Tongue-tied
As I sat there, I certainly didn't feel gifted.
But then, you may wonder, how did I end up in a room full of people babbling and gibbering like a bad movie about patients in a mental ward?
For several months, years ago, I went to Sunday night services at a Christian Servicemen's Center, located in a second-floor office in the downtown of the German city where I was posted in the U.S. Army. An officer in my unit went there, and knew of my interest in attending church -- on-post Chapel never really happened for me as Sunday mornings were for sleeping off my Saturday nights -- and he gave me a ride into town each week.
The "center" was independent of the military, funded and staffed by a mission of, as I recall it, the Church of God, Pentecostal. Someone told me once that branches of this denomination got into snake-handling, but its main body distanced itself from such congregations and did not endorse the practice.
What they did do was take the word "Pentecostal" seriously. In the spirit of the New Testament story in Acts and other select verses, they insisted that to truly have salvation and be a Christian meant to be blessed with "gifts of the Spirit" -- which usually came packaged as "tongues."
The idea is that the Holy Spirit takes hold of your body, especially the organs for speech, and directs you to speak in an unknown (to mankind) holy language. To fellow congregants, it sounds like the Lord moving in mysterious ways. To non-practicing (and non-believing) onlookers, it looks like a bizarre episode of epilepsy mixed with tourettes.
My upbringing in a southern Baptist church frowned on this practice, so I had no first-hand experience with it until I first went to the Servicemen's Center and heard the minister interrupt his sermon with a series of indecipherable syllables. I resisted any urge to pass judgement -- this was their kind of church, after all, not mine -- and eventually kind of got used to it.
Fortunately, the missionaries and the others who attended were very understanding and never insisted I "speak" that way myself. Still, they stayed firm in their belief that no real Christian was without the Spirit speaking through him or her, and I'm sure they hoped that I would eventually come around and join them in the joy of true salvation.
On the evening where I began this story, the Spirit moved big-time. The room was packed as church members from other towns had come to visit, with a special evangelist there to lead us. Finally, the whole place was given over to whatever anyone felt moved to do or say. Men and women all around me gestured wildly and spoke in (literally) God-knows-what languages. Some were praying. Some were crying. I felt a tangible energy in the air as I sat silent, a little bewildered and unsure of what to do.
Consider it peer pressure, or perhaps a nagging doubt in my own relationship with the Lord, but I started to wonder if maybe I was in the wrong -- perhaps something was missing in my own soul. I knew I was far from perfect, or even observant by my own Christian tradition. Was I denying something I should embrace? Still, I wasn't about to fake it to fit in. Making noises just to impress those around me would be the worst kind of lying -- to them and to God. If there was anything to this, it had to be real.
So I opened up my mind, letting go of all thoughts, feelings and doubts, and in that clear space simply prayed, "OK, Lord, if this is what you want, hit me! Whatever you want, I will not resist."
I then experienced an incredible feeling of calm. If there were words in it, the silence said something like, "You're fine. It's all right." I sat there in the eye of a spiritual storm, barely aware of the noise around me. I did not make a sound.
The Spirit's gift to me was peace.
- - - - -
This true story is my entry for LJ Idol: Season 9, Week 7, Topic: " No True Scotsman," referring to the rhetorical fallacy, not the fine people of Scotland.
But then, you may wonder, how did I end up in a room full of people babbling and gibbering like a bad movie about patients in a mental ward?
For several months, years ago, I went to Sunday night services at a Christian Servicemen's Center, located in a second-floor office in the downtown of the German city where I was posted in the U.S. Army. An officer in my unit went there, and knew of my interest in attending church -- on-post Chapel never really happened for me as Sunday mornings were for sleeping off my Saturday nights -- and he gave me a ride into town each week.
The "center" was independent of the military, funded and staffed by a mission of, as I recall it, the Church of God, Pentecostal. Someone told me once that branches of this denomination got into snake-handling, but its main body distanced itself from such congregations and did not endorse the practice.
What they did do was take the word "Pentecostal" seriously. In the spirit of the New Testament story in Acts and other select verses, they insisted that to truly have salvation and be a Christian meant to be blessed with "gifts of the Spirit" -- which usually came packaged as "tongues."
The idea is that the Holy Spirit takes hold of your body, especially the organs for speech, and directs you to speak in an unknown (to mankind) holy language. To fellow congregants, it sounds like the Lord moving in mysterious ways. To non-practicing (and non-believing) onlookers, it looks like a bizarre episode of epilepsy mixed with tourettes.
My upbringing in a southern Baptist church frowned on this practice, so I had no first-hand experience with it until I first went to the Servicemen's Center and heard the minister interrupt his sermon with a series of indecipherable syllables. I resisted any urge to pass judgement -- this was their kind of church, after all, not mine -- and eventually kind of got used to it.
Fortunately, the missionaries and the others who attended were very understanding and never insisted I "speak" that way myself. Still, they stayed firm in their belief that no real Christian was without the Spirit speaking through him or her, and I'm sure they hoped that I would eventually come around and join them in the joy of true salvation.
On the evening where I began this story, the Spirit moved big-time. The room was packed as church members from other towns had come to visit, with a special evangelist there to lead us. Finally, the whole place was given over to whatever anyone felt moved to do or say. Men and women all around me gestured wildly and spoke in (literally) God-knows-what languages. Some were praying. Some were crying. I felt a tangible energy in the air as I sat silent, a little bewildered and unsure of what to do.
Consider it peer pressure, or perhaps a nagging doubt in my own relationship with the Lord, but I started to wonder if maybe I was in the wrong -- perhaps something was missing in my own soul. I knew I was far from perfect, or even observant by my own Christian tradition. Was I denying something I should embrace? Still, I wasn't about to fake it to fit in. Making noises just to impress those around me would be the worst kind of lying -- to them and to God. If there was anything to this, it had to be real.
So I opened up my mind, letting go of all thoughts, feelings and doubts, and in that clear space simply prayed, "OK, Lord, if this is what you want, hit me! Whatever you want, I will not resist."
I then experienced an incredible feeling of calm. If there were words in it, the silence said something like, "You're fine. It's all right." I sat there in the eye of a spiritual storm, barely aware of the noise around me. I did not make a sound.
The Spirit's gift to me was peace.
- - - - -
This true story is my entry for LJ Idol: Season 9, Week 7, Topic: " No True Scotsman," referring to the rhetorical fallacy, not the fine people of Scotland.