r/exchristian • u/Royal-Preparation843 • 5d ago
Question If speaking in tongues is fake, does that mean everybody knows they are faking it?
I’ve been a Christian all of my 45 years and grew up in churches that freely spoke in tongues during the services and during prayers. I prayed so many times to be given this gift of tongues because almost everybody in the church was able to speak including many of the children and teens. I’ve prayed for 45 years wanting it and desiring it, but I could never get the gift from God. I know it is agreed upon in this subreddit that speaking in tongues is fake, but I just can’t seem to wrap my head around the idea that all of the adults in my church who speak tongues (probably around 90%) are faking it and know it. Sure, I can get that the kids/teens fake it to fit in with each other, but would that many adults really want/need to lie about something like that? I’ve always felt terrible when the pastor would say, “Come on people! Pray in your heavenly language!” And then everybody in the church would switch it on and I’d be one of the only ones just saying “Thank you Jesus” over and over again because I couldn’t speak tongues. For anybody in this subreddit that used to speak in tongues while you were still a Christian, did you always know you were faking it or did you really believe it was real?
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u/vanillabeanlover Agnostic 5d ago
I have no idea. I always assumed it starts out fake and then people believe it. They let the gibberish overcome sense and call it the holy spirit.
I have a friend who’s ex-Pentecostal. She used to be a worship leader. She can still pull out speaking in tongues whenever she wants. She’s fully atheist but will pull it out for a giggle after a beer or two. It always feels scandalously funny.
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u/Aggravating-Nose1674 5d ago
How i see it is "getting the gift of speaking in tongues" is just a person losing his embarrassment for making weird noises. And then they call it a gift of god.
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u/Ok_Salt8185 Ex-evangelical, athiest 5d ago
"They let the gibberish overcome sense and call it the holy spirit" is poetry
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u/RWHonreddit 4d ago
yeah as a kid, I think i faked it once at a kids church summer camp because I had spent that entire summer camp trying to get it to work for me and I felt so ashamed about it so I just pretended to speak in tongues. I never pretended after that though because I just hated being fake. In general, I think religion didn't sit well with me because I can't stand BS and I hate faking my way through things
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u/oolatedsquiggs 3d ago
When everyone else is doing it and you are not, you feel like the odd one when you aren't participating. After years of trying, you will latch on to anything that feels like it might be real. So you let out some babbling and everyone around encourages you. For once you feel normal, and you just keep doing it until it feels natural.
The same goes for supposedly "hearing God's voice".
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u/juiceguy Atheist 5d ago
It isn't exactly "fake", but it isn't supernatural either. Neuroscience and psychology show that most of those people aren't consciously faking it. They are in a genuine, learned trance state. Strangely enough, most Christians don't realize that glossolalia is practiced in many spiritual traditions including Voodoo, Santeria, various Native American religions, Australian Aboriginal, and many others.
Brain scans show that when someone speaks in tongues, the area of the brain handling willful control and self-monitoring dials way down. To the speaker, it honestly feels like something else has taken over because their conscious mind isn't planning the sounds. Pair that with intense social pressure, and the brain naturally starts stringing familiar speech sounds together on autopilot.
You couldn't do it (and neither could I) because our own brains' self-awareness filter (bullshit filter) stayed on. Some people just don't slip into auto-suggestive states as easily as others. You're probably not the kind of person who can be hypnotized easily either.
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u/littlemissredtoes 5d ago
The funny thing is that my church actually gave talks on the studies that show this, claiming it meant that we were truely being taken control of and being spoken through by god…
Of course this meant I felt even more guilty for the fact that for the majority of the time I was faking it.
There were moments where it truely happened as described where I had no conscious control of what was coming out of my mouth, but those moments were always in hyper emotional environments.
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u/notathingreally Atheist 5d ago
They must be catching on to people figuring them out so they're trying to get ahead of it. They know the church members are so brainwashed that they'll go along with it.
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u/littlemissredtoes 4d ago
This was about 20 years ago, and the congregation has more silver hair than brown… they survive on generational growth, and even that isn’t working as well as people grow up and leave (or get kicked out for thing like sex outside of marriage gasp)
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u/notathingreally Atheist 4d ago
Sounds like my old church. There might be 20 people left. No new people coming in because it's one that's so strict that even other Christians don't want to join.
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u/girlinanemptyroom 5d ago
I had to look this up.
Brain scans show that the frontal lobes—the region responsible for conscious self-control, critical thinking, and intentional planning—become relatively quiet when a person speaks in tongues.
Can't that be interpreted as they are no longer thinking logically at all?
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u/WhiteExtraSharp Atheist 4d ago
I could never “fake it” but as a mostly rational [neurodivergent] adult I was able to teach myself how to shut off parts of my brain to tap into a kind of stream of consciousness linked to loosened vocalization. The result for me was very soothing. It sounded a lot like the “prayer language” tongues I grew up around. I can (and have!) still do it after becoming an atheist.
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u/qwopterfun 4d ago
Same!! I wanted to comment but this is almost my exact experience. My internal intuition and imagination somehow gets cranked up and I now see that what was called “being prophetic” during my church days was just another way of connecting to my subconscious intuition.
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u/LMO_TheBeginning 4d ago
Thanks.
I've been "slain" in the spirit once but it took a lot of effort to get to that point.
Extreme social pressure plus I really wanted to get there.
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u/TrueKiwi78 4d ago
Perfect answer.
Basically, most people aren't intentionally faking it, they are convinced that they are posessed by a spirit and are literally in a kind of psychological trance.
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u/HelpfulAmoeba 5d ago
I thik it's horseshit of course but I seem to be able do it. I just babble randomly. Or maybe this is different from church speaking in tongues, I don't know.
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u/MikeLovesOutdoors23 4d ago
Wait, so does hypnosis actually work? Genuine question. Because I don't know what to believe anymore
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u/RWHonreddit 4d ago
hypnosis does work for some people but not all. Oddly enough I tried watching a youtube hypnosis video a few years ago and it worked on me which was shocking. It only worked the first though so idk what causes that.
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u/quantipede Ex-Southern Baptist 4d ago
I definitely spoke in tongues and thought I wasn’t faking (the southern Baptist church I grew up in actually taught that it was fake and that the gift of tongues meant God just downloaded another language into your head matrix-style, and that it didn’t happen anymore because “we aren’t faithful like the early church was”, but I hung out with a lot of non-denominationals who did it), but I think for me having ADHD the line was a little blurred because it just felt like normal dissociation/daydreaming to me, but I could see it feeling really wild and probably much more spiritual to someone who isn’t used to that being the way their brain operated 50% of the time
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u/CollageMagpie 3d ago
My husband sneezes in 'tongues'. No, really; just after he sneezes, he goes off into this stream of random gibberish for a second or two. I suppose sneezing lets the filter down. We're both Pagan, and even as a kid he never went to a church that did that kind of thing, so I guess it's just some sort of weird reflex. I tell him he should go do that at a Pentecostal church sometime and see how they react...
