Onle Have Seen It Twice (Speaking In Tongues)

[antix]

Speaking in tounges always seemed a little rediculous to me. I've only done it once, and that was at church camp. I never could, nor have had the desire to do it in any other circumstance. Probably the only reason I did it at camp was so I could be 'baptized in the spirit', or whatever, since my AoG church always seemed to imply, although they were never explicit, that if you can't speak in tounges or do some other Holy spirit bullshit that you aren't really saved. At least it seemed that way to me.

 

The 2 people I saw do it were total opposites. One just mumbled and the other was obvioulsy full of herself and making a couple unintelligible phrases for attention probably.

[Endemoniada]

Speaking in tounges always seemed a little rediculous to me. I've only done it once, and that was at church camp. I never could, nor have had the desire to do it in any other circumstance. Probably the only reason I did it at camp was so I could be 'baptized in the spirit', or whatever, since my AoG church always seemed to imply, although they were never explicit, that if you can't speak in tounges or do some other Holy spirit bullshit that you aren't really saved. At least it seemed that way to me.

 

The 2 people I saw do it were total opposites. One just mumbled and the other was obvioulsy full of herself and making a couple unintelligible phrases for attention probably.

 

That's the way I experienced it too. All the teenagers at the camp were mumbling and thrashing on the floor, with the occasional outburst, and the guy on the stage was shouting in his holy babble between cogent English. It was, when I look back on it, a little frightening, and very weird.

[Antlerman]

I think the Charismatic/Penetcostal use of glossolalia is infantile. I used to practice it as a Pentecostal back in the day, and it wasn't just that practice but any sort of spiritual experience/exercise was like starting the motor, revving the engine up, but having no clue about what that stick shift on the floorboard was for. They made a lot of noise, revved the motor, then got out of the car and went home. Sums it up pretty well. All the motions, no substance.

 

Glossolalia is a practice a lot like chanting mantras, yet a step further. Chanting mantras are about suspending the verbal centers of the mind to open to the non-verbal. It is within the non-verbal that people are able to feel and experience other aspects of themselves that transport them to 'higher' planes of their own being, like getting totally lost in a piece of music, the sunset, a mountain scape, the night sky, etc. In that moment the active thinking brain is stilled and we open to something normally obscured by all the chatter. Repeating the same words over and over becomes like a drone you don't 'think' about. Glossolalia ('talking in tongues'), is like that except that it is non-formed vocalizations.

 

Unlike a mantra where people actually form actual words and sentences, these are utilizing the vocal chords in a less structured manner, not forming actual words you need to use that part of the brain that normally goes into that. It's even more 'disengaged'. Furthermore, the sound of ones own voice resonating in their skull creates a sort of non-verbal self-sense engaging the body as well. It's more along the lines of doing a deep guttural "Ommmmm". It focuses the mind outside the structures of reality we live within in the verbal centers of the brain.

 

These practices are ancient, and tongues predates Christianity by a long shot. It has a legitimate use in spiritual practices, but again, in the hands of the Charismatics, in their mythic, biblical literalistic, social conservative worlds, it's like putting a powerful tool in the hands of children. They have no idea what they're doing. It's just revving the motor without any of it being used to take them somewhere useful. Any of these things are means to something beyond themselves. But not to them, it's a miracle sign they're saved!

 

Just in case anyone cares to know a little more of what it really is beyond the impotent practices in your typical Christian tongues talking, miracle type churches.

[MrsRoper]

Hare Krishna. Krishna Krishna. Hare Hare.

[Thought2Much]

I think the Charismatic/Penetcostal use of glossolalia is infantile. I used to practice it as a Pentecostal back in the day, and it wasn't just that practice but any sort of spiritual experience/exercise was like starting the motor, revving the engine up, but having no clue about what that stick shift on the floorboard was for. They made a lot of noise, revved the motor, then got out of the car and went home. Sums it up pretty well. All the motions, no substance.

 

THIS. I got so sick and tired of going to church services, and being told that THIS church service was going to take us to the next level with God, and during THIS church service we would finally experience a breakthrough, and THIS church service was the one in which God would REALLY show us what he's been preparing us for all this time, if we can only press in a little more and pray a little harder and yell a little louder and speak in just the right tongues and if we are all in one accord and have no dissenters in our ranks and if there is no sin in the camp...

 

Oh, hey, what's for lunch? See you next week, everyone!

