing techniques. They, and what they, in turn, stand for, sullies the name of Christ among the Gentiles. Perhaps the gratuitous “Gentile” name drop is the sort of sing songy mumbo-jumbo that Bess so despises.

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