What Does 'Repentance' Actually Mean?

What Does 'Repentance' Actually Mean?

"Repentance' is usually understood to imply a sincere feeling of regret and sorrow (not merely a hypocritical claim of regret and sorrow) for a sin in opposition to God, because of which we hope to obtain His forgiveness.
But the Greek phrase within the New Testament which is translated as 'repentance' is Metanoia, which truly means to change one's mind, to think in another way, to think in a new method. The Bible repeatedly teaches that the Thoughts must take the first step, that all religious attainment has to begin with thinking in a new and totally different approach. Except the Mind modifications, until our attitudes and understandings change, nothing in the world will ever change, for we are going to remain perpetually exactly as we are. Metanoia is the beginning of awakening, the beginning of spiritual maturity.
It's easy to suppose that when unhealthy issues happen to folks it should be the result of divine punishment for his or her evil habits. In other phrases, "they deserve it". Such individuals, we are typically susceptible to say, must repent, really feel sorry for this evil habits, and beg God's forgiveness. But really, this is not what Metanoia is about, and this misinterpretation has been a leading cause of much of the savagery, cruelty, and violence, which has endured all through western historical past and nonetheless continues to this day - God is at all times on our aspect, these individuals are evil, and so they have to be punished till they are sorry. This peculiar mind-set continues to function the premise of much up to date so-called morality.
But Jesus denied all of this quite explicitly. At one level, he's speaking together with his disciples who convey up the current story of some Galileans whom Pilate had viciously murdered. Jesus asks them, "Do you suppose that because these Galileans suffered in this manner they were worse sinners than all the other Galileans? No, I tell you." He then reminds them of a latest catastrophe wherein a tower had collapsed and killed various bystanders. "Or these eighteen who had been killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them - do you think they had been worse offenders than all the others dwelling in Jerusalem?" Quite the opposite, he says, none of this occurred to those individuals as a result of they had been evil. They did not 'deserve' it. These items 'just happened' to them.
Then Jesus concluded by telling the disciples, "unless you repent, you will all perish simply as they did."
What are we to make of this strange warning? It actually cannot mean that all the disciples will necessarily be murdered by Pontius Pilate or crushed by a falling tower! Nor can it mean that they will all necessarily be punished with a painful death if they don't really feel an applicable quantity of guilt for all of the unhealthy issues they've completed: as we all know, loads of sinful individuals die peacefully of their sleep with out ever looking for forgiveness.
What this implies is, 'except you change the best way you suppose, and awaken, you will die in a state of unconscious, meaningless, sleep, precisely as they did.' That is the issue that Jesus needs his followers to concern themselves with. Significant faith will not be about social morality - and particularly not a mean-spirited vindictive morality. Neither is it a couple of sanctimonious or sentimental must be 'good'. Real morality, as Socrates taught, is a morality of aspiration: an act is moral if it helps to perfect one's soul, even though it may be utterly contrary to the priggish calls for of society. This doesn't negate the should be 'stewards of the earth' or 'our brother's keeper', each of which offer vital expertise for the soul's progress. But the kind of religion that Jesus was instructing his disciples is all in regards to the perfection and inner evolution of the human soul, and this begins with awakening, it begins with thinking in a new method, it begins with Metanoia.
Once we are asleep, the Body sweeps all our attention outward to the material world because the Thoughts is passive. As a result, all the things 'just happens' to us. We're not even authentically current. As such, in fact, we're not really chargeable for what occurs in our lives because it all 'simply occurs' - we don't do it. So no one can actually act evilly, since nobody is admittedly appearing! All of it simply occurs.
But we're in the end responsible, in truth we are completely responsible, for insisting on remaining asleep.
Dr. Andrew Cort, D.C., J.D., is a Instructor, an Lawyer, and a Physician of Chiropractic. His books embrace "Return to That means: The American Psyche in Search of its Soul" (this article is an excerpt), "The Tune of Songs: A Lover's Poetic Dialogue", and "From Joshua to Jesus". To read Free Excerpts, to order books, and to search out out about Talks and Seminars, visit Dr. Cort lives within the Berkshires in western Massachusetts.
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