Let me unpack the idea above for a moment. Keep it in mind and stick with me on this. We can tell that repentance is a huge deal at the beginning of the New Testament, as seen in what Jesus and John the Baptist have to say. The Greek word behind it is metanoia, and the English word repentance is not a good translation of that Greek word. When we say repent, were usually referring to feeling guilt or regret at what weve done, and being sorry about it, and perhaps going another direction, but metanoia actually means changing your mind, and having your way of thinking and perceiving revolutionized. This mistranslation and misunderstanding explains a lot. I can see now that Ive known many people who had epic conversion experiences and yet never repented in the true sense of metanoia at all. I know that sounds like a bold statement. (It sounds that way because it is a bold statement.) I used to regret not having a powerful testimony in that regard, having been raised a Christian kid with no major conversion story. But when I met Jesus, the way I perceived everything began to change. Its like a light switch was flipped on at the core of me, and every direction I turned had a new lustre. Ive never needed to hunger or thirst after God since that time. I have been satisfied. It has been harder to connect with the focus in Christian culture of being desperate after God all the time, since I have a more abiding sense of God in the always and the everywhere, and do not see Jesus as withholding... IT HAS BEEN A REVOLUTIONARY EXPERIENCE TO CONTINUE WORKING OUT THE IMPLICATIONS OF THAT SHIFT IN PERSPECTIVE. While pastors, authors and leaders continue to carry a message of Repent! with great passion and conviction, far too often that message is not a reflection of the Jesus they are trying to identify it with. This is how we have a church culture which can bring about such dramatic repentance in people who have never come to a real place of metanoia in order to find their way into Christianity. Culture had already defined for them what it all means and how best to follow it. Thus, we have lost the virtue of metanoia. The very concept of it is not a part of modern Christianity, despite being the clarion call of the New Testament. We have replaced See everything with new eyes with Use your old eyes, but just commit yourself to follow the rules better this time. That is not true repentance. That is the burden of religious guilt, and shame, and personal defeat. That is the vantage point of someone whose focus is still centered on her own brokenness and failings, whose frame of reference remains her own imperfection... But true repentance is release from those things. It is liberty. It is the deep and abiding sense of the way forward as we let go of the former things. It is brand new eyes and a brand new mind. It is revolution. A LOT OF US NEVER FIND THAT REVOLUTION. THATS WHY A LOT OF CHRISTIANS NEED TO BE SAVED FROM THE BIBLE AS THEY KNOW IT. A lot of Christians need to be rescued from the way they perceive, read, understand and use The Bible. Their level of reverence for the book itself has amounted to them looking much like the ewoks in their attempts to worship C-3PO in Return of the Jedi. However pious and passionate they might be... they arent really listening. They arent truly understanding. Their biases have served to elevate them and their perspectives rather than illuminating a more ultimate perspective. They have served to obscure a lot of meaning and truth rather than unveiling it. They are not honoring the object of their affection so much as they are honoring their assumptions - the lenses through which they view everything. I have said this before and I will likely say it again: Its very easy to claim we pay attention to things like context, the original languages, poetic form, the literary devices of specific cultures, etc... but its much more difficult to actually observe and value those things in practice. The truth is, even in the most staunchly Bible-believing churches, were more prone to visiting our modern biases on the Bible than we are to actually getting into the MIND of the Bible and the soil from which it grew. A bubble, however Christian, is still a bubble, after all. And, so long as that continues to be the way of things, its not really The Bible we are so passionately believing in anyway. More accurately, its our own structures and traditions were championing, as those things prove themselves to be the foundation were far more invested in. As Jesus said to the Scribes and Pharisees, You have a calculated way of evading what God has to say in order to cling to your own traditions. We have to see it: These were the same people holding so desperately to The Bible as they knew it. The same people hoping to be defined entirely by it. The same people claiming to be in full support of all it had to say... their noses buried deep within its pages... their mouths repeating its words... All the time. For them it was all set in stone. All of their ideas own attributed to God... ALL OF IT... SETTLED. But so many of them had missed the meaning of it all entirely, just as so many Christians have done throughout the centuries. And we must - at the very least - be open to the possibility that we might be doing the exact same thing. We must remind ourselves that we are here, not just to exist comfortably, but to truly live - to meaningfully engage our moment of history in real and dynamic relationship to truth and beauty. Whatever that might entail. See more at: youhavehearditsaid/entries-posts/god-said-it-i-believe-it-that-settles-it
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 19:05:35 +0000
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