What is Metanoia?
The Purpose of My Work
In my last article about my new online community The Upper Room I wrote:
‘The intention of this community is to support each member to come into deeper communion with the Creator, each other, and all of creation.’
We can put that intention in different words that are even more simple and concise:
The intention is to go to Heaven.
Anything that distracts us from that focus is essentially the definition of sin. It causes disconnection and thus suffering to ourselves and others.
This brings forward a few of life’s most important questions which sadly are rarely discussed.
Where is heaven?
What is heaven?
And how do we get there?
These are not questions we can merely answer verbally, or just by repeating a belief someone taught us to say.
The answers come through a continuing transformation and healing, of the mind, body, heart, and soul.
The answers come by being willing to let go more and more fully and allow God to make us a new creation.
The answers come through committing to the process of metanoia.
What is metanoia?
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Metanoia (Greek: μετάνοια) is one of the most important words in the New Testament.
Most English Bibles translate it as “repentance,” but that translation is somewhat limited because modern people often hear repentance as:
Feeling guilty
Being sorry
Apologizing for sins
The original Greek is richer.
Meta = beyond, after, change
Nous = mind, intellect, perception, way of seeing
So metanoia literally means something like:
A transformation of mind, perception, consciousness, and orientation.
Not merely “I did something bad.”
Rather:
I now see reality differently.
This is why when Christ begins preaching:
“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 4:17)
The deeper sense is:
“Change the way you see. Awaken. Reorient your entire being because God’s Kingdom is present.”
Many modern scholars believe “undergo a radical change of heart and mind” is closer to the Greek than simply “repent.”
This is one reason the Desert Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and other Christian mystics viewed the Christian life as a lifelong metanoia. It wasn’t a one-time emotional conversion. It was an ongoing transformation of perception until one sees all things through God.
For St. Maximus especially, sin is fundamentally a misperception of reality. We become attached to created things as if they were ultimate. Metanoia is the healing of vision so that everything is seen in its proper relation to God.
In that sense, metanoia is not merely moral.
It is:
intellectual
psychological
spiritual
existential
A complete reordering of the person.
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May this space, and the core purpose of my work, hold a healing energy, intelligent insight, and compassionate guidance, that supports you in moving more fully through the process of metanoia
May God bless you.
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