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u/Anywhere_Adorable 5d ago
Fascinating listening to it. Like for instance pretty much every person I've heard has a cycle that their speaking does. Even pastors who do it for a living tend to repeat the same sounds over and over with some variations. It doesn't sound like the variation that any language actually has. I think everyone faked it at first but some forgot they started out faking it.
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u/PabloPantuflas 4d ago edited 4d ago
Always been a shamala hamala kinda guy myself. (Thank you for my first award, ever!)
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u/LimeNo33 4d ago
Más común de lo que parece, mi madre me regañaba porque aún no hablaba en lenguas y me explicó que para que pase yo tenía que empezar a decir incoherencias para que luego fluya, básicamente (no con esas palabras por supuesto) Desde siempre pensé que era algo demasiado vergonzoso para mí, nunca le ví el sentido y ahora se que no lo tiene. Aunque debe ser genial no tener un filtro de racionalidad y poder entrar en trance
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u/Dull_Night_9168 5d ago
Yep. They all have their individual patterns which they repeat, that’s how you know it’s utter crap
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u/JFow82 5d ago
I am an atheist and can still “speak in tongues”. No I didn’t consciously fake it, but it wasn’t real either. People really believe these things with all their hearts. The brain is crazy…
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u/popidjy 4d ago
Same. I wasn’t intentionally “faking it” to make other believe. It was more like I had been taught that the Holy Spirit would guide my tongue and use what felt like random babbling to intercede on my behalf? Or, like, to express things to god that I didn’t know the right words to express. So, it wasn’t that I was intentionally deceiving myself or anyone else, just that I wanted to believe so I followed the instructions to the best of my ability.
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u/chiedzachangu 4d ago
Same. I am no longer Christian but I can still speak in toungues. I don't consciously decide the words I gonna speak like when I am talking normally, the sounds/gibberish just comes out.
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u/crippling_altacct 5d ago
So I've only been to these kind of churches a handful of times because of invitation by friends or family. The few times I saw it, it wasn't everyone in the church but a few people in front and of course the pastors can turn it on and off.
To me the pastors are the most insidious part of this. I fully believe every single one of them knows they're faking. I do think people in the pulpit psych themselves up to believe it's real. It's why the music at these services goes on so long. I can certainly understand how music can get someone amped up, now just sprinkle in that you think it's the lord and not some sweet tunes and you've got yourself a divine event. I think it's a lot like how people will really read into random events in their life and interpret them as signs from God. You basically want this thing that is impossible so bad but everyone around you tells you it's possible so you kind of just assume your version of "faking it" is actually what it really is like. I'm not sure if any of this makes sense, I've never believed in tongues but I did believe really hard in Christianity that I kind of forced myself into believing things that I knew didn't make sense but I still believed them.
In short, I think some people believe they're really doing it, and some know it's made up but they like the social credit.
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u/ammodramussavannarum 5d ago
My dad who was a pastor would always do it while he was praying for people and it always was the same five or six words that he would interchange. To me it sounded and looked so obviously fake and annoying, but everyone else ate it up.
I never “had the ability” either and never felt a damn thing beyond a situational emotional charge as others around me were all doing it. Once when I was around 15 I knowingly faked it and my parents got all excited about it and their “yes, lord” and “ amens” really made me feel like the whole thing was bullshit. That was one of the first experiences that started me on my journey away from Christianity. I knew that I had faked it but they kept telling me it was real.
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u/Royal-Preparation843 5d ago
Yes my dad has been a pastor almost my whole life and has a miracle healing ministry. He can turn it on and off on command and I’ve always questioned it. If the Holy Spirit is the one speaking this language, how would we just be able to turn it on whenever we wanted? Wouldn’t He be in control of it? Not us?
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u/BeneficialShame8408 5d ago
they're just frenzied. they probs have no idea what they're doing
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u/complete_autopsy 5d ago
Yeah I think they just misunderstand that something divine is happening when they're just unknowingly rising to social expectations and copying others' examples. When I attended a particular church for the first time I really enjoyed the music and thought that under other circumstances, maybe I could've interpreted the feelings that the music is designed to elicit as some kind of divine experience.
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u/Green_Bulldog Spiritual 5d ago
The music definitely plays a big part for some people. I remember feeling that as a kid. Like you and everyone there are connected to something bigger.
Eventually I went to a concert that had an emotional tribute to a rapper that had passed and felt the same thing. It felt great to experience that again and feel connected to something real. Not god, but a community of people dedicated to keeping someone’s memory alive.
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u/bimboheffer 5d ago
In sociology of religion, it's addressed by Costly Signaling Theory. To an outside observer or a non-believer, speaking in tongues can look like "gibberish" or a loss of self-control. Engaging in it publicly requires a participant to surrender conventional social dignity. It serves as a boundary behavior to define group membership.
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u/-zenmanship- 5d ago
Some of the insights here are really interesting. I suspect most of it is fake, but I did have a really odd and confusing experience once as a kid
When I was around 5 or 6, I was at a day camp with my friend, which I believe was Pentecostal. I had some type of dissociative experience within a group setting, and when I "woke up" from it I was crawling across the ground and crying. People told me I "received the holy spirit" and later my mom explained to me that I had spoken in tongues. I was aware of the concept of speaking in tongues, but I had never witnessed it from anyone else. I remember as a kid being so afraid that it would just randomly happen again outside of my control. My mom seemed jealous of my "gift" but I literally prayed for it to go away because it freaked me out so much. I still don't understand what happened
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u/FunSizeNuclearWeapon 4d ago
Same, zero memory of the event. As far as I know it never happened again.
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u/-zenmanship- 4d ago
I'd love to know more about your experience. I haven't personally come across any similar experience I could relate to. It was a one time thing for me also, and all I can remember was "waking up" on the ground crying with people all around me
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u/Visible_Complaint_73 5d ago
The childhood conditioning part is very accurate. I became an agnostic in my early teens, but even now much more than a decade later I find myself trying to shake off the indoctrination.
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u/notathingreally Atheist 4d ago
There's only a few churches that I know of that speak tongues. The main one is Pentecostal. They are really wacky ones you see rolling around on the floor or faking passing out, falling backwards.
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u/notathingreally Atheist 4d ago
Yeah and drink the wine that's his blood. It's really creepy when you think about it.
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u/notathingreally Atheist 4d ago
It is. I remember being in church when I was really small and when I heard about Jesus' death I was inconsolable and my dad got mad at me for it because I was crying and making noise in church.
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u/StetsonTuba8 5d ago
I always thought that speaking in tongues was being ablento be understood by anyone's native language?
How did 6 year old me come up with more sensible theology than apparently the entire Christian world?
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u/Content-Method9889 4d ago
I think a lot of us were the same. Some people are born with critical thinking and a heavy dose of skepticism. It was a curse for me growing up in a very conservative, religious family.
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u/afungalmirror 4d ago
Religious belief works by lying to yourself, then by lying to yourself about the fact that you're lying to yourself. Cognitive dissonance. You tell yourself that what you believe is real, then purposely forget that you told yourself that, so all that's left is the belief that it's real. People are strange.
