December 28, 2010
Tongues
In Sunday School our lessons have been on the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit and of course talking in tongues is part of the discussion. I’m reminded of a time in our previous church when a bilingual member wanted to reach out to the Cora Indians (from Mexico) who were living in our valley. The Indians spoke Cora, with Spanish as a second language and Eva the interpreter spoke Spanish with English as a second language. Our services did get a little distracting and to a visitor it may have sounded like there was some talking in tongues going on. The reality was that the gospel was presented in English, interpreted/repeated audibly in Spanish and then (we hope) reasoned out mentally by the Cora in their native language.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Consider Paul’s last statement regarding tongues and manners for the meetings, “...but all things should be done decently and in order.” (I Cor 14:40) If I were living in Mexico, not speaking Spanish, I would certainly search out the church that was doing services in English. Then I could actually understand and participate in all the nuances of the service without necessitating such a distraction to others as an interpreter would be. There is at least one Spanish speaking church in Montrose. It would have been better order for your previous church to direct these Cora Indians there for the gospel instead of causing need for the distraction of interpreters in its own services. After all, at that time, the popular phrase around the church was, “It is not about you.” So why was it made so much about them?
-----Maybe because Paul did not point to order alone. Order has to do with arrangement, function, and calculated efficiency. In fact, reading God’s Word with good order uncovers my above fallacy. “And” is a conjunction for combining concepts or things. If you have an apple and an orange, you have both, not one or the other. If order were the only principle, Paul would not have connected to it decency by this conjunction.
-----It was for decency that it was about these Cora Indians. I don’t know why they chose to attend church where they could not speak the language. That would be none of my business. My business would be for what their presence called fellowship to provide. The goal was building them up in the Lord, and I am sure just the attempt to translate the services gave them assurance of the Lord’s care.
-----All of this exposes the basic blue-print of the Lord’s temple. Paul said, “What then, brethren? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.” (I Cor 14:26) Is it really only for worship that we come together? And many of today’s churches gather to only celebrate. It is like two different languages being spoken; one driven by reverence, the other by exuberance. We all saw what happens when one language seizes control of a congregation. There is no attempt at interpretation. The other is almost aggressively silenced. But, neither worship nor celebration alone makes the stones into a temple any more than do English or Spanish. The temple is not built without edification. For one stone, edification is about the other stone, just as it was being made about these Cora Indians. More than a binding mortar, it is the ordering of the stones’ arrangement and the decency of their mutual fit. It is the sincerity of both worship and celebration. Only with edification is the temple truly about the Lord.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment