Metamorphesize

More proof that even after reading the same passage in the Bible 300 times, somehow on the 301st something pops out at you.

It was actually reading someone else quoting Romans 12:2 - "Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is." Now, I've read this verse easily a thousand times. I have it memorized (it's a good one to know), but it was last night for the first time I did something I've never done with this verse, and do very seldom. I looked up the original Greek transcript.

Now I should start with I'm not one of those people that carries around a Greek Lexicon and Hebrew Torah so I can get the "full original meaning". In my mind, the people who translate have already done that to the best of their ability and if I look through enough translations, I'm sure to get an idea as to what was meant. But last night was different. Primarily, the word transform there in the beginning.

You see, the original Greek, which I don't know, so I had to translate all those funny little symbols, uses a word that we have in English, but don't really have the proper function in our language that is talked about here. It's a form of the word metamorphosis, hence the title, I made a new term to apply. We're not supposed to be transform into a new person, we're supposed to metamorphesize into a new person. Transform makes me think of the old 80's toys Transformers. Move the pieces around and it looks like something new. Metamorphosis is more like a worm that turns itself into a cocoon and weeks later comes out as something completely and utterly different, a butterfly.

See, God wants us to be totally and utterly new. He doesn't want us to turn from a truck into a robot with wheels for elbows (thank you Optimus Prime), there should be nothing from the old on us. A worm has no sort of wings anywhere on its body or even in it's body waiting to come out. That little squirrelly thing completely changes so much it has new appendages that take it from the dull life of inching around a leaf to flying across meadows, opening up new worlds it never saw before. That's what God has in store for us. New worlds and depths of a relationship with Him like we've never known.

But it all goes back to the idea of metaporphesizing. We have to get completely rid of the old. Can you do that...?

T