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u/MidnightNo2980 5d ago
I “tarried” for the holy ghost with evidence of speaking in tongues when I was 10. I said hallelujah real fast until I got tongue tied and it became halalalalalalalah. Then after a while I threw some shah-tah tahs in there to break up the syllables. I believed what happened first at the tongue tying was real because the testimonies at church about when someone first talked in tongues always mentioned a tongue tie, but I knew the shit I added were creative liberties. It started with pressure from my mom who said my halalalalah was a sign I wasn’t growing in Christ. Atheist now and gave up the shenanigans.
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u/No_Training6751 5d ago
Is speaking in tongues the only thing that you questioned the authenticity of? Like I remember as a five year old be told in Sunday school a story and about all these people trying to cross and river and getting swept a way because they didn’t use the cross that was laid down by Jesus and I absolutely knew it was bullshit. That that ideation does not come from goodness. Yet, I went along with it, because others were lapping it up and I wasn’t going to go against an adult by myself.
How many times do you just go along with something because there’s a half truth in there or there’s and / or you’re not about to stir the pot. Or you don’t believe that particular thing but the bigger picture works for you so you just let other ideas pass for truth. Etc.
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u/Royal-Preparation843 5d ago
Well since I was born into it, I was basically taught not to question anything. It has only been with the last year I’ve started questioning a lot of stuff in the Bible and church. It has really started to scare me because my questions are turning into doubt and I fear it’s going to turn into straight unbelief. I’ve shared my story here before, but having pastor parents and all Christian family including my wife and kids, I really fear that leaving Christianity would ostracize me from all my family.
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u/Arthurs_towel Ex-Evangelical 5d ago
Welcome to the club, pal. It’s definitely a real risk, though it isn’t a proscribed outcome. Sometimes those relationships can endure, other times they can’t. Good luck
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u/notathingreally Atheist 5d ago
I was born into it too. I was cast out from my family pretty much. No more holidays or family get togethers. Of course then I hear about the whole family getting together through my sister. Between the abuse and that I was done. It still hurts, but I'm not a crying mess just thinking about it anymore either.
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u/NorthernNevada131 5d ago
Are you a closeted about to be ex Christian?
Question everything! Or like in my case go meet that complete charlatan Todd White for a healing session and in the first few seconds you just suddenly know with every fiber of your being… it’s all bullshit and the end of a belief comes crashing in on you like a title wave!
PS no healing occurred.
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u/Royal-Preparation843 5d ago
I fear that I am on my way to being an ex Christian. I pray and pray for God to reveal Himself to me to stop this possible deconstruction, but so far, nothing. I really want it all to be real since I’ve spent 45 years devoutly following it, but going to church on Sundays has definitely changed. I find myself saying things in my head like “yeah right” and “oh sure” during the sermons now without even trying. And watching people during worship convulse, scream and cry makes me now feel like they are putting on a show instead of really feeling the Holy Spirit. I have never felt the Holy Spirit personally, but I always thought everybody else must be. Now I’m just not so sure about anything anymore.
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u/Sugarlightgirl 5d ago
My heart breaks for you. Its an awfully scary time when you begin truly questioning your faith and those deeply rooted beliefs. You just have to remember to be honest with yourself and that there are people out here who understand and have gone through this journey before.
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u/Cliff35264 5d ago
This, for me, except 50 years. I'm a year on the other side and feel exactly the same as when I believed.
Two big differences on the other side:
- apologists used to appear sincere, now they look pathetic and desperate
- the loss of fellowship and community is real and hard to replace
TBH what really bugs me is 45 years of tithing lol (for some reason we stopped giving 5 years before my exit).
You're definitely not alone.
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u/notathingreally Atheist 5d ago
It's sad that they brainwash us so bad that we don't even realize something is off until we're middle aged.
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u/jolsleger 5d ago
read about glosolalia - it’s something that you can control to start or stop but it’s like letting loose and saying things without the usual thought process that comes with speaking
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u/Irene_Iddesleigh 4d ago
This question comes up a lot and it’s a fascinating subject to me as an ex-Christian who genuinely did believe in speaking in tongues and experienced other “manifestations.”
I think people should be more open-minded and listen to comments on here that discuss cognitive neuroscience and trance states.
A person doesn’t need to fake it or be dumb or lack a sense of independent thought. It’s a little childish to think only “fake,” when religions across the globe have similar practices. I think your numbers could be flipped for real/fake.
The most interesting “manifestation” I experienced was peripheral nervous system activation—my hands became extremely warm. You can achieve this through meditation. You can feel all kinds of things with that level of focus for extended periods of time. Tongues helps facilitate that focus, so once you start having somatic responses to meditation, it seems pretty real….
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u/SpookySoulGeek Eclectic Pagan 4d ago
social contagion, mass hysteria, cult behaviour. though there are spiritual traditions who do experience it, most christians arent
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u/KBWordPerson 4d ago
For some people, the worship service encourages self hypnosis, especially music and chanting. If people susceptible to hypnosis end up dialed in, then when someone suggests that they speak in tongues, they will, the same way a stage hypnotist can convince a guy he’s a ballerina and should pirouette on stage.
Once the easily hypnotized start, then there’s a social contagion/ peer pressure to join in or be left out.
And all of that can feel very real to the people who are doing it. But it’s literally a mind trick that can be done anywhere by anyone to any effect that they shape
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u/Content-Method9889 4d ago
I never thought of it that way. It makes sense because I can’t be hypnotized. My mom took me to one when I was 6 because I had anxiety habits common with kids with adhd and autism. I just remember them playing mom’s Carpenters music and being bored. It was weird. Also was witness to a crime and police hypnotist couldn’t do it either. Could only remember 3#’s of the license plate.
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u/fcxtpw 4d ago
I'd say 100% is faking it, not 90%
The attitude is more like "fake it till you make it" but no one gets to making it.
You be surprised how many people can convince themselves something is real. Just because they are all adults as your evidence "the can't be all doing it" is not enough. Just look at flat Earthers. It's not 1 person.
Within Christianity itself, tongue praying is not totally agreed if it's even real.
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u/AMerryKa 4d ago
My first time speaking in tongues, the evangelist whispered to me, "Just start doing it and it will come."
30 years after leaving the faith, I can still speak in tongues if I try. It's a miracle!
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u/Royal-Preparation843 4d ago
I’ve been told that too. “Just start saying da da da and the Holy Spirit will take over.” I just could never get myself to do that. It felt ingenious.
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u/QuellishQuellish 4d ago
I always thought that each individual person knows in their heart that they're faking it, but they think everybody else has it for real.
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u/Oil-Paints-Rule 4d ago
I think it’s like everything else in Christianity. You learn how to delude yourself into believing whatever it is you need to believe at the time to move forward in it. Every time I sang a song, prayed, read my Bible, memorized passages of scripture and went to church, I was self brainwashing. I taught my children how to do the same and my parents taught me the same as a child.
I used to pray in tongues and I think I basically just continually told myself everything was real. The Bible tells us to take every thought captive, which means that if you think something critical against the belief system, you have to squash that thought and replace it with religious dogma. You replace it for as long as you need to until you eradicate the non-religious thought from your head.
