Question:   Dear Greg,

            We recently started attending a Pentecostal church in our area.  We are very unfamiliar with the speaking in tongues issue.  We are from a Baptist background and the topic of speaking in tongues came up.  We truly feel the Holy Spirit is at work in this church and have recently witnessed or heard of people speaking in tongues.  We are not sure whether we should be uncomfortable with this or not.

            Could you please shed some light on this issue?

            Thank you,

            Darryl

Answer:  Dear Darryl,

            Speaking in tongues is often a cultural thing with Christians—you have either been exposed to it or you have not, and your feelings are thus formed.

            Some who call themselves cessationists (the position favored by the majority of Christians alive today, or who have ever lived) believe that the gifts of healing and tongues were obviously real and a part of the early church recorded in the New Testament.  However, they point to the record of the other 1900 years of Christianity and to the majority of Christians who have ever lived, and note that tongues has not been a part of their worship.

            It’s a compelling argument—one that, with modifications, PTM would make.  However, PTM would not say that tongues is not a gift that might be given to some Christians today.  PTM does not dispute whether some who speak in tongues do so as a gift of God.  On the other hand, PTM would point out that speaking in tongues can become, and has become in some congregations, a “union card” that demonstrates greater, deeper and more profound conversion.  That is, there is, in some circles, discrimination toward those who do not speak in tongues.  The idea is that while you may be a Christian and not speak in tongues, the more deeply you are converted, you will eventually speak in tongues as a sign of that deeper conversion.  That is man-made denominational marketing and manipulation and has nothing at all to do with authentic Christianity.

            On the other hand, there are some Christians who regard any other Christian who speaks in tongues as illiterate, superstitious and unsophisticated.  Such a judgment is a condemnation and has nothing to do with authentic Christianity.  If we were to take such a view we would have to regard the greatest Christian theologian, the Apostle Paul, as an illiterate hayseed.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht