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> What Are You Asking? - September 2006
 


Tom Ehrich
Tom Ehrich

 
   

What are You asking?

Pastor, Author and Speaker Tom Ehrich responds to
your questions about God, faith and
living spiritually

Send us your questions


 

SEPTEMBER 2006


We often hear of "speaking in tongues." What is speaking in tongues and how do people learn it?

"Speaking in tongues," or glossolalia, is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit mentioned by Paul. It refers to ecstatic utterance, when the Spirit of God is perceived as speaking directly through a person. It must be paired with "interpretation of tongues," so that what God intends to communicate can be understood.

Tongues was a significant problem in the early Church. Read 1 Corinthians 12 & 13. Some felt themselves superior to others because they spoke in tongues. Paul's response was to say that love matters more than ecstatic utterance. Even today, churches that focus on speaking in tongues sometimes claim special status.

Spiritual gifts are conferred by the Holy Spirit, not sought by the believer. The point is to discern what gifts God has given you and use it or them to the best of your ability.

Speaking in tongues isn't what Acts 2 is about, by the way. The point of the Day of Pentecost was that common Galileans were suddenly able to speak in the many languages of the known world, a restoration of what had been lost at Babel, when God punished the people by confusing their languages.

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Does the church acknowledge the validity of the Gnostic scriptures? Would you discourage a church member from reading them for inspiration? Would a leader in your church be allowed to openly pursue them for their wisdom?

Yes and no. There's no doubt that the Gnostic Gospels exist, despite efforts by early church leaders to burn every copy of the Gospel of Thomas and to suppress the rest. Indeed, some Johannine scholars see signs of Gnosticism in the Gospel of John. This was a major movement at one time. Elaine Pagels has studied this movement in depth in her book The Gnostic Gospels.

So, yes, they are valid in that they were written by early Christian thinkers and they reflect major theological strands of the times.

The Church, however, has declared them heretical, perhaps more fervently so in the early years when it felt threatened by Gnosticism. Every now and then even today, when a theological argument ventures onto unorthodox ground, some traditionalist is certain to label it "Gnostic."

My opinion—shared by many progressive Christian thinkers—is that Gnosticism reveals much about the state of the early church. It wasn't fanciful, but rather a sober, reasoned response to Jesus. I think it helps us to know about that response. The Gospel of Thomas, for example, ends with an impassioned diatribe against women. Knowing about that mindset might help us to understand how women went from center-of-the-circle with Jesus to marginalized, secondary status in the early Church.

Today, in most progressive denominations, students and others are encouraged to be aware of the Gnostic writings.

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My best friend just lost a dear friend of hers whom she thought of as a
great grandma. I was hoping you could help me with my condolences and
send me a few tips on how to keep her spirits up. Please help me to help
her.

The key to any expression of condolence is love. If your friend feels loved, then it won't matter much whether you found the perfect words.

I would suggest two things. First, I would discourage blaming death on God. I know it sounds helpful to say that God "called her home," or "needed her more," or "took her to a better place." But death just happens, from a variety of causes, and God is there to be our help in time of trouble, not the cause of our troubles. Many a person has come to hate God because they blamed God for taking away someone they loved.

Second, the greatest help we can give in time of grieving is to allow grieving to happen. Lifting a person's spirits may not be what they need. It might be what the people around her need, because they are distressed by her pain, but she herself probably needs to go through the stages of grieving, which include denial, bargaining, anger, depression (or sadness) and acceptance. Any attempt to go straight to acceptance usually delays the actual grieving. If your friend is sad, maybe what she needs is a companion in her sadness, not someone trying to talk her out of sadness.

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I've enjoyed reading many of Marcus Borg's books and am currently reading The Meaning of Jesus. I've only read bits and pieces of the Gospel of Thomas and am confused by it. Where can I find more information on the Lost Gospels?

A book that I found helpful was From Jesus to Christianity by Michael White, of the University of Texas. Elaine Pagels' book, The Gnostic Gospels, is another useful volume.

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How is it that there are so many differences in beliefs and only one Christ? How does one know what these differences are so they know what faith makes sense to them?

Differences have marked the Christian experience from the days when Jesus went about with the disciples. Even those men and women saw Jesus through the uniqueness of their personalities, intellects, needs and expectations. Zealots (Jews seeking the overthrow of Rome) saw Jesus as a fellow Zealot. The Pharisees were surprised that he wasn't more like them. James and John saw Jesus as a source of power that they would share. Mary Magdalene saw him as beloved.

In the Book of Acts, you can read how the Christian world began to divide between Jewish-Christians and Gentile-Christians. Within those basic divisions were others. The Church in Syria, for example, had books that other regional communities didn't have. A way of seeing Jesus known as Gnosticism became popular, until a Bishop named Irenaus waged doctrinal war against it.
Later came divisions between a Western Church and an Eastern Church, which we know as the division between Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox tradition (e.g. Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox.) Each saw Jesus in different ways and worshiped him differently.

Later still came the national churches arising from the new sovereignty of Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Scotland and England. From them came the Lutheran, Huguenot, Calvinist, Presbyterian and Anglican traditions. In the United States, we have well over 300 separate Christian denominations.

The cause of this remains what it was at the beginning: people seeing Jesus through their unique personalities, intellects, needs and expectations. Add to that class and racial awareness, as well as gender and educational.
Is this a problem? Not really. It can make it difficult to find a congregation in which you feel comfortable. But as Paul said, we all have different gifts, different ways of serving God. The body of Christ needs every one of us.


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To learn more about Tom Ehrich’s writings, visit www.onajourney.org.
 


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