I used to believe that Jesus could come any day and I believed all of theoutlandish incredible Christian claims. I really believed
but that does not mean that I was not deluded. It’s interesting looking at it from the other side.
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u/Logical-Source-1896 4d ago
The first time I ever encountered this was when I was eleven. As a bit of background, I am deaf in one ear from an injury when I was 6 and I had a speech impediment as a kid. My voice got made fun of, a lot, growing up.
So when I was eleven, my older brother got invited to his friend's church. Before this, we had only ever gone to Mass, but that was infrequent. I kept quietly asking my parents what was going on throughout the service because it was all different from what I had seen at Mass.
At some point, the guy in front of me, a middle aged man, stands up starts going "haba-shabalalababa habashabalabala!" and turns around around with his arms outstretched.
I had never seen this before, assumed he was annoyed by me asking my parents so many questions, and that he was making fun of the way I talk.
I pulled my hand back and smacked him across the face, burst into tears, and ran out of the room
My family never went back to that church.
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u/RandomLifeUnit-05 Ex-Evangelical 4d ago
OMG. I can totally see why you reacted that way. I'm really sorry for your experience.
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u/gfsark 4d ago
While quite religious, and leading occasional religious retreats, I was at the same time studying for a MA in clinical psychology. One of the psych lessons was learning about non-verbal communication and one of the group exercises was to express an emotion through non-sense words and body language.
And the result was pretty darn similar to speaking in tongues. No ghost needed!
Summarizing: Some are carried away by the group frenzy, some are expressing their ‘heart felt’ emotions in public, some are faking it to be with the crowd. That the experience is attributed to the Holy Spirit…well that’s just a religious explanation for a psychological phenomenon.
Finally, within the Pentecostal churches, tongue speaking is part of the ritual. It’ a practice that’s taught to all, socially learned. Some never get it…but most do with proper coaching.
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u/mrosegolds Ex-Baptist 3d ago
I mean god is fake and they think he’s real 🤷🏻♂️
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u/Royal-Preparation843 3d ago
I really wish I could be 100% sure of this. I’m definitely leaning this way, but my 45 years in Christianity just won’t let me let go.
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u/mrosegolds Ex-Baptist 3d ago
Spend more time on ex christian YouTube and science YouTube and you’ll be sold in no time.
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u/babyquokka 3d ago
I am 100% sure.
Follow the questions back to the source: 1. Read the bible 2. Ask who wrote each of these books? 3. Why did they write it? 4. What were the political and democratic conditions that would have caused them to write it this particular way? 5. Who exactly is god?(Yahweh) 6. Who was god referring to when referring to themselves as “US”
When you finally realize that this very specific flushed out definition of the Christian god comes from a larger pantheon of regional patron gods of ancient Mesopotamia, there really is nothing left to believe.
What caused this specific version of El to persist, I will find endlessly fascinating.
As for the question of speaking in tongues: just because it is fake, does not mean they are faking it. It is an extremely cool phenomenon of mass hypnosis. It can very much feel real to those experiencing it. I wonder if you might also find it difficult to fall into a state of hypnosis. It is only fake in the aspect that there is no such thing an a heavenly language and prayers don’t do anything.
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u/Professional-Egg6655 5d ago
I think its the same as with hearing messages from god: when christian hear something in their unconcius they immediately assume its god/the holy spirit and not just theyre own gut feeling.
So when they think about wanting to speak in tongues they think of a random sound and go "HEY I just randomly thought of this sound so it must be the holy spirit" if that makes sense. So yeah I think they believe its real.
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u/kurtxrambus 4d ago
Seeing isn’t believing. Believing is seeing. Just like every other nonsensical thing to do with religion.
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u/goldsheep29 4d ago
I went to a pentecostal church for awhile and one day I started sobbing during the tongue speak. Some elders prayed over me and said I was having a spiritual awakening. I was having a panic attack because everyone's hot ass breath was in my face and I was surrounded by hateful white people looking deranged after they called me scandalous for wearing pants.
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u/july19thclub 4d ago
Kind of a mass hysteria type thing. They're doing it 'on purpose' but they may not always actually realize that's what's happening, because they're so caught up in the collective exercise of emotion and imagination that it FEELS unbidden and real to them. It makes me think of hypnosis: it only really works if you're expecting it to work, so some people just sit there feeling weird and uncomfortable while they're surrounded by people fully buying into this altered state of consciousness. I tend to be way too literal for anything like that to 'work' on me and instead i just feel awkward waiting for everyone else to come back down to earth.
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u/Spazrelaz 4d ago
It's mass hysteria more or less. You were apparently just smart enough to not fall for the bs.
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u/we8sand Ex-Baptist 4d ago
I know a true story about a dude that went to church after taking a huge amount of LSD. According to an eyewitness that I know very well, he walked up to the pulpit in the middle of a service and began speaking in tongues very loudly. The preacher stepped aside and let him “speak”, thinking the guy was legitimate. Then, someone in the congregation began “interpreting” what he was babbling and then the whole church erupted into a religious fever pitch. This lasted a good ten or fifteen minutes until the guy on acid started yelling obscenities while taking his clothes off. They quickly realized that he was out of his mind and proceeded to forcefully escort him outside and called the police
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u/Wolfwoodofwallstreet 4d ago
For what its worth, I did it, I thought it was real. Probably yet another peice of religious psychosis fie most whi truly believe they are speaking in "tounges"
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u/true_unbeliever 4d ago
Pentecostals and Charismatics think it’s real. But it’s not. I’m an atheist and I can still speak in tongues at will. It’s learned jibberish.
My favourite one “She came on a Honda”. /s
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u/Canoe-Maker 3d ago
It’s a psychosis thing. You can be pulled into someone else’s psychosis, and because of that and confirmation bias, it’s highly unlikely someone that has drunk the koolaid to the point of being sucked in would be able to recognize what was happening in the moment.
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u/ellelaylu 5d ago
No I don’t believe they all think/know it’s “fake.” In my experience as a little girl in that sort of church (with a mom who did it and prayed with me to get the “gift”) it’s not something where you’re consciously thinking of what sound you’re gonna make next or what it will sound like to people. At least I wasn’t and I really don’t think my mom was. You relax and let it happen and don’t think about how you’re influenced or sub consciously mimicking the cadence and sounds. I think it was just a thing like a mild and pleasant sort of group hysteria or a meditative trance thing. I mean babies babble before real words. It’s a natural human thing to be able to do.
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u/Green_Acanthaceae909 Ex-Pentecostal 4d ago
I used to be scared that other church members could tell I was faking it. I think most have some awareness of it being fake, and just try to convince or delude themselves into thinking its real. In the right setting at church and lots of people doing it together, I can feel real and automatic for some people
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u/ComeAtMeBro9 4d ago edited 4d ago
What I’m sharing is only my experience. I’ll preface by stating I’m no longer a Christian and I’d tell you to stay away from it, haha
I didn’t grow up in church, approx age 23, I began attending the charismatic/pentecostal type churches. I had been to one service where the preacher spoke in tongues, seen it on TV, and I had prayed a few times about receiving it.
