The most difficult thing I am struggling with regarding early church practice.

What's the most difficult thing I am struggling with regarding early church practice?

Brain scans while the subject was speaking in tongues.
Credit Dr. Andrew Newberg, University of Pennsylvania,
but taken from a site sympathetic to tongues,
 Spiritual Gifts >.

You may think it's the primacy of Rome, Marian veneration[1], confession, or something like that.

Nope, it's speaking in tongues, and it was part of the religious experience of the early church.

Now, we can ignore it by saying (as many fundamentalist evangelicals do) that this gift ceased with the closing of the New Testament and the ministries of the Apostles.

But whether we (Protestants) like it or not, up until the time of Luther, the church was everyone's church, including many of the niggling traditions we debate today.

Brain scientists who've measured brain activity during sessions in which subjects were speaking in tongues will tell you that in these instances the frontal lobe (which lights up like a Christmas tree when we're talking) goes dark, and of course, recordings of these events are never identified as any real human language.

My struggle is probably obvious: Tongues was a real 1st Century phenomenon, and appears to have been a little out of control.[2]

I'm tempted to regard it all as nonsense, as everything I've ever heard is just a talent for creating believable babbling.

But since the neither Jesus nor the Apostles ever said this gift would be "turned off" (1 Cor 13:8 notwithstanding) I'm left wondering; and imagining that some early churches more resembled lunatic asylums.[3]

Lonnie Mackley Speaks in Tongues

(A random Youtube example)

If someone finds this practice liberating and helpful in fighting addiction, good for them.

But I recall also that traditional accounts of possession have the afflicted speaking in languages they never heard. I'm not conflating the two; counterfeits very closely resemble the real thing, I'm just not sure there is a "real thing."

If anyone can document utterances in a language the speaker doesn't know and are correctly interpreted by another, you'll convince me.

c0

[1]

Marian veneration began very early >

[2]

"But if no one is present who can interpret, they must be silent in your church meeting and speak in tongues to God privately." 1 Cor 14:28, NLT

[3]

Later fathers like Augustine did say tongues had ceased.

c0