[MrsRoper]

I think the Charismatic/Penetcostal use of glossolalia is infantile. I used to practice it as a Pentecostal back in the day, and it wasn't just that practice but any sort of spiritual experience/exercise was like starting the motor, revving the engine up, but having no clue about what that stick shift on the floorboard was for. They made a lot of noise, revved the motor, then got out of the car and went home. Sums it up pretty well. All the motions, no substance.

 

THIS. I got so sick and tired of going to church services, and being told that THIS church service was going to take us to the next level with God, and during THIS church service we would finally experience a breakthrough, and THIS church service was the one in which God would REALLY show us what he's been preparing us for all this time, if we can only press in a little more and pray a little harder and yell a little louder and speak in just the right tongues and if we are all in one accord and have no dissenters in our ranks and if there is no sin in the camp...

 

Oh, hey, what's for lunch? See you next week, everyone!

 

Yeah, they need to cut the crap and just smoke a doob already.

[MrsRoper]

Antlerman - I really like what you said. I just can't say much with my one finger on the iPad. It reminded me of George Harrison.

[mcdaddy]

I think the Charismatic/Penetcostal use of glossolalia is infantile. I used to practice it as a Pentecostal back in the day, and it wasn't just that practice but any sort of spiritual experience/exercise was like starting the motor, revving the engine up, but having no clue about what that stick shift on the floorboard was for. They made a lot of noise, revved the motor, then got out of the car and went home. Sums it up pretty well. All the motions, no substance.

 

THIS. I got so sick and tired of going to church services, and being told that THIS church service was going to take us to the next level with God, and during THIS church service we would finally experience a breakthrough, and THIS church service was the one in which God would REALLY show us what he's been preparing us for all this time, if we can only press in a little more and pray a little harder and yell a little louder and speak in just the right tongues and if we are all in one accord and have no dissenters in our ranks and if there is no sin in the camp...

 

Oh, hey, what's for lunch? See you next week, everyone!

 

Yeah, they need to cut the crap and just smoke a doob already.

 

Agreed.

 

Then pass it to me.

[TrailBlazer]

I never spoke in tongues myself. But being submerged in an AG school, I saw/heard it a lot. I believe it's a bunch of heightened emotions aimed at making an experience more "spiritual". Derek Webb's lyrics come to mind: "I'll say words that rattle your nerves, words like 'sin' and 'faith alone now'".

 

I do have two cool stories about tongues. The first was in chapel. A professor was on stage blatantly trying to hype up the student body spiritually and I found it disturbing and a disgusting crowd manipulation. Anywhoo, I actually prayed for someone to shut her up and this kid started yelling in tongues and another kid stood up to interpret, something about leading with sound theology.

 

The second is this: one of my friends was in an abusive roommate/friend situation. This crazy chick was seriously going to strangle my friend one night and my friend busted out in tongues for the first time, despite her roommate trying to strangle her.

 

Crazy stuff. Glad I'm not being subjected to that insanity anymore!

[antix]

So we have all at least seen speaking in tongues. Now the next question, how many have seen the gift of healing

[Akheia]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HEALING

 

Dude, that's, like, actual physical real stuff. You've got to be kidding.

 

Seen it? Never. Ever. Not even once. I saw a woman in my congregation who "got healed of an issue of blood," some sort of menstrual weirdness that had prevented her from having sex, but it came back. She was so ashamed to admit it, but she had to because her doctor couldn't seem to fix it and she saw no other choice but to ask for more prayer a few weeks later. I saw another get healed of her crushing depression, but a few weeks later she had the same issue. I saw a wheelchair-bound old guy get up and dance at my first revival meeting when I was a cute, perky little 17-year-old and I was so very impressed, at least till a woman told me not to get so overexcited because he'd be back in his wheelchair next week--and he was. Preachers would get billed as these MEN OF HEALING POWER and do these roof-raising revival meetings with so much hollering and dancing and massive group catharsis/prayer/weeping sessions, but not once did I see anything that really looked like a miracle of healing in my 25 years in one denomination or another of Christianity.