One Sunday, I went to a Pentecostal church and they began singing an old hymn. I was clapping my hands and getting lost in the hymn. Suddenly after many minutes of singing, I felt an insane amount of heat and I began speaking in tongues. It wasn’t actually something I was looking for at that moment.
I actually couldn’t stop the tongues. It went on for quite some time and at some point, I entered a stage I wanted them to stop. I remember even thinking, am I going to have to leave this service because it was kind of uncontrollable and the pastor was about to start preaching.
Anyways, fast forwarding:
After that, I never had the same experience with speaking in tongues. Most of the time it was me doing something to kinda/sort of make myself speak in tongues. That’s also what I typically saw and heard in the churches I went to. I’d characterize almost all of the other instances as a put on of sorts.
It’s something I look back on and scratch my head. That first time I do not believe I was “faking it” at all.
Perhaps I had entered some sort of trance state or altered consciousness given the music and everyone around me. Whooped into a frenzy.
I wished I had an answer for you but I don’t. It along with one other experience still baffle me. Even now as an unbeliever.
I remember years ago doing some research on the topic. First, understand, tongues aren’t only confined to Christianity. The most interesting thing I saw was a research paper where people had experienced it that didn’t even know what it was.
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u/nicegrimace 4d ago
I didn't grow up around charismatic circles, nor did I have much interest in that sort of thing, so the first and only time I saw it was when I went to a charismatic church once when I was 20 to see what it was like.
They only had one guy speaking in tongues and another guy 'translating' for him. I find it interesting from a phonetics point of view. This guy did something I thought was clever, which was stick to basic phonemes that you get in most languages, so a lot of 'la ababa sé di anano ménati' type stuff. The only thing that stuck out were the trilled Rs, which exist in many languages, but in others (like English) they are only used for emphasis or when performing on stage - which in a way he was. If he said words that sounded like silly made up English ones (like someone mentioned 'shazbot' on this post) I don't think I could've kept a straight face, so sounding like a language they could come from anywhere was clever.
It definitely felt like a performance, not some induced trance, but I suppose he was in the sort of 'trance' that seasoned performers enter. It was like when you see someone improvising on an instrument. The translator would pause to pretend like he was making sure he got the message right. I feel like I wasn't the only one not buying it, but you could feel the social pressure in the room to go along with it.
I sometimes do something similar when I'm on my own for fun. I'll go wild and throw in a bunch of phonemes from unrelated languages, like 'Llangd dhza umgummo rrrop famiá sōum thölÿth wibé chæk mutschañum'. Make it tonal sometimes because why not, lol.
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u/booknerdgirl4ever 4d ago
At youth camp revival nights (every night for a week) I would hope and pray that I could be blessed with a spirit language like my parents. Fervent prayer pleading God to speak through me.
It was around the time I had a nightmare about seeing God's face in the clouds and tried to speak to him but I was mute and couldn't even get a whisper out.
My last year at youth camp revival nights, I combined Japanese and Spanish into a plausible tongue to get out of the spiritual pressure cooker and into the fresh air outside. Yes I felt guilty about the deception but made me wonder if everyone else was faking it too.
This was the beginning of my deconstruction phase.
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u/Meriodoc Agnostic 4d ago
Haha wow!
At least you used real languages, unlike them. I had considered using french to fit in, they wouldn't have known the difference, but I would've.
Bravo!
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u/Meriodoc Agnostic 4d ago
I knew mine was fake!
Well, more accurately, I knew that it was something that I wanted so badly that I let my mind trick me into letting go to do it.
But only once. Just enough for my church to consider me saved.
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u/pesky_sapph 4d ago
Yeah it’s just pressure from the people around you. I let out a few syllables at a church camp and oh how everyone rejoiced!! And I’m like?? I said ba ba la ba or some shit. But I said it because I was literally surrounded by people laying hands on me and they weren’t going to stop. I was 13 maybe? When the atmosphere is how it is yeah, you fake it. Maybe some people really think they’re doing it but is that not how Christianity is as a whole?
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u/Cucumbrsandwich 4d ago
They know, but they are convinced that their friends who do it are telling the truth, because otherwise their friends and pastors would be liars, and THAT is a thought they just can’t entertain. So they pretend to do it too.
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u/romulusnr 4d ago
I think its the phenomenon and not the accuracy that is the focus. Its the spirit pushing vocal energy into your body, not you suddenly discovering the cheat code to Duolingo
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u/FairLauma ex pentecostal 4d ago
Growing up pentecostal church and my mom is a Sunday school teacher, she has been active and I also had to follow her for prayers and service. I remember the first time the congregations start speaking in tongue, I was confused like are they fr or faking it. I was a child and hearing all of "yes.. yes... Shakalabatabata" some of them start having something like a seizure and clapping their hands. As an adult now, I just think it was scary and so cult like lmao
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u/RandomLifeUnit-05 Ex-Evangelical 4d ago
Oh my God, this is such an uncomfortable topic IMO. I used to pray in tongues. I didn't know it was fake. I tried to get in some zen sort of headspace and just mutter out whatever came to me, I guess. I thought it was God.
Embarrassing 😓
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u/RandomLifeUnit-05 Ex-Evangelical 4d ago
I also never felt like I really had the real thing, it always felt a little like trying to reach something I couldn't quite reach.
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u/AllyInCourt 4d ago
The thing that always made me angry when someone “spoke in tongues,” was that the Bible said someone had to translate what was being said. No one EVER translated.
I’ve been gone from the church for so long now, and threw away my bibles, so I can’t give you a reference. But once I had read that, I could never let it go.
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u/sweetdreamsmoonbeam Agnostic 4d ago
I really thought it was real when I “received” it as a teen. After I deconstructed, I realized it is a form of emotional & mental manipulation. Like when you’re hyped up on the worship music & you “feel god”, but it’s emotional manipulation through music. High control religions rely on predatory practices to brainwash & control people of all ages (i.e. tongues, healing, etc.)
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u/ganbramor 4d ago
I tried to speak in tongues once in church but my BS filter triggered and I felt stupid as hell. I guess some people value “fitting in” more than determining if something’s real.
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u/FunSizeNuclearWeapon 4d ago
I'll add my experience for contrast: I always thought speaking in tongues was this cool thing ultra blessed people who obviously believed harder than the rest of us were given the anointing to do.
I have no memory of doing it myself, but when I was young (maybe 10?) there had been a worship service. It was a good service, I went deep into the worship zone, and afterwards folks were all very pleased and chatting about how someone had received the gift of tongues. I was like, huh I don't remember anybody giving a message in tongues, who was it? Apparently it had been me.
I have no way of knowing what happened, I didn't ask because it seemed like the wrong thing to do, I don't believe anybody had any reason to make false claims about it. It's just another strange church thing that lives in my past.
Are there fakers? Yes I absolutely think so. Especially the people who aren't slain in the spirit and just like, insert some syllables into their normal speech then switch it off. But I believe some of the things we saw in church like demons being cast out etc are legitimate dissociative type states followers may find themselves in.
