Metanoia

We should probably begin with this blog's title.  First, I recognize this is a dangerous little word that might invite slogs of Phillies fans to rail against my favorite NL team with such insights as "Met-Annoy" and the like.  So now that I've puctured that balloon, we can get down to business.

Like the father figure in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" would tell you, and with great pride, this is a word that comes from the Greek, and is almost a direct transliteration of the original.  It means "change of heart," or "repentance" or "turning from one's sins" or "change of way."  Rarely is this an immediate change.  I've found that people treat the matters of their hearts and the patterns of their lives with more religious fervor than Phillies fans would show when their boys play the Mets at home.

It's as if the matters of the heart are definitive and beyond question.  What one feels in one's heart is absolute truth, and what offends one's heart is universally abhorrent.  Now, I don't know about you, but I can look back at my life and see where my heart was wrong, even though I was, in those moments, thoroughly convinced it was right.

And you can forget about convincing someone to change the patterns in their lives.  Those patterns, even if they are self-destructive, are the tick and tock that give order to each day.  Have you ever tried to change your patterns?  They're harder to dislocate than squatters in disputed Palestinian territories and easier to pick back up than a magnet to iron.  Alter a pattern a that person function like a partially derailed train the rest of the day.

This is where metanoia comes in to play.  It's a slow and deliberate change.  It's a way to challenge the heart to let go of impediments to faith and love in order to grow and feed the soul.  It's a way to replace self-destructive patterns with life-giving patterns.  Metanoia is a transformation of self so that we can be renewed by the changing of our minds.

And while this has echoes of "The Power of Positive Thinking" and "Visualization" and "The Secret" rummaging around, it isn't.  The fundamental flaw in all of the above is they direct a focus on the heart's desire, and we've already pretty well lampooned the heart's infallibility.  Metanoia takes seriously that our hearts are flawed and seeks another standard by which to measure itself.

The next question is pretty important:  Who are you trying to become?  Do you want to be a better boss, salesman, or co-worker?  A better spouse, parent, student, musician, computer geek, athlete, or gamer?

Metanoia isn't about self-improvement to become a better anything.  It's about becoming like Christ.  And I'm not talking about anyone's pre-conceived version of Jesus, as if Spurgeon or Calvin or your pastor or your mother have the fullness of Christ figured out.  These may start to align your carriage on the right track (c.f. railroad simile above), but I don't care who's idea of Christ is informing your idea of Christ, that person's idea isn't Jesus himself.

Metanoia means not only paring away impediments to faith and love, but also moving beyond what everyone says about Jesus to developing a relationship with Jesus directly.  Along the way we'll poke around some classic spiritual literature for developing this soul-filling relationship, pick apart cultrual maladaptations of Jesus, encounter scripture and find encouragement to continue on.

Be at peace,
Pastor Dave