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The Super-emotional State
Studying and comparing examples of
tongues and the descriptions of those who uttered them at the very peak
of their ecstatic experience have supplied me with sufficient
indications that one can speak of a super-emotional state during which
the subject appears to be entirely out of reach from his surroundings.
Dr. Goodman has observed the same behavior and writes, "The
glossolalist does indeed behave differently from ordinary language
speakers. … We may now suggest that glossolalia be defined as an event
of vocalization while the speaker is in a state of disassociation termed
TRANCE."—"Phonetic Analysis of Glossolalia in Four Cultural
Settings," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,
VIII, 1969, pp. 227-239.
There have been many religious reasons
given for the sudden growth of the charismatic movement, but with atomic
regularity many researchers keep coming back to the emotional
instability as being one of the most dominant factors. Perhaps they have
a case, for our society is less sane than it used to be.
Dr. Gordon B. Hamilton, a Washington,
D.C., psychiatrist, concurs. "In the past decade, and particularly
in the past five years, the general level of sanity has gone down.
Conversely, cases of inferiority complex, melancholia, neurasthenia, and
psychoneurosis have increased sharply."—Associated Press Dispatch
as quoted in Speaking in Tongues, by H. J. Stolee, op. cit.,
p. 77.
Dr. Hamilton has touched upon a
sensitive area, for it has long been known to researchers that mental
instability is indeed one of the recognized avenues to the Pentecostal
experience. There is little doubt in their mind that the charismatic
movement is just as much psychological as spiritual. It has been said
that when speaking in tongues, the subjects enter a "pathological
condition which is a perversion of the God-intended function of the
brain. It is toying with this delicate precision instrument with which
God has gifted us. It is transforming the seat of rationality into an
irrational machine. In doing so," Donald W. Burdick comments,
"a person contravenes God’s purpose for man as a rational
being."—Tongues—To Speak or Not to Speak, (Chicago:
Moody Bible Institute, 1969), pages 84, 85.
At this point, we must become very
selective. While many social scientists blame mental aberrations alone
for a person’s interest in Pentecostalism—and it must be admitted
honestly that in a number of instances there is a close connection—speaking
in tongues is not always the result of a sick state of mind. But here,
too, the researchers hold contrasting views. The verbal barrage of
disconnected vocal sounds, emitted under great stress, is, irrespective
of what triggers the phenomenon, made up of sounds stored in the subject’s
mind; and, according to psychiatrist Stuart Bergsma, there is a close
relationship between this and cybernetics, the storage system on which
modern computers operate.
Looking at the phenomenon with a
clinical eye, Bergsma writes: "Obviously nothing can come out of
each individual brain that was not once previously stored there.
Material stored may be altered, fragmented, confused, distorted, but
cannot be humanly created. Also it is obvious that language … which
comes out as language in glossolalia, must have been introduced somehow
in that person’s life. Even if that person was not conscious he or she
had heard those words or that a memory engram was being recorded, these
had nevertheless been recorded there. This will explain the very few
cases of modern glossolalia [intelligent foreign languages], if there
are any."—Stuart Bergsma, "Speaking With Tongues," Torch
and Trumpet, November, 1964, p. 10. (Italics supplied.)
His first conclusion is valid. The very
fact that Pentecostalists in various countries use intonations and
inflections common to their native tongue in their glossolalical
discourse, enabling the impartial parties to identify a tongue’s
national origin, more than proves his point. They take the sounds that
have been stored in their brain and reproduce them in a disconnected
fashion while "in the spirit." However, it is his position
that foreign languages must also have been introduced sometime in
a person’s mind before they can emerge as intelligent
glossolalia, that puts him in contrast with the Biblical interpretation
of the gift of tongues. The Bible states that in New Testament times
these were given as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit—not to show an
occurrence of human recall. He completely ignores the possibility of
supernatural intervention in the mind of men and denies the existence or
even the likelihood of God-inspired utterings.
The ecstatic tongues were judged
correctly by Dr. Abraham Kuyper, the late Dutch theologian, long before
they had ever become a social status symbol. Said he: "This [the
tongues] is not due to man’s thinking but in consequence of an
entirely different operation. That this is possible we see, first, in
delirious persons who say things outside of their own personal thinking;
second, in the insane, whose incoherent talk has no sense; third, in
persons possessed, whose vocal organs are used by demons. … Hence it
must be concluded … that the use of these [vocal] organs may be
appropriated by a spirit who has overcome them." And this is
exactly the direction our findings have led us!
There is a deceptiveness in glossolalia
that is subtle, religiously oriented, and capable of infecting those who
are desperate in their search for new light. This sense of desperation
is precisely the spark which can explode the human psyche and hurl the
seekers into an experience which they think is similar to the one that
accompanied the New Testament outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Being
surrounded by others who claim the same emotional upheaval, their
sincerity and reasoning goes unchallenged; yet this is in itself no
proof of the Biblical validity of what has overcome them. It is the
sincere devotion to an "all-inclusive faith" that has trapped
them into a counterfeit manifestation; an experience which does not
measure up to the Biblical standards governing the gifts of the Spirit.
Read
Chapter 3 — Who Really Controls the Tongue? |
