No term of scriptural vocabulary is more central to the gospel than metanoia. In the first translation of the Bible into Latin, the international language of the learned, Jerome (345–420) rendered the Greek term as “do penance.” That translation had enormous repercussions for the next thousand years, as it colored Christian perceptions of just what Jesus and John the Baptist intended by the phrase. Protestant Bibles rendered the term as “repent,” and that word is one of the words more associated with the Christian call to renounce sin, amend one’s life, and choose Christ and the Way that he taught. Most persons today have learned that a more literal translation of metanoia would be “change your heart,” and that phrase is consistent with God’s call to cooperate in the remolding of our desires, our proclivities, and our affections.
The original Greek word, “nous,” is more commonly translated in non-biblical texts as “mind” or “intellect.” Given how colloquial expressions change from culture to culture, changing one’s heart is not an inaccurate rendering of the Biblical phrase. Yet it may be worth exploring the peripheral denotation of the original words. “Change your mind, change your mind, for the kingdom of God is near.”
Unless we are undergoing a brain transplant, changing one’s mind—like changing one’s heart—is a metaphorical expression. Neither one perfectly captures the original Greek, and notice that both English expressions have some overlap. When we overcome a negative first impression of a person and open ourselves to loving them—have we “changed our heart” or “changed our mind?” When we determine that science is not the field of our dreams, and decide to major in engineering instead, have we changed our heart or our mind? What about canceling our wedding—or dinner engagement?
My point is that both expressions (changing mind, changing heart) are inadequate to capture precisely the nature of those transformations, those reorientations within, that alter the paths of our lives by shifting our relationships to persons, to ideas, and to future ways of engaging the world. And yet, the phrase “change your mind” is seldom associated with spiritual renewal. Perhaps it should be. Because as my examples are meant to remind us, “mind” and “heart” are overlapping domains. They cannot be as fully teased out as we believe, and metanoia suggests both may be integral to discipleship.
With that possibility as a live hypothesis, a fruitful key to spiritual self-assessment may be to ask yourself, when was the last time you changed your mind? If repentance is a daily practice, then instances should come readily to mind (no pun intended). And yet in my case, I’m not sure they do.
Psychologists refer to the human tendency toward “cognitive entrenchment.” One scientist defines cognitive entrenchment as “a high level of stability in knowledge schemas that cause [persons] to be inflexible in their thinking.” Such entrenchment “blocks the generation of novel ideas,” makes it harder to “adapt to novel situations, and generate creative ideas.” And it “leads to habitual behavior.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the phenomenon is most pronounced among experts in any given field. The more learned we are—or think we are in our given fields, the more unlikely we are to step out of the run of conditioned thinking.
Many quirks in our psychological makeup condition us toward cognitive entrenchment—most famous of which may be “confirmation bias.” Our brains are simply attuned to latch onto whatever evidence is available to support rather than challenge preconceived notions.
Curiosity is, in this regard, a human impulse that is always at war with other natural impulses. “I want to know the mind of God,” Einstein professedly said. And yet he could not let go of his commitment to the picture of the universe that quantum mechanics annihilated. Hence his tragic failure to fully participate in some of the most consequential advances of twentieth-century science.
Our cognitive entrenchment may lead to failure in many ways. We may fail to change our mind about the merits of Betamax over VHS (like Sony corp.), or of alternating over direct current (as Edison did), yet do so with more economic than spiritual harm. And yet, is the same moral quality involved across the spectrum of mind-changing? I think it may be.
“The highest ethical calling,” writes Brian Christian, “is curiosity.” Curiosity as an ethical calling? That claim is true if we think of agency in a more expansive way. We generally emphasize moral agency as the capacity to act in a certain way—a way of our own choosing. But we inhabit a world of manifold agents as well as manifold objects. We are biologically engineered and socially conditioned to make our self the center of our universe. For Augustine (who was correct this time), self-love, self-preoccupation, is the default condition of humankind. The disposition to de-center the self, in this context, might be exactly what Christian meant as an ethical calling. We are called by the lure of love, of growth, of transformation and becoming, to be open to the world and to the other—with genuine interest. That is the true meaning of curiosity. And it is an ethical stance because it is a decision fraught with moral value: asking questions is a gesture toward connection and commitment to the value of what lies outside and beyond. If our questions are “genuine,” Hans Georg Gadamer taught, then they are laden with risk. “Our own prejudice is properly brought into play by being put at risk.”
Perhaps now we are seeing why repentance might be related to changing our mind and not just our heart. Repentance requires us to be moldable. Open to being changed by what the universe and its inhabitants have to teach us. Theologian Rowan Williams applies this moral dimension of curiosity to one of the highest forms of human relationship—marriage. In his words, what to the world generally is only “the transient force of sexual attraction is [in committed marriage] transfigured. . . . Our crisis in sexual morality . . . is about a loss of the sense of personal mystery and the calling to explore and enjoy someone else's mysteriousness for a lifetime.”
The beauty and power of that invitation—to explore someone else’s mysteriousness for a lifetime (and beyond)—is hardly a challenge constrained by marriage. What might the world—and our community—look like if we listened to each other with that degree of curiosity? How might we be further shaped in happy and unanticipated ways?
Terryl Givens is Senior Research Fellow at the Maxwell Institute and author and coauthor of many books, including Wrestling the Angel, The God Who Weeps, and All Things New. To receive each new Terryl Givens column by email, first subscribe and then click here and select "Wrestling with Angels."
Art by John William Waterhouse.
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