 

The saddest thing I can recall about healing is this: my senior pastor hired a junior pastor, Daniel, to help him out till he could retire. Daniel (who despite the title was in his 40s) was married to the senior pastor's perfect skinny blonde daughter and they had two perfect skinny blonde teenaged boys and a perfect skinny blonde teenaged daughter. Daniel's dad had been a BIG BIG BIG name in Africa in missionary work. But a year or two later, Daniel learned he had late-stage cancer. Inoperable. Brain cancer, with months to live if that. The PRAYER MACHINE went into overdrive, you can bet. People with "gifts of healing" prayed over him. They used gallons of Pompeiian olive oil on him, no doubt. Prophecies promised us that God would heal him. Millions of people made prayer chains around him. I'm sure more than a few people were convinced that God was going to heal Daniel. Evil Ex was one of those. I was not. Daniel died in a hospital room a month after the diagnosis, surrounded by his friends and family. Evil Ex tried to invade the hospital room with a bottle of oil and sheer determination to pray over Daniel, and they threw him out of the room. I mean seriously, they THREW HIM OUT. The senior members of a denomination devoted to believing in miracles and taking the Bible 100000% literally didn't even want my Evil Ex to do, let's be honest, precisely what the Bible says should be done for the sick (I didn't learn this till a couple of years after the fact, and I can see why: learning of the incident began my descent into apostasy).

 

Anybody who says they've seen "the gift of healing" is either lying or has been seriously deceived--pretty much the same as "the gift of tongues" or "the gift of prophecy."

[♦ ficino ♦]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HEALING

 

Dude, that's, like, actual physical real stuff. You've got to be kidding.

 

Seen it? Never. Ever. Not even once. I saw a woman in my congregation who "got healed of an issue of blood," some sort of menstrual weirdness that had prevented her from having sex, but it came back. She was so ashamed to admit it, but she had to because her doctor couldn't seem to fix it and she saw no other choice but to ask for more prayer a few weeks later. I saw another get healed of her crushing depression, but a few weeks later she had the same issue. I saw a wheelchair-bound old guy get up and dance at my first revival meeting when I was a cute, perky little 17-year-old and I was so very impressed, at least till a woman told me not to get so overexcited because he'd be back in his wheelchair next week--and he was. Preachers would get billed as these MEN OF HEALING POWER and do these roof-raising revival meetings with so much hollering and dancing and massive group catharsis/prayer/weeping sessions, but not once did I see anything that really looked like a miracle of healing in my 25 years in one denomination or another of Christianity.

 

The saddest thing I can recall about healing is this: my senior pastor hired a junior pastor, Daniel, to help him out till he could retire. Daniel (who despite the title was in his 40s) was married to the senior pastor's perfect skinny blonde daughter and they had two perfect skinny blonde teenaged boys and a perfect skinny blonde teenaged daughter. Daniel's dad had been a BIG BIG BIG name in Africa in missionary work. But a year or two later, Daniel learned he had late-stage cancer. Inoperable. Brain cancer, with months to live if that. The PRAYER MACHINE went into overdrive, you can bet. People with "gifts of healing" prayed over him. They used gallons of Pompeiian olive oil on him, no doubt. Prophecies promised us that God would heal him. Millions of people made prayer chains around him. I'm sure more than a few people were convinced that God was going to heal Daniel. Evil Ex was one of those. I was not. Daniel died in a hospital room a month after the diagnosis, surrounded by his friends and family. Evil Ex tried to invade the hospital room with a bottle of oil and sheer determination to pray over Daniel, and they threw him out of the room. I mean seriously, they THREW HIM OUT. The senior members of a denomination devoted to believing in miracles and taking the Bible 100000% literally didn't even want my Evil Ex to do, let's be honest, precisely what the Bible says should be done for the sick (I didn't learn this till a couple of years after the fact, and I can see why: learning of the incident began my descent into apostasy).

 

Anybody who says they've seen "the gift of healing" is either lying or has been seriously deceived--pretty much the same as "the gift of tongues" or "the gift of prophecy."

How very sad, Akheia. My apostasy started under similar circumstances, when a lot of prayers for a friend's cancer did nothing.

 

I suppose some fundies might say that the fault is with those who threw out your evil ex - if evil ex had prayed and anointed Daniel, he would have been healed...

 

Sigh.

[Legion]

 

Shama llama ding dong

rala eeki elohim

When the spirit comes on me

it's far better than a hymn

I say things that come to mind

and my man interprets them

We're a dynamic duo

and I'm glossolalic gem

[Antlerman]

We didn't have so much the healing hype in our church with big healing services and whatnot, even though it was a regular feature to pray for the sick and occasionally lay hands on those with a whatever ailment. Nothing stood out as a jaw-dropping 'that couldn't happen' sort of miracle thing.

