Language Barriers Are A Curse
I've been thinking a lot about this thing called a language barrier.
This week, my two other non-German-speaking labmates have been out of town. It has just been me, which puts English-only in a significant minority. On Wednesday, lunch was entirely in German. So was coffee break. It was not fun. I swung into the bathroom and cried.
It was the second time I'd ended up crying in a bathroom after lunch. The first time, I blamed a sudden wave of inexplicable homesickness. This time, I was not so sure. I wasn't missing home at all. I wasn't missing Texas, or even English. Nor was I mad at or hurt by my labmates. They're the nicest people ever! So what was wrong?
I'm going to take a quick detour and talk about road kill.
You heard me.
Every time I see road kill, I'm reminded of death. My spirit cringes, not in fear, but out of distaste. And every time, I feel like God says to me, "This is not how it was supposed to be, Melody. That's why it makes you so uncomfortable. You are seeing something as it was not designed to be." Death was never meant to exist. It is a curse. It is a wrong. It is a wrinkle in the fabric of our existence.
And during my second crying episode in the bathroom, I pinned down another wrong thing about the world: the language barrier. As I stood there with tears running down my face, I asked God, "Why? Why does this exist? Why can't we all speak the same language?"
The Tower of Babel, of course, is the Sunday School answer to this question. Let me tell you my previously held views on the story of the Tower of Babel:
But that's not what happened. The creation of multiple languages was not simply a device for God to stop people from building the tower. It was a punishment. It was a curse. The existence of the language barrier is not how things were designed to be.
How do I come to this conclusion? Because I've seen what the existence of a language barrier does! It gets in the way of relationships! It wrests conversations away and leaves people feeling isolated or excluded {even when no one means to do such a thing}. At the end of the day, I am unhappy because I have not been able to participate. My labmates are unhappy because they feel bad for forgetting my lack of German. None of us harbor any ill feelings toward the other--I am not mad at them, and they never mean to leave me out--but German still comes between us.
My point: the language barrier is a relationship barrier.
And knowing how God feels about relationships--He's very much a fan of community--I do not think the language barrier fits into His plans at all. Anything that keeps people apart is not of His design. The people at Babel weren't only hindered, but placed under a curse in the same category as death.
Of course, this is all theory. However, one thing that makes me think I am right is the existence of the gift of tongues. Everything we have under the New Covenant is the result of us being free of curses.
Let's talk about the gift of healing for a second. Paul states that it is a thing in 1 Corinthians 12:9. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit, which is only freely available after the death and resurrection of Christ. We know that our ability to pray for the sick and see them healed is a result of Jesus' sacrifice, since "by His stripes, we are healed." We also know that sickness and disease is a result of The Fall, a something that is not supposed to be, since it is reversed in the New Covenant multiple times by Jesus and also, to us, as the gift of healing.
Established: the spiritual gift, the gift of healing, is a "reverse the curse" gift. Yes? Good.
It follows that if one spiritual gift is a "reverse the curse" gift, then another could be as well. In this instance, we are talking about the gift of tongues. The hypothesis I would like to present is that the gift of tongues is more than just a "prayer language," but is actually intended for use as a "reverse the curse" gift due to language barriers being a curse.
There.
This makes a lot of sense to me, since I've never really known what to do with the gift of tongues. I mean, I have it, I guess--IhaveaprayerlanguageyesI'vebeenbaptisedintheHolySpirit--but it has seemed rather useless to me. I'm not opposed to that; God is an abundant and infinite God, and if He wants to give us something fun and "just between us," I'm not opposed. However, this makes sense. This is practical. And God is also practical. This breaks down relationship barriers between people. God very much enjoys breaking down relationship barriers between people.
This week, my two other non-German-speaking labmates have been out of town. It has just been me, which puts English-only in a significant minority. On Wednesday, lunch was entirely in German. So was coffee break. It was not fun. I swung into the bathroom and cried.
It was the second time I'd ended up crying in a bathroom after lunch. The first time, I blamed a sudden wave of inexplicable homesickness. This time, I was not so sure. I wasn't missing home at all. I wasn't missing Texas, or even English. Nor was I mad at or hurt by my labmates. They're the nicest people ever! So what was wrong?
I'm going to take a quick detour and talk about road kill.
You heard me.
Every time I see road kill, I'm reminded of death. My spirit cringes, not in fear, but out of distaste. And every time, I feel like God says to me, "This is not how it was supposed to be, Melody. That's why it makes you so uncomfortable. You are seeing something as it was not designed to be." Death was never meant to exist. It is a curse. It is a wrong. It is a wrinkle in the fabric of our existence.
And during my second crying episode in the bathroom, I pinned down another wrong thing about the world: the language barrier. As I stood there with tears running down my face, I asked God, "Why? Why does this exist? Why can't we all speak the same language?"
The Tower of Babel, of course, is the Sunday School answer to this question. Let me tell you my previously held views on the story of the Tower of Babel:
People got arrogant and were going to work together to build something they shouldn't. So God, in order to take away their capacity to finish the project, gave them all different languages.Do you see where I came from? I looked at the story the way I looked at mythology. People were doing something that God didn't want, so God messed up their plans. Problem solved, and that's why we have so many different languages today, kids.
But that's not what happened. The creation of multiple languages was not simply a device for God to stop people from building the tower. It was a punishment. It was a curse. The existence of the language barrier is not how things were designed to be.
How do I come to this conclusion? Because I've seen what the existence of a language barrier does! It gets in the way of relationships! It wrests conversations away and leaves people feeling isolated or excluded {even when no one means to do such a thing}. At the end of the day, I am unhappy because I have not been able to participate. My labmates are unhappy because they feel bad for forgetting my lack of German. None of us harbor any ill feelings toward the other--I am not mad at them, and they never mean to leave me out--but German still comes between us.
My point: the language barrier is a relationship barrier.
And knowing how God feels about relationships--He's very much a fan of community--I do not think the language barrier fits into His plans at all. Anything that keeps people apart is not of His design. The people at Babel weren't only hindered, but placed under a curse in the same category as death.
Of course, this is all theory. However, one thing that makes me think I am right is the existence of the gift of tongues. Everything we have under the New Covenant is the result of us being free of curses.
Let's talk about the gift of healing for a second. Paul states that it is a thing in 1 Corinthians 12:9. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit, which is only freely available after the death and resurrection of Christ. We know that our ability to pray for the sick and see them healed is a result of Jesus' sacrifice, since "by His stripes, we are healed." We also know that sickness and disease is a result of The Fall, a something that is not supposed to be, since it is reversed in the New Covenant multiple times by Jesus and also, to us, as the gift of healing.
Established: the spiritual gift, the gift of healing, is a "reverse the curse" gift. Yes? Good.
It follows that if one spiritual gift is a "reverse the curse" gift, then another could be as well. In this instance, we are talking about the gift of tongues. The hypothesis I would like to present is that the gift of tongues is more than just a "prayer language," but is actually intended for use as a "reverse the curse" gift due to language barriers being a curse.
There.
This makes a lot of sense to me, since I've never really known what to do with the gift of tongues. I mean, I have it, I guess--IhaveaprayerlanguageyesI'vebeenbaptisedintheHolySpirit--but it has seemed rather useless to me. I'm not opposed to that; God is an abundant and infinite God, and if He wants to give us something fun and "just between us," I'm not opposed. However, this makes sense. This is practical. And God is also practical. This breaks down relationship barriers between people. God very much enjoys breaking down relationship barriers between people.
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