Speaking in Tongues

My father was a quadriplegic who had hope, which made him a fairly rare bird. He lived for 35 years in a bed, but I can’t remember very many times, despite the constant pain he endured, that he didn’t have a smile for me whenever he saw me or talked to me on the phone. And right to the very end, he was always hoping for a cure. He prayed to walk again. I went to church with him many times when he would take a pair of pants with him just in case he would be miraculously cured and be able to walk out of the church. It was one of my first, great conflicts with the church: they encouraged him. I was 9 years old and in the beginning I went along with it. I believed, too. But then, one great event changed my relationship with the church, and Christianity, forever.

It was an evangelical church, and everyone there believed in the “speaking of tongues.” I always thought it sounded like gibberish, but for a long time, I believed, too. I wanted to. I loved my dad. I asked him once if he could understand what they were saying when they began wailing their particular brand of holy gibberish, but he only said that they were “communing with the Lord,” and that it wasn’t meant to be understood by mere humans. I didn’t really understand the point, but I was taught that the divine wasn’t something to be questioned, so I didn’t question it any more. I accepted this as a simple fact. Those people were communing with the Creator, and their messages were private, even though they would often stand up and scream out their arcane message, even interrupting the sermon at times.

I began going to church every Sunday with my dad. I became active in the church. I sat in the front row. I was an intensebeliever. And then one night when I was ten, the preacher beckoned me to the front of the church while all the parishioners were in the throes of speaking in tongues. I went to him, and he put his arm around me and announced, “We’re not going to leave tonight until this young fellow can speak in tongues!” And you know what? I believed. I wanted that gift from God. I wanted with all my heart to receive that blessing. At that moment, there wasn’t anything else in the world.

The preacher told me I had to believe–no problem there. I did believe. And everyone in the church came forward and put their hands out to me or on me and raised the roof with their cries in that ancient, arcane and holy language, begging the Almighty to grant me the ability they all shared. Time passed, I don’t know how long, but the minutes were long and worrisome. I prayed, I screamed with tears running down my cheeks, begging. Begging. But nothing happened. There was no epiphany. No voice from God. Nothing.

Finally, when the preacher repeated his order in a harsh cry, that no one would leave until I could speak in tongues, I began to get worried that it wasn’t going to happen. And so I did the only thing I could think to do. I screamed out some gibberish that sounded similar to what the others were screaming. I just threw my head back and howled, “Yada dada potta da didda fooda ka pidda!” (or something very like that), believing whole-heartedly that I was committing some ultimate sin that would doom me forever to the fiery pit our preacher always warned us about.

“FRAUD!” they would scream. Maybe even in English. I knew they would. I welcomed it. I was so guilt-ridden that I thought I deserved punishment. They should cast me out, send me packing, straight to hell.

But then the strangest thing happened. The preacher, along with everyone in the congregation…cheered. They cried “Hallelujah!” and “Praise God!” and suddenly I was the wonder kid whom God had touched with His special gift of gibberish that no one on Earth could understand.  

It was a moment of infinite clarity for me. I suddenly understood not only a disgusting portion of human nature, but I also immediately lost faith. In God, in the church, in my father, everything. It was all a sham. A lie. So in a way I guess it was an epiphany, but not in the way I’d thought it would be. Not in the way it was supposed to be.

In the long run my faith in God recovered and remains to this day. But my faith in the church–any church, really–was shaken in a way that I don’t think it can recover from. It was an ugly spectacle, and I felt abused, used, dirty and ashamed. Not just ashamed for myself, either, but for everyone in that church that day. I know many of you will say that it was a Pentecostal church, evangelical, even, and that all us Baptists/Mormons/Catholics/Hindus or whatever believe totally different from them and that your faith is all about being right and one with the Lord. And every faith on Earth believes that every other faith who doesn’t share their specific belief system is packed with parishioners who will all wind up in H-E-double hockey sticks. Maybe it’s just that I think that’s a really crappy outlook. And maybe I think they’re all lying to us and have been for a thousand years and more.

If the man we know as Moses, whose name was actually Moshe, was born today and taught and preached in the same manner that he did all those thousands of years ago, what would he be? Would we accept his word as truth and follow him? Or would we label him a lunatic, same as all the rest of the religious loonies in the world today and pack him away as a cult leader? And yet, a good majority of our faith is based upon people just like him, who would be considered lunatic today.

I don’t think I ever went to that church with my dad again, but he didn’t, either. I never told him about it, and I don’t regret that, because I did love him, and I wouldn’t want my beliefs to dampen his own enthusiasm. I know he died a believer, and that’s enough.