Speaking in tongues and why I stopped

I’ve always been a churchgoer.

Growing up in the Southwestern part of Nigeria, how could I not be?

Both parents were raised Catholic but converted to Protestant denominations later in life. They raised all four of their children in the Redeemed Christian Church of God.

Church is all I’ve really ever known; teaching Sunday Schools, attending Redemption Camps, baptismal classes, faith clinics, cross-over nights, deliverance services etc. It probably all sounds just as familiar to you, doesn’t it?

To understand why something exists, it is important to understand what it was created to do.

We even have a word for when a thing is used improperly: abuse. For example, when power is abused, we call it corruption. When sex is abused, we call it rape. When alcohol is abused, we call it alcoholism.

When something good is used for the purpose it is not created for, it is simply abuse.

What was speaking in tongues created for? When the heck did it even start?

I’m glad you asked.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane to about 2,000 years ago.

The origin of Speaking in Tongues

The practice of speaking in tongues started on the Day of Pentecost.

Day of Pente-whaaa?

What the heck is the Day of Pentecost?

Again, I am glad you asked. Keep it coming with these great questions!

If history is not your thing, the next few paragraphs will be a bit of a drag. But stay with me for a bit. The Day of Pentecost is crucial to understanding where speaking in tongues came from.

Alright, here we go!

(To follow the story, read Acts 2:1–47)

After Jesus died and was resurrected, he appeared to his disciples and told them to anticipate something grand that would happen in Jerusalem. It was gonna be soo WILD; he ordered them not to step foot outside of Jerusalem.

At about that time, the Jews were getting ready for the Day of Pentecost, a prominent Jewish festival. Otherwise known as ‘The Feast of Weeks’. It was a time when the Jews celebrated the memory of God revealing the first five Books of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai. The festival typically fell around late May or early June. Jews from around the world travelled to Jerusalem with their entire families to celebrate it (them Jews liked a good partaaaay). Think of it like Detty December when all the ‘I just got backs’ flock back into town to celebrate Christmas & New Year’s.

The disciples were going about life as usual, prepping for the upcoming festival. Nothing was out of the ordinary until suddenly, things got lit.

They were all gathered in the upper room of a home in Jerusalem, when GBAM! out of nowhere, a large rattling sound, the kind you hear when heavy rain is about to break out, thunders across, displacing furniture, vases, water jugs, stools, plates, and slippers in the room. The disciples are like, “What in God’s name is happening?” I bet by this point, some had already crawled underneath tables to take cover in case it was an alien apocalypse.

Shortly after that, they each noticed these strange-looking things that were like droplets of fire sitting on the heads of everyone in the room. Then as if things couldn’t get any weirder, uncontrollable outbursts of foreign languages followed. Each of them broke out speaking languages that were not their native Aramaic (the language spoken by Galileans)

The crowd of foreign Jews visiting Jerusalem for the festival had also been going about their business when they, too, were suddenly interrupted by the sound of a strong windstorm. Confused and bewildered, “What the heck is happppeening??” When they approach the house where the disciples are staying, they notice an even stranger thing. An odd group of young Galilean men speaking their own native languages (remember these Jewish foreigners were not Galilean).

Stop.

Just in case you are missing the significance of this. Imagine travelling to Beijing, China, and while touring an antique market in Beijing, you pass a group of Chinese people you overhear speaking Yoruba. I bet you are gonna turn around and double-check you heard right. Perhaps if you have small liver, you will even approach them.

“What? You can speak Yoruba?”

“Where did you learn how to speak Yoruba?”

“Do you know where I can get correct amala and ewedu in this market?”

That’s precisely the shock these foreign Jews felt. And guess what, it wasn’t just one language being spoken — it was an outburst of multiple foreign languages: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya etc. And let’s get this. This wasn’t no “Bonjour, Bonsoir” — the disciples were PREACHING in these foreign languages. I can probably say “Hello” and “Goodnight” in four other languages (French, Igbo, Spanish, and Yoruba), but that’s about it. I can’t hold an entire conversation in either of those four languages. But here the disciples were street preaching in foreign languages.

And that’s how speaking in tongues came about.

Any other mentions of this practice happen solely in the New Testament, all after this account in the book of Acts.

But that was then.

What about now? How is speaking in tongues used today?

Let’s make a comparison between then vs now.

Speaking in Tongues: Then vs Now

1. Tongues have always been intended for the benefit of unbelievers, not believers.

How was it used in the NT? 1 Corinthians 14: 22–23 goes straight to the point on this one. Without mincing words, it has a name for Churches where believers are chanting gibberish that unbelievers can’t even make sense of. The word is “CRAZY” Don’t believe me. Believe the Bible. Flip it open to see for yourself. Tongues were spoken in the presence of unbelievers for the sole benefit of unbelievers. Don’t forget the disciples travelled a lot, which brought them in close contact with various communities of unbelievers in different towns and villages.

