Metanoia – Part 1
Posted by Thomas on September 27, 2009
I have often pointed out in some of my previous comments that the most dangerous deception by far is not an outright lie but a lie garbed in the truth. I have also reiterated again and again that the emergent fraternity have truly mastered the ability to pin new meanings on well-known biblical words and thereby twisting or completely changing the Gospel message. One such word is “Metanoia” (repent). Ron Martoia who recently visited South Africa defines the word “repent” (“metanoia”) in Mark 1:14-15 as follows here:
Think about Jesus’ opening sermon picked up from John the Baptist…
Reorient your lives (repent, some have suggested “move beyond your mind”) the Kingdom of God is the framework you need to see right now!
(Metanoia in the context of theological discussion, where it is often used, is usually interpreted to mean repentance. However, some people argue that the word should be interpreted more literally to denote changing one’s mind, in the sense of embracing thoughts beyond its present limitations or thought patterns (an interpretation which is compatible with the denotative meaning of repentance but replaces its negative connotation with a positive one, focusing on the superior state being approached rather than the inferior prior state being departed from).
The word “metanoia” does indeed mean “to change your mind for the better” but Martoia, like so many other emergent scholars and preachers, deliberately dissect it from the biblical reasoning that man needs to escape his lost and sinful status (and the righteous judgements of God) by a voluntary and intentional adjustment of his mind with regard to his understanding of who God is and who he (mankind) is in the light of God’s Word. A biblical knowledge of God (i.e. God’s own revelation of his character, i.e. his holiness, divine love, goodness, mercy, and his righteous judgments) form the basis for true repentance and salvation. Hence Jesus’ words in John 17:10:
John 17:3 And this is eternal life: [it means] to know (to perceive, recognize, become acquainted with, and understand) You, the only true and real God, and [likewise] to know Him, Jesus [as the] Christ (the Anointed One, the Messiah), Whom You have sent. (Emphasis added)
To know or understand Him, in biblical terms, is not just a “know of Him” or to have a “superficial knowledge” of Him. The Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well was well acquainted with the Messiah who is the Christ (the anointed of God) and who was to come and tell them all things (teach them the Way of God) (John 4). And yet she was like a parched desert who desperately needed the Living Water He alone was capable of giving her. The Living Water is there for the asking but most people never learn to know Him because they never ask Him to give them the Living Water. Listen again what Jesus said to the woman:
John 4:10 Jesus answered her, If you had only known and had recognized God’s gift and Who this is that is saying to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him [instead] and He would have given you living water.
Who would you ask to represent you in a court of law when you’d been apprehended for breaking the law? A mechanic? . . . A medical doctor? . . . A politician? Of course you wouldn’t ask any of the latter to plead your case in court because they would all make a wonderful mess of everything, especially the politician. It is glaringly obvious that you would ask a lawyer or an advocate to present you because you know that they alone are equal to such a daunting task. Evidently knowledge, and particularly the “metanoia” knowledge, translates into an “asking, for it is in the “asking” that one expresses his/her desperate need of something they do not have. The Samaritan woman was desperately in need of the Living Water but sadly she did not know it; she haughtily and self-righteously argued that the Samaritans were just as religious and pious as the Jews who worshipped in Jerusalem, until Jesus gently and courteously showed her that “religiosity” was not her problem. Her problem was that she was living in sin. She already had five husbands and the one with whom she was living then was not her husband. “Wow!, this man is a real prophet because He knows my deepest secrets and has told me everything that I had ever done. He must be the Christ,” she excitedly told her fellow Samaritans. Jesus Christ, the Anointed of God, knows your deepest secrets (every single one of them) but have you ever asked Him to give you the Living Water? If you hadn’t, please do not procrastinate; procrastination is the best way to pave your way all the way to hell.
Many Calvinists have taken me to task for my unreserved critique of their unbiblical doctrine of predestination. Nonetheless, Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman clearly shows that sinful man needs to ask Him for the Living Water. He will never monergistically pour it down your throat.
The “metanoia” (changing of one’s mind) is never a superficial, self-induced exercise, transforming your reality from negative thought patterns to positive thought patterns. That’s pure New Age teaching. True repentance (“metanoia”) is a deeply heartfelt acknowledgment that you are guilty of breaking every single one of God’s laws and that you deserve to be judged and found guilty by the two-edged Sword of the Spirit (Hebrews 12:2), so much so that the convicted sinner cries out: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” A true “metanoia” casts itself wholeheartedly and willingly on the unmerited mercies of God. King David knew this and therefore cried out in complete abandonment: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” (Psalm 51).
