Metanoia

Metanoia is a fancy Greek word for "change of heart" or "conversion." Silly theologians and their Greek.

I've had a lot of moments in my metanoia, my own personal conversion story, and today I had another. Even though I was about to hit 20,000 posts on Phatmass (Yeah, I know, what a dork, right?), I just quit cold-turkey. Perhaps it was because I was about to hit 20,000 posts, actually. I'm not sure.

A friend of mine pointed out how Catholics on the internet tend to attack one another. We aren't often unified. While I hope this specific problem is one I have not recently shown (I was working on it a long time ago), I know of other problems I had. I've been addicted to the internet.

It's hard not to be. It's like entering our own little dream world. We can ignore people, tell other people what we think without any inhibitions, show off our knowledge (and occasionally reveal our idiocy), and whine, complain, and rant until we're blue in the...fingers.

Ah, internet addiction...what a disasterous thing! I'm reminded of the words of Psalm 115 (I had to look up which one it was):

"They have mouths, but they cannot speak;
They have eyes, but they cannot see;
They have ears, but they cannot hear;
They have nostrils, but they cannot smell.
With their hands they cannot feel;
With their feet they cannot walk.
No sound comes from their throats.
Their makers will come to be like them
and so will all who trust in them." (Breviary Translation)

We so often post what absolutely no one cares about...why? Because we want to say what's on our mind! We want to fashion a little virtual world in our image. I know very well that I myself have gone there and reloaded a page 20 or 30 times in a row. Why? Because I couldn't wait to see what someone else had to say! It was fascinating! Best of all, they were replying to me!

We get so caught up in ourselves on the internet and we rarely realize that there are others involved. We wait for replies with the time we should spend praying, we speak with sarcasm, we try to beat people in arguments...and for what? To impress a bunch of people we very likely will never meet.

Yet we hopefully will someday meet Christ...and what will He have to say about it all?

I don't know about you, but I need time to recollect myself, to pray, and to center my life once again around God and not about my talking about God. It's time for a little metanoia.

May God bless us and keep us and conform us evermore to Himself.