Apparently there is some rando on social media claiming that he’s a “Trad” and speaks in tongues. As in, babbles and then claims that he’s speaking in another language, which no one else has ever heard or understands.
I can tell you right now that the dude is either a grifter or schizophrenic. How? Because common sense. Speaking in tongues is a very real miracle that has and can still occur. It’s a miraculous gift of the Holy Ghost. And it ALWAYS serves a purpose and increases clarity and understanding.
The two forms are:
1.) When you speak in your mother tongue, as normal, except people around you who do NOT speak nor understand your mother tongue hear YOU speaking perfectly in THEIR mother tongue. Sometimes multiple people will each hear the speaker speaking in their own language at the same time, as is recorded in the Book of Acts. The key here is that people UNDERSTAND, and thus information is transmitted and truth is conveyed. There is clarity of communication.
2.) When a person can, all of a sudden, miraculously, speak a language fluently that they couldn’t speak before. This happened to St. Philip when he spoke to the Ethiopian. It was a miracle. The point is, St. Philip was able to communicate the Gospel clearly to the Ethiopian, in the Ethiopian’s mother tongue. Clarity. Transmission of information. Communication of truth.
That’s it. Babbling in a language no one understands not only serves no purpose, but it causes confusion. And, let’s be blunt, such displays are almost always fake. If some random American guy, let’s call him “Fred”, starts babbling away in a room filled with other English speaking Americans, what possible purpose could that serve? The Americans would be confused, skeptical (rightly), and no information would be transmitted, other than the fact that “Fred” is either an attention and glory-seeking narcissist, OR that Fred is legit nuts – probably schizophrenic, which often involves delusions of grandeur, of competence or of knowledge.
Another hint? A person genuinely, miraculously speaking in tongues might not realize that it is happening (type 1), or if they did, would never lord it over others.
I suppose it’s a fairly simple thing to confront these fakes. Simply ask them to go to their local Chinese restaurant and evangelize the proprietors in whatever Chinese (or East Asian) language or dialect the owners speak. Let’s hear your spontaneous fluent, unaccented Hakka dialect. We’re all ears. After all, wouldn’t a white guy rolling in and speaking Hakka, or Jianghuai Mandarin be compelling? Or… go to Dearborn, Michigan and preach the gospel to the musloids in spontaneous perfect literary Arabic. Wouldn’t that do more good than babbling in whatever “ancient, extinct language” you claim to be channeling?
Yeah. This is an easy one, folks. Don’t enable these people, because, as I’ve said repeatedly, they’re either grifters or schizophrenics. Shut them down as much as you can, because they just make sincere Catholics look like fools and con-artists.
As Dr. Beep said, “Protestantism has been the most destructive force in the west. Mentally ill people being given a microphone from the beginning.”
As always, I hope this helps.
Now there were dwelling at Jerusalem, Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.
And when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded in mind, because that every man heard them speak in his own tongue. And they were all amazed, and wondered, saying: Behold, are not all these, that speak, Galileans? And how have we heard, every man our own tongue wherein we were born? Acts 2: 5-8