August 26, 2009

Glossolalia Deserves Detention

So this guy is just teaching his high school class, when one of the students goes into a fit, speaking in tongues and issuing prophecies. Some of which are rather, shall we say, foreboding and concern fellow students.

If it were me, I'd handle it like a disciplinary problem (the girl was disrupting class). The fact that there is an allegedly religious gloss to the misbehavior does not change the fact that it is misbehavior. Further, it is readily apparent to me that glossolalia is a wholly volitional act, one for which people must be trained and the fictitious nature of which is known by the actors and criticized by sincere Christians.

Or maybe you believe in this particular kind of woo (demonic and/or angelic possession) yourself, in which case you have to entertain the idea that she really was possessed. Even then, if you're the teacher, you should treat it like a medical emergency, no different than if the girl had a grand mal epileptic seizure. Get her out of the class.

But if it were me, I'd give the girl a detention no matter what the "Holy Spirit" said about it, expect my principal to back me up on it, and let the Alliance Defense Fund sue me for it later. If they dared.

1 comment:

Podblack said...

Ah - so essentially (following the link to my page), you're saying the same thing I said about the news item on podblack.com:

"In the end, it appears that this is being treated as a straight-forward case of bullying. Yet the lack of discussion about what was happening with parents is certainly a concern. This could have been a good chance for a skeptic’s group to help out the school and certainly respond to the news - I hope that will happen in the future."

Thanks for linking to my site; it was a situation which occurred back in January 2009, but I guess it'll have other examples in the future. :)