Tongues

Acts 2:5-11

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they herd this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another “What does this mean?”

I pretty much grew up with “speaking in tongues.” I’ve never been one of those people who are fanatical about it, you know, where speaking in tongues fixes everything. But I grew up in a charismatic church, I’m spirit filled (or baptized) and I’ve been known to pray on and off, with words that sound, to the natural ear, something like gibberish. I’ve never really had a problem with this, and I still don’t, except for the verse that says, “I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding” (1 Cor 14:15).

But recently, I’ve been getting a bit of a revelation about the “gift of tongues” (believe it or not) from my literary theory class. See, one of the key concepts to, oh, Feminist criticism, post-colonial criticism, new historical criticism, and a whole host of others is the idea of “discourse.” Discourse, simply put, is a language. Actually, it’s a sub language. There are millions of ‘em. Every group of people, sub-culture, occupation, and clique has one. African Americans: “What’s happening, brother?” Computer programmers: “The key to Microsoft’s unparalleled success is not simply their impressive marketing program combined with hyper-aggressive business techniques, but behind it all lies the core of truly modular programming.” Bill and Ted: “Dude!”… “Sweet!” Britspeak: “Pardon me, would you happen to have any Grey Poupon®?” Critspeak: “The importance of the objective correlative is that it has the capacity to transfigure a simple objective consideration, either concrete or abstract, into a more broadening projection of personal, or even intimate, awareness.”

Yeah. Discourses. Everybody has ‘em. It’s what allows you to talk to the older people at church in one way, and the kids at school in another. It’s like one long series of inside jokes, strung together into a conversation. It just means that certain words in certain contexts have very specialized meanings. So, in a more liturgical church, I would talk about priests performing exorcism on a demon-possessed person, while in a Charismatic church I would talk about the importance of deliverance for those who are “demonized.” In a fundamentalist church, I would probably have to talk about the important influence of prayer in addition to psychiatric treatment and/or medication for the mentally afflicted.

Hopefully, you get the idea. Discourse is that special way of speaking that any group of people automatically develops to put as much meaning as possible into every phrase they speak. The thing that fascinates me the most, though, is that when those literary theorists discuss the nature of discourse, they don’t think of it as a kind of dialect, like where people from certain parts of the country say “pull the door to” instead of “shut the door” and the language doesn’t usually bleed from one part to the other. Instead, a discourse works just like a mini-language, and they bleed over into the culture at large. Which is why it’s cool now for anybody to say “you’re in denial” and it makes sense to people who aren’t psychologists. It fascinates me because I’ve always had a thing for languages. I’m always sitting around defining things, looking up words in my Bible for what they meant in the original Greek or Hebrew. I’ve always loved figuring out how the same word can mean different things to different sub-groups of people.

I’ve always had a bit of a gift for language. One of my biggest embarrassments is that, despite this “gift” for language, English is the only language I’m fluent in. That’s like being a math wiz who only does algebra. Something the Lord’s been showing me, though, is that my ability with words isn’t just going to waste on writing poetry. (Especially since I finally mastered the “discourse” that allows me to say nothing, but to say it in such a way that I win a bunch of writing awards—let’s just say that I’ve gotten really bored with impressing people with poetry) I’ve started to realize that the “gift of tongues” is both a spiritual and a natural gift, that is I can speak in the tongues of angels and of men, and that I have a very real calling to speak in these discourses, and to translate these discourses.

OK. I mean, I guess it’s pretty obvious. But it isn’t really. How many people aren’t automatically offended when somebody doesn’t talk their lingo properly? How many people argue over stuff when they’re actually trying to make the same point? How many people refuse to hear anything that isn’t being said in the language of their own sect? Frankly, this kind of “speaking in tongues” encompasses prophecy, teaching and evangelism. None of these callings can be successful if the people who are being spoken too are offended with every word because they don’t hear the message properly through the filter of the sub-cultures they’re familiar with.

I don’t know if that does anything for you, but I’m pretty pumped. It sort of pulls it all together for me: the poetry, the heart for teaching, the bookstore, the call to ministry… all of it. This even explains what the heck I’m doing signing up to become a member of the local Baptist church. I’ve got to learn the denominational language before I can do that part of my job. Folks, I’ve got a mission now, so you might as well call me a missionary. A missionary to America, but a missionary nonetheless. I’m excited. My whole life fits into one framework again.

Yippee skipe!