On Tongues, Tempers & the Joy of Not Forcing Things

 

The other day, my eight-year-old son came home beaming with the smug satisfaction of a seasoned diplomat.

“I made a deal with my friend at lunch,” he announced.
“What kind of deal?” I asked, already fearing a shared custody arrangement involving cookies.
“We’re going to teach each other our languages,” he grinned. “I teach mine, he teaches his.”

Just like that. No national policy, no curriculum, no coercion. Just two small humans navigating a noisy school cafeteria in America and deciding, entirely of their own volition to trade tongues like stickers.

It reminded me, somewhat sharply, of how different things are back home, where languages are rarely exchanged as gifts. They are often wielded like flags. Or worse like measuring tapes for patriotism.

Tongues: A Blessing or a Burden? The Bible Thinks… Both.

Whether you’ve read the Good Book yourself or sat through enthusiastic readings courtesy of an overzealous Sunday School teacher, you’ll know language has long been at the centre of divine plotlines.

There’s the Tower of Babel; our earliest attempt at divine networking, built on the bold idea of one language for all. But just as the tower touched the clouds, clarity collapsed. Words tangled, workers scattered, and the project screeched to a halt. The project abandoned. A celestial case of “too many cooks, not enough subtitles.” It wasn’t failure, perhaps, but a divine reminder: sameness isn’t the only path to connection.

And then there’s Pentecost; the glorious reversal. A band of bewildered disciples, huddled in fear, suddenly find themselves on divine fire, each speaking in a tongue not their own, understood by strangers from every land. No Babel-style collapse this time. Just connection. Clarity. Communion.

Two stories. One thread:
When language is wielded as control, it scatters.
When it’s received as grace, it gathers.

Brains Love Language—But Only When It’s Love, Not Labour

Science echoes what scripture hinted at: language is a gift; but not one to be forced open.

Multilingualism lights up our brains. It improves memory, attention, even empathy. Bilingual and trilingual children tend to develop greater cognitive flexibility. But here’s the twist: these benefits bloom only when the learning is voluntary.

When language is approached with joy, curiosity, or even the delicious motivation of understanding someone you like, it sticks. When it’s foisted like moral homework, the brain mutinies.

The problem is never “too many languages.” The problem is how we carry them. Like poetry or like punishment.

The Formula of Three (And the Politics of One)

Somewhere along the way, bureaucrats got inspired to engineer linguistic harmony through a neat little system; three languages per child, ticked off like a buffet menu. One for local identity. One for national cohesion. One for global mobility.

It looks beautifully balanced on paper. On the ground, it’s anything but.

Some children learn related languages that echo each other, making the process more intuitive. Others are given a mix so distinct, it’s like switching between a chessboard and a football field: both have rules, but none of them match. Meanwhile, certain communities are asked to give more, learn more, adjust more; while others stay cozily monolingual.

The language of equality rarely sounds equal in practice.

Why Resistance Isn’t Rebellion, It’s Remembering

In regions that push back against top-down language mandates, the reason is rarely hostility. It’s history. It's not about refusing to learn another’s words; it’s about not being asked to forget one’s own.

When someone insists, “This is the language that unites us,” what many hear instead is, “Yours doesn’t count.”
And if there's anything we've learned from ancient towers and modern tantrums, it's this: enforced sameness never ends well.

Unity isn’t made by erasing differences. It’s made by respecting them enough to listen.

Children Get It. We Just Forget It.

Back to my son and his friend: their little lunchbox alliance was struck not for exams or quotas, but for the sheer fun of it.

They slip between each other’s languages like kids trading snacks. Mispronunciations become punchlines. Confusions become games. There’s no anxiety. No shame. No sense of betrayal to the “mother tongue” or fear of “losing identity.”

They’re not trying to climb Babel. They’re not waiting for Pentecost. They’re just playing with the world; one word at a time.

Let Language Be a Bridge, Not a Badge

What if we took our cue from children?

What if we encouraged people to learn new languages not because they must, but because it opens up music, friendship, love, recipes, jokes, and ways of thinking you didn’t know you needed?

What if we taught languages like this:

“Learn one to tell your grandmother you understand her fully.”

“Learn another to watch a film and feel every line in your bones.”

“Learn one because someone you care about speaks it.”

“Learn all of them because the world is large, and your soul is elastic.”

But don’t make language a litmus test for loyalty. And don’t assume that unity must come with a uniform voice.

The Fire Still Falls—Just Not Where You Expect It

Maybe we won’t see tongues of fire descending in conference rooms. Maybe we won’t undo every Babel with one glorious syllabus.

But I believe the miracle is still happening; in playgrounds, kitchens, lunch tables, street corners where children and adults reach across barriers and say,
“Teach me how you speak.”

Because in the end, language isn’t about nation-building or syllabus-filling.

It’s about soul-knitting.

And that? That still burns with holy fire.