I’ll preface it with a description of a practice I developed while playing D&D, 1st edition, in my youth -I know: I’m “dating” myself – in which I was enhancing the credibility of non-human non-player characters (NPCs). I began enunciating syllables I thought to be characteristic of the fictional race of the NPC, and could both vary “random” syllables, to give the fictional language richness, but also repeat patterns, as though they were actual words symbolizing topical words.
When, a few years later, I was in a non-denominational (though affiliated with the Word of Faith network) church, and had experienced, as I thought, the flow of the “Holy Spirit”, and revelation that the “Word of God” (the ‘Bible’) was TRUE, I soon went forward for laying on of hands for the infilling of the “Holy Spirit”. I was expected, and encouraged, to speak in tongues.
Nothing was coming, but it occurred to me to repeat my FRPG experience, but yield it to the “Holy Spirit”, and began to speak in tongues, to the apparent delight of everyone in the church.
After that, I often prayed “in tongues” when either I felt a need to pray, but didn’t know specifically what ought to be the content of my praise and petitions, and after I exhausted everything of which I could think, but did not feel fulfillment, that the intercession was complete.
I also spoke in tongues in the meetings, though rarely, and even gave some interpretations, along with straight-up prophesying [not foretelling, but “forthtelling”, for edification, encouragement, and… -I dont’ recall the 3rd ‘e’-word at the moment-].
I occasionally doubted that I was REALLY speaking in tongues by the movement of the “Holy Spirit”, remembering my engagement in similar behavior in play, but I squelched those doubts by reaffirming my trust in my “Lord Jesus”, and the “Spirit” sent in his name, and in the testimony of the “Holy Scriptures”.
Even while my faith was being solidified, there were seeds of undermining my faith getting into my mind, in that I learned how many in history who claimed to be Christian were not, judging by their behavior, by their “fruits”, and how the Bible had gone through various alterations, and how translations were often skewed. I nevertheless retained trust in the scriptures, because of my early “revelation”, in that while the text I read might not be the original, that “hand of god” was still on the copyists and translators, and that the “Spirit of Truth” would lead me in my understanding and behavior.
After I returned to formal education, ironically at the urging of the wife of an elder in the church, I became further exposed to evidence that the bases of my faith were not reliable. However, for each disconfirmed aspect of my faith, I retained belief in those due to those aspects which were still firm, in my mind. Nevertheless, after I learned that ANYONE who practiced ecstatic religion even if not, fundamentally, believing the same as me and my church, could have alterations in their brain activity, blood flow, and chemistry, resulting in the feelings I felt in my “experiences of the Holy Spirit”, my engagement in ecstatic religion [in auto-hypnotism] waned.
I still would “pray in tongues”, occasionally, and think that I had done so within a week preceding my reception of the last straws that collapsed my faith, in April of 2002, almost twenty years after my plunge in the mass- and auto- hypnosis of ecstatic (“charismatic”) religion.
To summarize: I believed that my practice of glossolalia was of the “Holy Spirit”, a fulfillment of scriptural promises, and an indication of being as filled with the “Spirit” as possible. I now see that my behavior was no different than my previous habit, but that I was deluded into thinking it was divinely manipulated. I further believe that all who exercise “speaking in tongues” are similarly deluded.
I can even now “speak in tongues” at will, but see it as a product of my own brain. I attach a just-now recorded demonstration.
Views: 138