Contrary to the biblical meaning of “metanoia” Ron Martoia and his fellow-emergents in South Africa deliberately steer way from terms like “sin,” “being lost,” and “righteous judgements.” In their view they are all but negative connotations you can overcome by replacing them with positive thought patterns . . . by “embracing thoughts beyond your present limitations or thought patterns.” As I’ve already pointed out, this is pure New Age teaching, asserting that you can change your reality by changing your negative thought patterns to positive ones, and guess how this is accomplished? Well, of course through meditation, contemplative prayer and silence. The following excerpt comes from a site that promotes meditation as a means to change your negative thought patterns to positive ones.
The chanting of repetitious words, songs and mantras of any culture, as well as focusing the attention on an outer or inner image, mandala or candle flame, are most often used as a means to assist the practitioner with their desire to transcend the general field or train of thought-forms, and to interrupt its perpetual presence in the conscious thinking mind. Yet these activities and practices which developed from and are more suited to past generations, only penetrate to the surface levels of spiritual experience and transformation of act and attitude, leaving the deepest of today’s needs undiscovered, non-confronted and unresolved. . . .
Thoughts, in order to lose their hold on us, must be understood for what they really are; the result of emotional needs and desires on the many levels of our being. There exists a constructive healthy mode of thinking and an unhealthy destructive mode of thinking, and it is meditation’s true purpose and responsibility to bring an individual to a clear understanding and definition of that difference of mind and thought patterns.
The function of a healthy mind is to entertain thought as the vehicle for inspired inner direction and motivation. Thus the meditation process encourages the capacity of the discriminating mind to develop a continuous discerning perspective; the purpose of which is to clarify which thought patterns are worthy of support from those that are not desirable.
Willem Nicol, one of South Africa’s leading gurus in “Christian meditation” and contemplative prayer is one of the foremost promoters of “silent” worship in our country who uses a candle in his church on which his congregants focus when they meditate. The practice of silence is as old as antiquity itself. Rev. Hislop, the author of “The Two Babylons” says the following in Chapter 2, Section 2 under the heading “The Mother and Child, and the Original of the Child”
. . . according to the genius of the mystic system of Chaldea, which was to a large extent founded on double meanings, that which, to the eyes of men in general, was only zero, “a circle,” was understood by the initiated to signify zero, “the seed.” Now, viewed in this light, the triune emblem of the supreme Assyrian divinity shows clearly what had been the original patriarchal faith. First, there is the head of the old man; next, there is the zero, or circle, for “the seed”; and lastly, the wings and tail of the bird or dove;[1] showing, though blasphemously, the unity of Father, Seed, or Son, and Holy Ghost.
While this had been the original way in which Pagan idolatry had represented the Triune God, and though this kind of representation had survived to Sennacherib’s time, yet there is evidence that, at a very early period, an important change had taken place in the Babylonian notions in regard to the divinity; and that the three persons had come to be, the Eternal Father, the Spirit of God incarnate in a human mother [Semiramis. wife of Nimrod], and a Divine Son [Tammuz], the fruit of that incarnation.
While this was the theory, the first person in the Godhead was practically overlooked. As the Great Invisible, taking no immediate concern in human affairs, he was “to be worshipped through silence alone,” that is, in point of fact, he was not worshipped by the multitude at all. The same thing is strikingly illustrated in India at this day.
The present-day mysticism in the Emergent Church can therefore be traced back much further than the popular notion that it had its origin in the Roman Catholic Church and in particular the Desert Fathers; they all have their origin in Babylon. In fact, the Book of Revelation repeatedly affirms that a Babylonian system of worship, not unlike the one that introduced the idolatrous worship of Mother and Child in the Babylon of antiquity, will once again be the religious system of the entire world and it will be known as MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH (Revelation 17:5). Her fall, however, will be great according to Revelation 18
Revelation 18: 2, 10, 21 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. . . . Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. . . . And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.
[1] From the statement in Genesis 1:2, that “the Spirit of God fluttered on the face of the deep” (for that is the expression in the original), it is evident that the dove had very early been a Divine emblem for the Holy Spirit.