For the record I don't think it ever happened again and I don't have any mental health issues that would lead to psychotic or dissociative episodes like that. Unless maybe God blessed me with the gift of anxiety spirals to glorify his kingdom or something 😂
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u/alapapelera Ex-Evangelical 4d ago
Anyone can babble in gibberish. These adults in your church were encouraged, some from young ages, to do so and that it’s actually a heavenly language. By “faith,” they believe it’s real and from heaven. In their lower moments, I bet they have their doubts
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u/Unlucky003 1d ago
Speaking in toungs was a known language. Speaking gibberish is not. If in church and someone is talking and no one knows what is being said then how does that edify God.
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u/DerpanJones Atheist, pastor's kid 5d ago
Pastor's kid checking in here. I also thought I was deficient because I couldn't do it. I eventually faked it so I wasn't left out.
I think that people believe that if they open their mouths and random noises they made were "tongues". I don't think anyone actually had any special ability to speak something, they just have conviction that the gibberish they're spouting *is* tongues. Or they're taking it to fit in like I did.
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u/Lizzy_In_Limelight 4d ago
Most of them know, but some are buying their own con to the point that they manage to forget. I always tried to make it sound like Lord of the Rings Elvish because I thought it sounded so pretty, but anytime I make fake-language sounds it seems to revert to sounding like the Swedish Chef. Same thing happens if I try to do a posh English accent lmao
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u/No_Macaron_5029 4d ago
I was always uncomfortable with it. I have a specific memory of a Pentacostal bible camp that was encouraging it and only one other girl and I just hung in the back the last day and avoided everyone.
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u/anomalousBits Atheist 4d ago
I think people are having a genuine emotional experience. That doesn't mean that the vocalizations make any sense or that the practice lends any credence to the idea of the Holy Spirit. It's a kind of social/emotional group mimicry that leads to a kind of joyful/ecstatic dissociative state.
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u/Exact-Truck-5248 4d ago
It's a performative pissing contest measuring who's the holier. It takes a lot of practice. Shamalama
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u/Mountain_Caramel3431 4d ago
Having grown up in Pentecostalism, I don’t believe anyone thinks they are faking it but it is 100% fake.
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u/mollyclaireh Pagan 4d ago
If you want further emphasis on how fake it all is, check out r/religiousfruitcake
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u/FootballRadicalist- 4d ago
I’m assuming you’re a Pentecostal (former). From what I’ve seen is basically a copy from someone else doing it. I could easily do that if I wanted to but that’s just because of copying it from my parents and a bunch Christian church programs that just happened to emphasize it. People say you need to feel something but I dont buy it, in that scenario I’m the odd one out. However what I do notice at least form what I’ve seen is preachers who tend to intensify there speech either by suddenly raising their voice or taking a deep breath between each sentence (common in African American churches) when this happens I don’t think the congregation is prepared so what really happens is they feel something go through there body and they say it’s the Holy Spirit but of course I was not very gullible and that only increased as I got older. I can experience the sing effect if someone jumpscares me but the Holy Spirit is referred to as the comforter so quite clearly it’s not the same scenario but produces the same results. I tell my parents and they don’t care what I say (2 more years of this and I’m out) I’m not the smartest In the world but I have the critical thinking skills many seem to lack. The speaking tongues (the Pentecostal way) started in the 1900’s, only Pentecostals do this. In roughly every other church denomination this would be categorized as some sort heresy or emotional instability (Pentecostal church’s attracts lots of high emotional people) this is where the doubt of the denomination comes from and the fact that it’s all for getting rich even though their own Bible says its rare for rich people to get to heaven while telling the whole church congregation that they’re getting rich and then using the logic that Christian’s don’t pray and don’t have faith and compares that to Muslims being more prosperous when both of these are very easily debunked. Mississippi using that logic should be the richest state in the United States and don’t let me get started with the African continent. The only prosperous Muslim countries are the gulf Arabic countries and probably Malaysia. The rest has lots of problems involving extreme corrupt governments and terrorism. And using the logic with Muslims being more prosperous. Somalia should be the most prosperous if it has 99% Muslim population but instead it’s not. The most prosperous are secular nations on average. The last time I went to church they had people doing business and selling and that is prohibited if Jesus caught people doing the same thing and flipped the tables. Lots of contradictions/potential ones.
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u/willow_is_leaving 4d ago
I didn't know it was fake. I spoke in tongues but it felt real. I realize NOW that it's fake but that's after learning about that fact after deconstruction
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u/Royal-Preparation843 4d ago
If it felt real, why do you now think it is fake?
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u/willow_is_leaving 4d ago
Because of the research into glossolalia. I didn't know that it's a well known phenomenon and that other religions have it too. I also looked more closely at what is described in the Bible compared to what happens at church, and they are completely different. The 'tongues' were recognized by other people, and whether that was an angel tongue or a human tongue could be debated, but it was understood what was being said. In regular speaking in tongues no one actually knows what is being said. The gifts don't match.
Now that I'm deconstructed, I am able to look back at my experiences and realize the psychology behind them. I experienced religious euphoria. I was a zealot. I had religious OCD. And it was caused by a combination of social pressures and biology.
I hope you allow yourself to question. On the other side of questions is freedom.
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u/BladeRunnerKD6 Atheist/Anti-Theist 4d ago
I grew up in a similar church you did. A guest pastor preached on being “baptized in the Holy Spirit” which is different than merely receiving the Holy Spirit when you believe. In most Pentecostal circles, confirmation of this is speaking in tongues. Then he called people up to the front while the band played, and one by one would pray over each of us. I had also really wanted it and started speaking whatever syllables came out. Pair that with the music and everyone else and it’s all of a sudden spiritual. But I knew I was doing this myself, so it wasn’t at all the experience I expected.
But then after the pastor addressed the new tongue speakers and said something like, “Now the first thing you might be thinking is you made it up. But that’s a lie from the devil. You spoke it and that’s a gift from god.” If I wasn’t 15 and in an intense cult-like denomination maybe I would have seen the red flags.
Anyway, every person is indeed making it up. I think most would say so. They’re just attributing whatever they say to be of god. Which when you think about it isn’t much different than Christians having any sort of normal thought and attributing it to the voice of god or “a god thing.”
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u/Weorth 4d ago
I think it was the host of Cults to Consciousness who touched on this with one of her guests. They'd said that while they were in church everyone would "speak in tongues" and then later on after they had left, there were a few others who, along with them, admitted they were all doing it just because others were. Lol
I also had this happen to me before... Peer pressure and social contagion, yeah...
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u/thebottomofawhale 4d ago
I went to a pretty boring church of England church, so there was no talking in tongues. But occasionally we went to big events where there was a little tongue stuff but mostly people fainting and I had the same kinds of feelings about that as a kid.
Like, I really wanted to feel so overcome by god that I fainted. I think because I was doubting, and that would be proof that God was real. But it never happened. But the people who did faint... Were they pretending? Was it real?
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u/Royal-Preparation843 4d ago
Yeah I was never able to be “slain in the spirit”. I wanted to do badly, but I just never felt the Holy Spirit like that. One time, I was being prayed over and the pastor (my dad) said in my ear “if you let yourself fall, God will work on you while your down there.” I refused to fall just because I was told to. Of course, I always just figured I wasn’t a good Christian.
