Speaking in tongues

It's difficult listening to Christians who are truly straining for the deeper understanding of the faith yet have no language to get them there:

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/blog/2011/11/08/conversation-with-tullian-tchividjian-redux/

The first interview in the above link is what I'm referring to.

Some might say, well, the Bible is all the language we need. Well, in a foundational way yes, but we also naturally develop a doctrinal language, or a theological language, as we get real understanding of the Bible. That language though usually rests at the philosophical and theoretical levels and rarely, if ever, arrives at the practical level.

I'm convinced that what the Bible talks about as speaking in tongues demands a more esoteric reading than theologians are willing or capable of giving it. Saying that speaking in tongues means speaking in a foreign language you have never studied (for an American, the French language, or the German language, for instance) or speaking gibberish in a trance-like state just falls short of any meaningful reading of what that phenomenon is referring to.

They were speaking in a language which enabled them all to understand one another. That means they had left the outer circle of confusion of tongues (Babel) and entered a more inner circle where there is a language which enables each person who knows the language to communicate more practically, or, more precisely, without all the misconnection and everything else that happens when people aren't on the same page, or level.

A worldly analogy would be the language of music. Musicians can speak to each other, and understand each other, in a way non-musicians can't take part in.

So, for instance, in the interview at the link above they are struggling to define what school Christians know as the difference between self-will and real will. If anybody is reading this you will probably assume you yourself know what self-will is, though perhaps the term real will will be seen as new and hence weird in some way, or probably silly like somebody's made-up language. But to people who know the language those terms derive from they very well know what they mean, and it enables them to understand *at a practical/doing level* what the two theologians in the interview linked above are struggling to define.

And notice the two theologians will never get near to a practical/doing level of what they are struggling to define. They will be content to have hashed it out intellectually and then go back to the sleepy patterns and events of their daily lives.

I think it's natural for a Christian to strive for the practical level and to connect with a language that is at the practical level. I believe it is a gift of the Holy Spirit (which is what speaking in tongues is connected with in a rather big way, i.e. God, the Holy Spirit). Christians who are not at the practical level and who don't want to be will complain and warn of pride, or two-level Christianity, or whatever, but you really can't stop a child of God who has it in him or her to find the practical level and to connect with its language.