Certain Christians are terrified of
- They think it’s devilish, and are afraid of
evil spirits. - They think it’s madness, and are afraid of crazy people.
- They think tongues-speakers are out of control, and don’t wanna surrender or lose control of themselves… nor of course be around
out-of-control people. - They realize it’s empowered by
the Holy Spirit … and of all people, they’re afraid of him.
All of them are wrong ideas and false views, and people need to be taught otherwise. But whenever someone starts speaking in tongues around them, their fight-or-flight instinct gets triggered, and at that point there’s no teaching them anything. They’re having a panic attack, or they’re getting out of the building as fast as they can, or they’re furious that someone’s put them in that uncomfortable situation.
So, reason the leaders of various churches, best to just hide or silence the tongues.
Now, those of us who do speak in tongues, tend to get our dander up at the idea. Hey, didn’t the apostles forbid this kind of behavior?
1 Corinthians 14.39 KJV - Wherefore, brethren, covet to prophesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues.
But what I’ve found are two types of churches:
Because too often, when they get a tongues-speaker in their congregation, they get yet another immature Christian who can’t keep the volume down. Who insists they have every right to make noise. After all, Holy Spirit! And since God’s enabling their tongues, how dare anyone stifle them? How dare anyone declare how and when and where to show off exercise their particular
I told a friend I was gonna write about Christians who forbid tongues, and this was largely his attitude too. He “got his angry up,” as they call it
1 Corinthians 14.40 KJV - Let all things be done decently and in order.
Ah there it is.
You know how people are: We never give one another the benefit of the doubt. We just assume they’re sticking it to us.
The fear of giving offense.
Though in a few cases, churches ban tongues because they worry about how tongues terrify people, as I said earlier. Rather than have people flee the building, they figure it’s best to hide or silence the tongues.
Sometimes their excuse is they’re temporarily quieting tongues. Just for now. Just till the scaredy-cats in the church can be properly educated. But in practice they never do get round to properly educating anyone. Because tongues isn’t a pressing concern: There are a billion other priorities, like educating newbies on the basics of Christianity, helping the needy, finding teachers for Sunday school, and that one church lady who only attends prayer meetings for the gossip. Because they’ve “temporarily” quieted tongues, they don’t see how often it’s practiced… nor know how often it’s malpracticed, and don’t realize they might need to instruct the tongues-speakers on how to do it right,
Because when tongues go into hiding, a church rapidly fills up with people unfamiliar with tongues. Some of ’em are Christians who were looking to avoid tongues, found a church which has tongues on mute, and figure this is the church for them. Some of ’em, hoping to justify their discomfort and fears, have been listening to anti-tongues, anti-supernaturalist, anti-Holy-Spirit rhetoric from various false preachers. You don’t want your church full of such people… but if you never teach on tongues, I guarantee it’s what you’ll eventually have.
When the church leaders procrastinate long enough, they’ll reach a point where they fear to broach the subject of tongues: It’s gonna cause a church split! Worse, over an issue they kinda consider irrelevant… ’cause if they considered it relevant, they’d’ve taught on tongues long before now, right?
Me, I don’t see tongues as an irrelevant issue. (I am writing about it, y’notice.) Because tongues build up individual Christians,
Yeah, churches which do tongues can have sucky prayer groups too. But that’s more often from the personality conflicts, not from group members who are forcibly limited in the ways they can pray, or who have to hide their forbidden practices. Churches without tongues suffer from both personality conflicts and stifled petitioners. So if you wanna hamstring your church’s prayer, ban tongues.
If your church leaders don’t forbid, but don’t practice, tongues: They’re gonna have to grow a backbone. To have a serious talk with the congregation. To preach, not just in the small groups but to the entire church, a sermon about what the scriptures teach about tongues. To describe how they understand tongues to be properly, biblically practiced. To remind everyone the apostles forbade the forbidding of tongues. To encourage everyone to responsibly, humbly, pursue and practice the gift.
As for the folks whom tongues terrifies: The leaders have to address that elephant in the room as kindly as possible. Clearly everyone who responds to tongues with fear or anger has some personal issues with the Holy Spirit they need to work out. Because both responses
And yeah, even if your leaders explain this as gently as they can, they’d better brace themselves for the fact many of these people have no interest whatsoever
Resisting the Holy Spirit.
When Christians don’t know the Spirit, and figure they need to read the bible instead of listen to him (and they don’t read the bible), Christians are gonna go wrong. If they believe he no longer empowers miracles, including tongues, of course they’re not gonna pursue them, nor any of the other supernatural gifts. Even fear them. And ban them.
They’ll figure any of us Christians who do pray in tongues are either nuts or devilish. Same as
Not a lot we can do with them. The Holy Spirit has get through to them. So pray. In tongues if you gotta.