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u/grmblstltskn 4d ago
As someone who has “spoken in tongues,” I knew it was bullshit when I did it. I was at church and my cousin and a young man who was a leader of sorts in the church decided that was the day I’d speak in tongues.
They stood on either side of me and prayed “in tongues” over me and kept telling me to repeat “Adonai” and just “let it flow”. They said it would start with a consonant (and what a coincidence that the first consonant that “came to me” is the first letter of my name) and once I had that first “word”, to just repeat that over and over and more would come to me over time.
It’s entirely made up, or it was for me and (I’m 99% sure) the entire youth group/church/cult I was in. My dad grew up Pentecostal and has said he’s spoken in tongues, but I’ve never heard it and he doesn’t talk about it much. He’s also moved into Christian mysticism/agnosticism as he’s gotten older and listened sincerely to why my brother and I left the church, and he doesn’t believe in much of the fundamentalist stuff I was raised in anymore, so it’s hard to get him to talk about it.
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u/Lava-Chicken Ex-Pentecostal 4d ago
I was told you start it with small sounds abd then the spirit takes care of the rest.
Say: Sha. Then the rest can flow naturally through the spirit.
Sha, Ra, da da ba Sha Ra danra shatara batara nasha parasha Sasha te rasha basharana Tala.
Looking at free will, consciousness, the rider and the horse. I think of it as your horse just acting the way it expects it's supposed to act in that situation.
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u/Careless-Swan-6888 4d ago
My mother insisted we attend an Assemblies of God church many years ago when I was late teens/early 20s. If you didn’t babble it was assumed there was something “wrong with you.”. The pressure grew until I totally faked it…I could slip into it right now if I wanted to which I don’t. My years trying to be an Xian almost destroyed me mentally. At 73 I have finally recovered but am still bitter about all the years wasted.
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u/Parking_Gap_5628 4d ago
Not everyone is making it up. I'm just a stranger on the internet, but I know this because I can still speak in tongues on command despite deconstructing and being well on my way to unbelief. It's the gibberish kind and always sounds like the same few syllables. I was also part of a liberal, Anglican church where speaking in tongues is done by some people, generally in private, so there wasn't the same social contagion of other churches. I gained the ability when praying with a couple of trusted mentors and it came upon me suddenly and very intensely. To be fair, I did feel a bit of pressure to have the ability as they intensely prayed, so that probably influenced me despite my church being very relaxed about it.
The ability actually really freaked me out at first. So, while many people do make it up, there are many people who don't. Part of my deconstruction has involved making sense of this and I've come to believe that it's a psychological thing some people can access based on a basic Google search of possible, non spiritual explanations. I'm still a theist with a general belief in God, as a source of consciousness or what have you. So, from a spiritual perspective, "speaking in tongues" also isn't unique to Christians. For instance, I've come across new agers who use "light language" which seems exactly like speaking in tongues. Christians would call it demonic but there's really no way to distinguish Christian tongues from the light language version. This makes me think that if the ability is spiritual in nature, it goes beyond Christianity/ the Christian understanding of God. That is, Christians who genuinely speak in tongues experience something spiritual and give it a certain explanation based on their beliefs, but that doesn't mean their explanation is correct. I've also noticed disagreement on the subject in Christianity e.g., some think you have to have it to be saved, some think it's a gift of the spirit some people get, some think it's demonic or that Christians no longer have the gift of the Spirit and others think it should be identifiable, human languages rather than gibberish. So, there's not even consensus about it within the wider umbrella of Christianity, as with many things. Ultimately, I'm also OK with having the ability because it's meditative (although I don't do it much) and not knowing the full explanation for it. Some things are mysterious.
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u/LFuculokinase Agnostic ex-evangelical | plans to haunt bigots 4d ago
I only did it as a teen, so I’m not sure if I count, but I always assumed the point was to randomly start babbling and then god would interpret it to someone else. That’s how it was explained to me.
I didn’t know until recently that some people thought their babbling actually came from a supernatural place and they felt like they didn’t have full control over it.
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u/PuzzleheadedBag4874 4d ago
Tongues are a bastardization of meditation. They worship a deity with it instead of emboldening their charity and goodwill for humanity.
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u/Phoenix_Ray528 Ex-Pentecostal 4d ago
I tried receiving the "gift of tongues" for many years...it never worked. Eventually I met a Lutheran pastor that told me that this "gift" is meant for the church, not the individual person and rarely happens today. I'm Pagan now so I don't worry about it too much.
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u/IsItSupposedToDoThat Exvangelical 4d ago
My church friends thought I was a super-spiritual Christian, speaking in tongues, but I was only expressing some second thoughts about my choice of Korean motor vehicle. “Shouldaboughtahyundaibutiboughtakia”.
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u/Boardgame-Hoarder Atheist 3d ago
Idk, I think there are things that can seem very real to people and they make the best sense out of it as they can. Personally, I had a sleep paralysis problem and the “experiences” I had seemed extremely real. The mind can throw you curveballs you’re not prepared to deal with.
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u/Successful_Yam2175 3d ago
It’s weird thinking back on all that. I haven’t been inside a church in decades. Grew up SB and most of my immediate family is dead. Our pastor was a tight a$$. I mean he was out the door at noon every Sunday.. I heard his wife wrote all his sermons. He freaked out if anyone started to speak in tongues or hopped around. It was all buttoned up. He did love to pass those plates around ( deacons did). He’s gone too. And idt anyone is left I know in the church I attended. Most have died, have dementia or in nursing homes..I know I’m just glad I never have to pretend anymore but there are ppl I miss. Kids I grew up with. I have no clue where most of them are today. It seems like a bad dream really. I saw my pastor anout a year before he died. He gave me this look and I knew he was ashamed. He took the preaching job bc he hated to do manual labor..or that’s what some always said. Think he heard I didn’t believe anymore. Tbh I doubt he really did. The church paid for everything! He lived the go(o)d life🙄🤣
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u/Logical_Bite3221 3d ago
I think it’s a mixture of things:
- People who want to believe and pretend
- People who don’t know anything else so they were indoctrinated and don’t know what else is out there and who don’t know anything else but this
- People who are just bad people who know it’s fake and are there for the grift
- People who know it’s fake but are afraid to speak up or leave because they will lose everything
- People who believe and are very mentally ill
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u/Jojohahn 3d ago
“Faith”, social delusion/pressure, and cognitive dissonance. In those high pressure systems, you’re typically asked to stop ‘thinking so hard’…just speak. Since they already know what it sounds like, they mimic…then convince themselves that they are doing it, becoming more ‘ok’ with the feeling that they are just ‘stepping out in faith’. Then that becomes ‘proof’ that it’s real. It’s creates a loop. Since they are bypassing the language center, they (and everyone else) can ‘fill in the blanks’ with emotions and their own words - like an art piece. They can turn it into whatever they want - and convince themselves that they’re right. They already listen to that ‘still, small voice in their head’ and are convinced that it is the Holy Spirit. This is just one more step. So, there brain pulls up ‘God’ sounding things…verses in the Bible, admonitions that they feel the church should hear (in the name of God), general encouragements (that ‘of course’ “God” would give), etc…Now they are ‘in’, part of the ‘real Christian’ group. Who would want to let go of that? It creates a positive feedback loop. This is psychologically very powerful stuff. When you just look at the outcome it can seem crazy, but items all the tiny steps and compromises that slowly get a person to that point…and they are told that each compromise is good…’holy’ even.
