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These people speak in tongues. They. speak. in. tongues.

You'll be standing next to one of them in worship, and then, suddenly, something is going on. Words begin to cascade from their mouths in indecipherable syllables, eyes closed, hands aloft. I am going to consider the possibility that it's not culturally- or emotionally-induced hysteria, and that this is just a way that God has given this particular set of believers to express their joy, or pain, or wonderment.

Then again, it could be a sort of hysteria. Either way, they believe it to be a heartfelt, and honest exchange with God, and so it serves a purpose. It's genuine.

What's more interesting to me is the interpretation of tongues. A couple of Sundays ago, a woman began to speak out in the silence of the auditorium readied for a sermon. Moments later, someone else gave the interpretation. As I looked around (to figure out if other people looked as freaked out as I felt--they never seem to), I realized, these people believed that this was God speaking into the room. Literally, the entity who has all power--consider the actual might of God, The GOD--was believed to be giving a word to a modern-day group of believers.

I don't know if I think that that actually happens. But I do know that the possibility is awe-inspiring. As I stood there, I warmed to the implications. My pulse quickened, my face flushed, I felt a little breathless with the possibility that the Creator of the universe could possibly be inspiring a message in the middle of a church, March 2010, Springfield, MO. How staggering--that this God I'm chasing after, this one that I don't understand, who breaks my heart, and frustrates me,and delights me--that He could be known in reality. Too good to be true.

Then again, why? I'm fickle. I won't accept it if it doesn't look like magic. And I won't accept it if it does. Why isn't it possible that God speaks new messages to the world through tongues?

As I said yesterday, to strike the scientific community, if God exists, He might very well exist as a personal God, and if He's a personal God, He might very well speak into our hearts in ways we don't understand. If God is God, the possibility exists that He speaks through people, that He breathes new life into His churches not just through biblical exegesis, and personal, private inspiration, but out in the open, through tongues--a practice that is not un-biblical.

I think that sometimes, we consider possibility by weighting the number of links it takes to get us from something we can accept, to the proposition of interest. That is, if I say to an agnostic friend of mine, God might exist, she'll say ok, and allow me my faith. And if I say, God might exist, and if that's true, He might have inspired the scriptures, she'll say ok, but with uneasiness. But if I say that God might exist, and thus, He might have inspired the scriptures, and thus, since the scriptures speak of tongues, He might be inspiring tongues in His modern church--her uneasiness will end the conversation.

The links from the original proposition became too numerous, the possibility too tenuous. But, really, probability or possibility doesn't work like that. If you agree to one yes, you're allowing for the absolute possibility of the next. The uneasiness is not logical, but emotional.

Tongues get a bad rap because they're weird. Frankly. And they're associated with weird people. But that doesn't mean that they're in some way, un-Truth. The possibility exists that they are what the (weird) people say they are: gifts from God, tools through which the deepest longings of our hearts can be offered to Him, and through which He can answer those pleas.