 

I do believe however that it is possible for us to cure quite a lot of ailments in ourselves that is not some supernatural miracle from a god in the sky. I'm not talking fixing broken bones our regrowing limbs or crap like that, but just by eliminating stresses in our physical bodies by realigning the mind into a healthy state. There's no doubt being all wound up in our minds will lead to physical problems, and having a healthy peaceful mind will eliminate the source of those. So my take on a lot of "miracle" healing, is really simply someone letting go of those things they harbor in their minds that impact their bodies with stress.

 

In this sense yes, "your faith has made you whole". The relationship of the body with the mind goes in both directions. A faith 'healer' is simply someone who can evoke that sort of response in a believer to 'let go', if even for a time. If the person could keep themselves there permanently (not a faith a denial, but of release so to speak), then those sorts of mentally driven physical aliments would likely cease. Again though, no regrowing limbs kind of crap. There are limits.

[Thought2Much]

I do believe however that it is possible for us to cure quite a lot of ailments in ourselves that is not some supernatural miracle from a god in the sky. I'm not talking fixing broken bones our regrowing limbs or crap like that, but just by eliminating stresses in our physical bodies by realigning the mind into a healthy state. There no doubt being all wound up in our minds will lead to physical problems, and having a healthy peaceful mind will eliminate the source of those. So my take on a lot of "miracle" healing, is really simply someone letting go of those things they harbor in their minds that impact their bodies with stress. In this sense yes, "your faith has made you whole". The relationship of the body with the mind goes in both directions.

 

I would tend to agree with this. There must be a reason why the placebo effect works as consistently as it does, and why so many people seem able to see positive results from just believing that they'll see positive results. It would be great if science could pin down exactly why the placebo effect takes place, and be able to encourage the same result in more cases.

[TrueFreedom]

Mark Twain wrote an entire book on Christian Science acknowledging the utility of the placebo effect: http://www.gutenberg...87-h/3187-h.htm

 

Though he refers to those who practice it as insane, he has the following to say about it:

 

"Remember its principal great offer: to rid the Race of pain and disease. Can it do so? In large measure, yes. How much of the pain and disease in the world is created by the imaginations of the sufferers, and then kept alive by those same imaginations? Four-fifths? Not anything short of that, I should think. Can Christian Science banish that four-fifths? I think so. Can any other (organized) force do it? None that I know of. Would this be a new world when that was accomplished? And a pleasanter one—for us well people, as well as for those fussy and fretting sick ones? Would it seem as if there was not as much gloomy weather as there used to be? I think so."

 

A book which has helped my wife immensely is Feelings Buried Alive Never Die by Karol K. Truman. It's an aid to mental and physical healing through acknowledging and accepting past injuries. We tend to make ourselves sick by holding past hurts in different parts of our bodies.

[Antlerman]

I do believe however that it is possible for us to cure quite a lot of ailments in ourselves that is not some supernatural miracle from a god in the sky. I'm not talking fixing broken bones our regrowing limbs or crap like that, but just by eliminating stresses in our physical bodies by realigning the mind into a healthy state. There no doubt being all wound up in our minds will lead to physical problems, and having a healthy peaceful mind will eliminate the source of those. So my take on a lot of "miracle" healing, is really simply someone letting go of those things they harbor in their minds that impact their bodies with stress. In this sense yes, "your faith has made you whole". The relationship of the body with the mind goes in both directions.

 

I would tend to agree with this. There must be a reason why the placebo effect works as consistently as it does, and why so many people seem able to see positive results from just believing that they'll see positive results. It would be great if science could pin down exactly why the placebo effect takes place, and be able to encourage the same result in more cases.

It's kind of funny in a way that science seems surprised by this. You can see someone's thoughts, their dispositions towards life etched on their faces, and carried into their bodies in postures, hunched over, gnarled up, etc. More and more you're hearing about 'stress' in the body causes problems, in fact that it has an enormous part in our overall health issues. Then they speak now of epigenetics where our social environments, and I'll add your belief structures are part of that, will in fact affect our very DNA coding in what is passed down. There is far more of an integral impact of the mind in what goes on in our bodies than traditionally science has looked at previously, where the assumption is a purely bottom up, materialistic determinism.

 

I somewhat speculate that we haven't even begun to really realize just how interrelated everything is and the overall impacts they have on each other, not just in our own persons, but from outside, and from us to others, from bottom up and from top down, in an unimaginable web of relations (that should get Legion excited). These 'miracles' attributed to supernatural deities in our mythologies, are really only miraculous because they seem to defy our present ability to put them into a box of our understanding.

 

As with what was touched on earlier, I believe there are a few 'miracles', like you have those with true spiritual realizations, but then religions spring up in their footsteps trying to simulate and reenact it in some social form. These healing services and whatnot are just like the tongues talking in the Charismatic churches. Children playing with powerful things, imagining them to be controlled by a magic being outside themselves they look at in their child-level myth figures. Revving the motor, never knowing what the stick-shift on the floor does and consequently never really 'getting it'. They make lots of noise and just look silly.

[jblueep]

Some of you have probably seen this Derren Brown video regarding healing. It's a very well done, compassionate look at healing within Christianity. It's tough to watch, even as an ex-Christian. I know the difference between people of genuine faith and charlatans that intentionally exploit the vulnerable, and I don't question the sincerity of those I personally know that believe in healing. But if a believer actually watches this with an open mind, it would definitely make them seriously question.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYjgeayfYPI&feature=youtu.be

[Akheia]

Legion, you should make an album

 

Thank you, Ficino. And I'm sorry that you, as well, had to go through such an experience. Learning under such circumstances that God lied, that he doesn't really answer prayers at all is so emotionally damaging. I'm glad in a way that I figured out that God doesn't exist, because it removed the pain of him existing and just not caring enough to do what his Bible said he absolutely would.

 

There are a lot of criticisms I could level at Evil Ex, but from what I heard of that incident, he was in the right, technically. He just had a highly dramatic streak, a real sense of the "movie moment," and it really would have been just a truly momentous occurrence had his charge into the hospital room ended with Daniel getting up and dancing out of there with him. The old fogies in there just didn't have the same appreciation for dramatic tension, I guess. They just wanted to have a quiet bedside vigil and a peaceful passing and didn't appreciate a wild-eyed, screaming, bombastic "turn or burn" Jesus freak invading their space. Nobody really won in that incident; the poor relatives had the disruption of a weirdo interrupting their vigil, and he got a good strong emotional thwick on the nose as if he were a puppy. I could easily understand why he felt reluctant to talk about the whole thing. Don't imagine I learned about it from him! No, the senior pastor's wife, Daniel's mother-in-law, was the one who talked to me about it; during a chance meeting, she asked me to convey to Evil Ex her apology for being curt with him, and I had no clue in the world what she was talking about. I was quite shocked--more because she was tacitly admitting that she knew prayer wouldn't do any good than because Evil Ex had apparently made a fucking idiot of himself yet again and caused disruption in my life because of his inability to function in the real world.

[Legion]

Legion, you should make an album

 

Akheia, you are my album.

Your memory is my track

I'll sing and I'll write poetry

until you can play it back.

 

Phantom community I have,

and phantom I'll shall be

for as you listen in,

you try to anticipate me.

[mcdaddy]

Legion, you should make an album

 

Akheia, you are my album.

Your memory is my track

I'll sing and I'll write poetry

until you can play it back.

 

Phantom community I have,

and phantom I'll shall be

for as you listen in,

you try to anticipate me.

 

Leege-

 

I'll lace the track, you lock the flow.

 

Deal?

 

We can be the southern white version off Puffy and Biggy.

 

[mcdaddy]

Double time

[Legion]

Leege-

 

I'll lace the track, you lock the flow.

 

Deal?

 

We can be the southern white version off Puffy and Biggy.

 

McDaddy wants to be my daddy.

bom bom

Yeah man, he wants to hitch me on a cart.

He sees my words, he sees my rhymes.

Can't tell you what it is, but knows it's art.

[mcdaddy]

Leege-

 

I'll lace the track, you lock the flow.

 

Deal?

 

We can be the southern white version off Puffy and Biggy.

 

McDaddy wants to be my daddy.

bom bom

Yeah man, he wants to hitch me on a cart.

He sees my words, he sees my rhymes.

Can't tell you what it is, but knows it's art.

 

*spots Notorious L.E.G. a dope beat with one Beats headphone on, while concurrently spinning and mixing*

 

Whoot whoot

[antix]

After accepting Christ in 1980, I was part of a Bible study for a yr and we went to this church somewhere outside youngstown OH. All the people in the Bible study would praise this pastor sister judy. I went ONCE to this place and she asked anyone who had any issues to come down front. I went and my issue (she did not ask what the specific issues were, she placed her hand on you head and told you). She is placing her hands on all these people and telling them what they are praying for and they are praising jesus up and down. My prayer was that my wisdom teeth would be fine and she comes and lays her hand on my head and says I am praying to be a better witness. NOPE!