What do You Know About Speaking in Tongues


I don't know how many readers have heard someone speak in tongues. A man in Fargo, ND, did so more than once at regular City Commission meetings when I was its mayor. It was just a brief moment. It flowed off his tongue like a native language. As I recall he had just made some point about anti abortion and, I suppose, wanted to give the impression he was hearing directly from God. Wikipedia says the practice is said to be a gift from the Holy Spirit and the speaker does not understand the language but through this super natural thing can speak it anyway. Here is an example.

Speaking in tongues, explained in the Bible, was a thing back in the 1980's. I had a friend back then who was the head priest in a large Catholic church in ND. He confided there was a conflict there because some church members really liked to shout out speaking in tongues phrases during his Sunday sermon. Lots of other members found this annoying. There were three services each Sunday so my friend ordered the tongue people to attend one but stay away from the others.

On another You Tube channel a young woman who has left Christianity explained how she mastered speaking in tongues. Everyone told her, she said, the Holy Spirit would enter her and out would come this fluent babble. She was a teenaged star preacher at the time and had been asked by people would they see the Holy Spirit's gift of this talking in her. She herself was baffled why this had never happened. She thought it would happen spontaneously but it never did. One night she was listening to a Christian musical piece that included some speaking in tongues interludes. She started singing and talking along just for pleasure. Then she realized that with practice these same phrases from the recording rolled off her own tongue easily. She incorporated them into her public appearances. She listened to others and realized they also had lifted their babble from the same source. 

Since I'm not able to fathom the "Holy Spirit" I'm not able to fathom speaking in tongues. The U.S. and its capitalism is said to be the land of opportunity. To those who can make a living preaching and speaking in tongues, take advantage of this offer this opportunity capitalism has provided and babble your way to wealth.

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