1Cor 14:12-14 - Blank Mind = Bad Theology

12-14 So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church. 13 Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray for the power to interpret. 14 For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful.

In being careful to attest from scripture that Biblical tongues are always an actual earthly language, one must be careful not to denigrate the gift itself. It is a supernatural manifestation from God the Holy Spirit given to actual people in the church. It seems to be such that the people so gifted often did not themselves understand what they were saying. So they were speaking meaningful things about the glories of God in Jesus Christ in an actual language, but not with their understanding. It was for demonstrating and presenting the gospel to people from other lands - that they might hear and believe.

But it was a gift that could be used even in the company of people who were countrymen of the tongue-speaker; it could be used in the church but, as strongly pointed out by Paul, it wasn’t much use to anyone unless somebody could understand it and interpret it for everyone else - so that all might be edified. To this end Paul encouraged tongue-speakers to pray for the power to interpret themselves what they said in the foreign tongue. The alternative - absent interpretation, was to keep silent.

Now, to the question of praying in a tongue being "spirit prayer" without the engagement of the mind - we need to be careful. Christianity nowhere endorses putting the mind in neutral and going with the flow. That sort of thing has more in common with Eastern occultic mysticism. While it is true that genuine tongue-speaking was a supernatural manifestation and that it was a language often not understood by the speaker (unless he had the gift of interpretation) the thrust of Paul’s whole argument about tongues is precisely that the mind must be engaged and edified by the whole process. He is not saying "throw your mind to the wind and float in the Spirit," but rather "if the Spirit is not edifying the mind then don’t bother."

So we need to avoid falling into the trap of those who want to make verses like this tell us to blank our brains and not look for meaning. Rather, we should insist that, unless the meaning can be made plain so that the mind is informed then the practice ought not to be allowed in fellowship and worship. Only the enemy would ever have the audacity to stand God’s plain meaning here on it’s head and insist that it says the very opposite of Paul’s teaching - thereby encouraging Christians to think that lack of understanding with the mind is not only permissible, but actually desirable.