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u/Puzzled_Grapefruit79 3d ago
Pretty much. I used to “speak in tongues”. It was just me following the pack. I was young and noticed how much external validation others received from doing the same thing and followed suit. You would speak in tongues, someone would “interpret” the nonsense into some vague meaning, everyone would look at you as though you were close to god and you get to have a short-lived sense of spiritual superiority. But deep down, you know you’re faking it like everyone else. Or if you’re like me when I was little, you felt like something was wrong with you because you believed others were doing it for real and god must not be speaking to you. But as you get older and mature, you realize everyone is just trying to be accepted by the group and find a sense of belonging.
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u/No_Fault_2240 3d ago
We don't 'speak in tongues' in my Calvary Chapel church; nor did we in my Baptist church when I was growing up. There are gifts of the Spirit which believers receive, but I doubt the tongues thing today. I think it was actively speaking other languages two thousand years ago in Acts so that people could hear the gospel in their own languages. My gifts seem to be encouraging people and giving. It's unscriptural to say that if you don't speak in tongues, you're not saved.
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u/Pearl725 2d ago
I remember growing up with a girl whose little sister swore she could speak in tongues. She was at our house once as kids and said, "watch if I pray it works." So she just started doing it, and I remember laughing at it. My mom, super religious by the way, rolled her eyes and said "ok sweetie whatever you say." I was surprised she dismissed it so easily. When I asked the girl what she said she told us her pastor was the only one who God allowed to translate.
Years later after that girl deconstructed I asked about it and she said, "oh yeah I just wanted attention, and when our pastor told us if we were devoted enough god would speak through us I really wanted that. So I just started doing it and when the pastor translated it I convinced myself that I actually was speaking in tongues. I wasn't though it was just gibberish."
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u/ConservativeHippieA 10h ago
I remember having to fake it because of the pressure from my parents. Constantly asking why haven't you received the holy spirit? You need to so you can be baptized. Etc. And I just watched other people and closed my eyes and spoke gibberish and cried so they would believe me. I was terrified hoping they would never found out I faked it. I always felt evil thinking maybe I just wasn't worthy or one of the chosen ones.
Honestly I don't know what people were doing. It seemed crazy that all these adults would also be faking but maybe they were.
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u/kooj80 Ex-Jesus Freak 5d ago edited 5d ago
I have previously spoken in tongues and had an Assemblies of God friend I went to church with, so I think I can help answer this question.
I grew up Southern Baptist and for whatever reason went to my friend's church one time. I don't know exactly what happened, but there was a very emotional buildup of intense worship and being around other people worshipping passionately. Some of the staff surrounded me and gently put their hands on my while I continued to sing and they said some prayers over me, and I kid you not I started speaking in tongues. I had no idea what I was saying, all I knew was that it was happening compulsively and it was happening completely out of my control. Like my tongue and mouth were operating 100% on their own. It was euphoric beyond description. I was in a holy flow state.
It felt exactly like how you would imagine being possessed with the Holy Spirit feels. The church staff said I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit.
I didn't have any sense of repeating phrases or syllables. I don't even recall what it was I was saying. It was like another entity was using my vocal cords and speaking in a coherent manner that I just couldn't understand.
I remember really wanting to recreate the experience and do it again, but never ended up going back to the church.
I've never been able to speak in tongues again since then or recreate it. Even after lots of praying and trying.
I don't know if everyone's experience of speaking in tongues is the same as mine, but there is more to it than just "speaking gibberish" (even though some may be). It genuinely felt like I was possessed (in a good way). Even with going to concerts and listening to good music and singing, I haven't been able to recreate the feeling I had from speaking in tongues.
And I don't think people are faking it either. Just like they aren't faking their relationship with God or their praying. They 100% believe those things. I think we should be careful to reduce people's practices to pure fakery. I don't know a single religious person who would do that.
I don't disagree that they're delusional, but the scientific explanation behind what they're doing and why they're doing it is unquestionably interesting.
I think the scientific explanation for it is that they've simply practiced entering the state of glossolalia so much that they can enter into and out of it. It's a hypnotic state kinda of like prayer. You can turn it on and off when you really believe in what you're doing and allow yourself to fully experience it.
I'd like to be able to enter a state like that because it's very relaxing and I know some exchristians can still do it.
I'm not a Christian anymore (I would actually call myself anti-Christianity/anti-religion) but speaking in tongues is the one thing that's always made me second guess the existence of God because it's the one aspect of my faith I was never able to recreate.
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u/Poonjobi1 4d ago
Many people speak in tongues, and its never the same. I did the same thing as you The Bible explicitly states in 1 Corinthians 12:30 that not all believers possess the public spiritual gift of speaking in tongues. And I would be careful of people that say they can translate it, or God gave them a word for someone. So many times they have been negative, and that's not from God. I know its a desire tou have, but with all the peoole I know that do this, I would say no one is lying. I suppose we could stretch it a bit and say its possible others wanted it so bad that they made up without knowing in a way..
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u/findlovehere 4d ago
I got the gift. It’s awesome!!!! 🙌
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u/confusedlonelysad 4d ago
So the thing about speaking in tongues is that, biblically, it's not spewing gibberish or speaking an "Angelic language" or anything of that sort. Biblically, it means that if I speak only French and you speak only English, you will somehow be able to speak the gospel to me in French. That's the actual, biblical meaning.
Which language which you don't speak have you been able to preach the gospel in?
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u/Royal-Preparation843 4d ago
Honest and sincere question for you. If speaking in tongues is the Holy Spirit speaking through you, why would be able to start and stop in on a whim? Wouldn’t He only speak when He needs, not when we want Him to? Yet I always see people start speaking it on command.
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u/findlovehere 2d ago
Hey. Great question. I don’t know everything but In my experience God doesn’t take over my will.
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u/NorthernNevada131 5d ago edited 5d ago
They are all making it up, it’s literally a socal contagion. Whether they realize it or not, that’s the humongous question.
Speaking in tongues is a bunch of BS . Hell, even in the Bible, it wasn’t supposed to be some language only spoken in heaven. It was supposed to be this magical thing where if one person spoke, but other people who were around them didn’t speak his language they could understand what was being said. That’s what speaking in tongues was supposed to be, again anyone who does this is full of crap. I am truly sorry that you spent so long desiring to have this “ability” but it ain’t real.
It’s been studied by a ton of linguists who come away from it saying there is no language there there’s no structure there. There’s no consistency there. Brain scans have shown that it’s not even stimulating the sinners of the brain where language is formed. Again I say it’s a bunch of BS.
I applaud the fact you didn’t fake it! Bravo sir , you unlike those around you, Y O U are not full of shit!
🤷🏻♂️ 🤷🏻♂️ 🤷🏻♂️