Sep 30 Wed
Can I change my brain?
Often you hear, ‘I Changed My Mind.’
A curious idiom in English and difficult for non-native speakers to grasp. If I say, “I changed my mind,” it looks like I am saying I had one mind, but I swapped it out for another. The closest analogues, after all, are expressions like “I changed my clothes” or “I changed a tire.” But how can I get a grip on my mind, and even change it? And how would I know that it was a new mind there, rather than the old one still?
In contrast, “I had a change of heart” seems to make perfect sense. Something can happen to me which makes me change my heart. Even so, if I don’t change my mind, it looks like nothing –no one– can change my heart.
Deuteronomy 6:5 says only: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”
But Our Lord in the New Covenant took pains (it’s recorded in all three synoptic Gospels) to add: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might, and WITH ALL YOUR MIND.”
This fact is hidden in some translations. “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Lk 5:32): but it says literally, I have come to call sinners to change their minds (μετάνοιαν, metanoian).
The Lord says to his disciples just before ascending into Heaven: “Thus, it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations” (Lk 24:46-47) – literally, “change of mind and forgiveness of sins.” Thus, forgiveness is linked to a change of mind.
In one of his most beautiful passages, St. Paul says that he wants to see Christians “changed in form,” by making their minds new, or more precisely their intellect: “I appeal to you … be transformed by the renewal of your mind." (Rom 12:2)
The beauty of “I changed my mind” is in the completeness it signals. “Did you want the steak after all?” “No, I changed my mind and decided upon fish.” Steak is just no longer in view. We are blind to the steak. We are thinking about wine pairings with fish.
How disarming, for its simplicity, it could be to speak in this way! “Yeah, before, I used to fool around. But after I stuck to Christ as my Savior and Lord, and I learned his commandments, I changed my mind.”
“If you really have changed your mind, as you say, then, through what you do, provide convincing evidence to me that this is so.” It’s a paraphrase, and yet a perfectly precise account of the meaning of the Baptist’s words, which the Church puts before us: “Bear fruit worthy of repentance." (Mt 3:8).
‘I Changed My Mind’
Show then the change with the testimony of your life.
Excerpts from Michael Pakaluk