How is it being used today? Today, speaking in tongues is most often done in gatherings of “believers” — Either during prayer sessions, worship sessions, group devotions, cell meetings etc. It is not an activity that is done to bring the gospel message to non-believers. When was the last time you saw a bunch of zealous tongue-speaking Christians standing outside a busy Mosque in Kano state or a traditional shrine in Ogun State, speaking in tongues to crowds of non-believers?

But why just for unbelievers though? That leads me to my next point: tongues were real languages.

2. Tongues were actual languages that people could understand.

How was it used in the NT? Tongues literally meant “languages” The first mention of ‘tongues’ in the Bible was in Acts 2:4. Go to that scripture (for real, pause here and open it), notice it has a small superscript number on the top pointing you to the footnotes. Check out what the footnote says. It likely says “other languages” or “foreign languages”.

And by ‘languages’, it means actual speech that people of a particular nationality can hear and interpret. When the disciples started speaking in ‘tongues’, the foreign Jews that heard them exclaimed, “…how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?” (Acts 2:8)

Imagine the gospel message could only be spoken in Aramaic or Greek? How the heck would it have reached all nations as Jesus commanded in Matthew 28:18–20?

God literally used the gift of tongues to break down language barriers to spread His own message.

Ain’t that amazing?!

How is it being used today? If you listen to the tongues spoken today, much of it is essentially gibberish. It bears no resemblance to any of the established languages people speak today (e.g Spanish, French, Italian etc.)

Can either you or Siri interpret “rebaba shante robosheteshete lakade baba?”

Now, if this particular point triggers thoughts of Romans 8: 26 (“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans”) then good, it means you know your Bible and are referencing many of the points being made here back to the Bible. Also very good. Never come to a conclusion based on the rantings of a lunatic on the internet. Always refer back to the Bible.

Romans 8:26 is often used to justify the rapid gibberish people speak today. But one clear distinction that must not be overlooked is that Romans 8:26 refers to ‘wordless groans’, aka ‘no words’, aka ‘an absence of speech’.

Gibberish is not word-less.

3. Tongues didn’t come because the apostles prayed for it; they were taken unawares.

How was it used in the NT? On the Day of Pentecost, the community of believers, Peter and the rest of the gang were busy preparing for the festival that was about to happen. Perhaps the women were already hard at work kneading the bread dough, marinating the meat etc., while the men were…well, doing Jewish men things? When suddenly (i.e. without warning, unexpectedly, abruptly…), some of them broke out speaking a language that sounded nothing like their mother tongue (Aramaic)

In short, they never experred it.

Their prayers didn’t summon it forth. The Holy Spirit triggered it on his own accord.

How is it being used today? Today, speaking in tongues is a ‘practised’ act under the control of the speaker. He/she can start and stop at will. They can choose to speak in tongues during a midweek Church service and choose not to while riding the Bus.

In fact, at Pentecostal Churches, the traditional way a “new convert” receives the ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’ is by a minister or deacon praying over them and encouraging them to ‘release as the Spirit gives utterance’ aka ‘start speaking in tongues’.

I will never forget the account of a friend of mine who said the minister started shaking him violently when he didn’t immediately start speaking in tongues after he had been prayed on.

4. In the early Church, speaking in tongues was actually NOT supposed to be done by everyone in the Congregation.

How was it used in the NT? Should I shock you small? Just small. In the early Church, not everyone spoke in tongues.

1 Corinthians 12: The Church in Corinth started abusing the use of tongues. So much so that Paul had to write a letter to them to re-teach them the actual purpose of speaking in tongues and how it was to be used.

In his letter (1 Cor 12:30), Paul asks them a rhetorical question, “Do all speak in tongues?” He teaches them that not all members of the Congregation should be speaking in tongues.

How is it being used today? In many Charismatic Christian denominations, speaking in tongues is the very evidence that a believer has received the gift of the Holy Spirit. It’s seen as the trademark of the ‘Spirit-filled’ believer. New converts are strongly encouraged to go through the process of gaining this ‘gift’ of the Holy Spirit.

There are more, but this piece has overshot the word limit.

To close, I have great mentors, friends, best friends, and relatives that swear by the doctrine of tongues. So you can imagine the audacity I have coming on here to invalidate it. But there’s one thing I fear more: it’s Jesus ever looking at me (…or you) to say, “Away from me, I never knew you” (Matthew 7:21–23)

So here I am, at the risk of offending many well-meaning, devoted, committed, compassionate, generous men and women in Christendom.

Let’s not end the conversation here. If you have more puzzling and troubling questions about many more thorny and divisive issues in Christianity, let’s connect for personal Bible studies to sift fact from hype. If you’re down, don’t debate it; go right ahead and fill out this form here.