Faking Tongues

 

I was about six years old when I first "spoke in tongues".  I was living with my parents in Mississippi at the time and attending a Charismatic church.  There was a particular Sunday School teacher named Deanna that I idolized, and so when she asked for volunteers to be baptized with the Holy Spirit, I was one of the first to raise my hand.  Deanna led me and the three other children who had volunteered out of the noisy Sunday school room into the sanctuary and directed us to kneel and pray.

 

After a few minutes, I felt her tap on my shoulder, and she began to whisper quiet instructions into my ear.  "Let your tongue just sit loosely  . . . open your mouth and say whatever you feel that God wants you to say . . ."

 

Eventually, under her guidance and the pressure to do something, I mumbled a few nonsense syllables.  "That's it!" she said. 

 

Back in the Sunday school room later, she proclaimed to everyone that I had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  I was pleased to be congratulated and patted on the back by all the adults present, but, truthfully, I felt just the same as I had before.  I had expected that I would feel overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that my tongue would be seized by an irresistable urge to sing wonderful praises to God in a heavenly language.  Somehow it didn't seem like it would be so mundane as merely babbling a few syllables.

 

I pushed the doubts to the back of my mind.  My baptism had made me part of the in-crowd, and I felt I could not go back by saying that it hadn't really happened.  So I pushed on.

 

Soon, I became quite adept at my "tongues".  I practiced making it sound better.  I noticed that many people, when they prayed in tongues, repeated the same phrases over and over and over (the classic "shandala shandala shandala" prayer) which didn't sound very much like a real language.  So I began to hold a picture of the alphabet in my head when I prayed in tongues so that I could be sure that I was hitting a lot of varying consonants and vowel sounds.  I also started throwing in a few words that were recognizable, but sounded like I was speaking another language:  "gloria", "Yesus", "Christo", etc.  The final touch came when I took a French class in junior high and realized that some languages use different sounds not covered in the English alphabet.  I threw a few French-sounding consonants into my tongues, just to give it my heavenly language a nice, foreign-sounding flair.

 

The ironic thing is that, throughout all of this, I persisted in believing (or at least pretending that I believed) that I was really speaking in tongues.  Whatever doubts I had, I kept them pushed deep beneath the surface in my mind and refused to consciously entertain them.  It was only after leaving Pentecostalism that I began to realize what should have been obvious all along:  it could not possibly be a supernatural language if I was consciously changing it up, practicing it, and adding to it to make it sound better.

 

Based on my experiences, I do not think that most Pentecostals realize (even if they should) that they are faking their tongues.  In fact, they are taught to believe that speaking in tongues is always supernatural, and that, whatever babbling noises come out of their mouths should be unquestionably accepted as a spiritual gift.  Most Pentecostals do not even seem to realize that it is possible to fake the gift of tongues.

 

In fact, faking tongues is extremely easy, and it is something that people can do with very little conscious effort.  Even babies can babble .  . .it takes no special training or planning. 

 

The key is often the high-pressure atmosphere created around a "baptism of the Holy Spirit".  The person who wants to receive the "baptism" is usually surrounded by well-meaning friends and family, all laying on hands and praying intensely.  It creates an atmosphere of expectation.  The person being prayed for does not want to disappoint them all.  And, in fact, he or she probably fears that failure to properly perform will result in accusations of hidden sin or unbelief.  As time passes, the praying intensifies and reaches an almost frantic level.  Hands that were layed on gently to begin with start to press the person harder, even to shake him or her.  And then the instructions start to come, "Just let it go . . .  free up your tongue . . .  receive it . . . open your mouth and just speak out whatever God gives you . . ."  At last, the person hesitantly babbles a few syllables, and the whole group breaks into cheers.  There is an atmosphere of immense relief. 

 

"That right, just keep doing that, keep working on it," the newly 'Spirit-filled' person is told.  "If you have doubts about whether this is really of God, then just remember:  that is Satan trying to get to you.  Satan wants you to doubt so that you will lose your blessing.  Just keep believing!"

 

And now the trap has completely shut.  If the person tries to evaluate the experience objectively and concludes that it wasn't really a supernatural event, he or she will be immediately accused of giving in to Satan.  Others will never believe that the tongues were faked; they will insist that it experience was real but that the doubts are a sign of unbelief.  The only thing to do is to keep going, to suppress the doubts and just believe.  All other alternatives have been shut off.

 

The entire system is set up to reward dishonesty.  Those who will fake are going to heaven and accepted by the church.  Those who refuse to fake are outcasts who can never seem to get the blessing and are suspected of all kinds of sin and pride.

 

I look back on my experiences now and realize how much I was a coward, easily swayed by the expectations and easily led by the rewards offered for a good tongues show.  I most admire those who never "received", those who cried and prayed many times at the altar, begging God to touch them, but never getting the "blessing".  At least they were honest.

 

(Article by Caroline Weerstra)