Metaphor 17 - The Microscopic New Leaf

Another species of false thinking that a great many people engage in is the idea of "turning over a new leaf." I.e. they come to a realization that they fall morally short of their Creator, and decide that from this moment of realization on, they will conduct themselves by what they perceive to be that Creator’s desire.

The problem with this solution is two fold.

One is that, as creatures in time, who have experienced its baneful "healing," they have forgotten that their past is still as real to God as their present moment of realization is to them. The term of abuse they leveled at someone five years ago is still right in God’s face at the present moment, and will in fact remain there for all eternity no matter how else they have behaved since then. The "new leaf" is simply too small to cover over all that a human being might do in a lifetime of latent thinking and actual doing.

And it is this same problem that invalidates the idea of "working" for one’s escape from wrath. A time bound creature may think that "a righteous act" (however defined) can wipe away a previous act of sin from before the face of eternal God. But that creature forgets that it is still in time, and therefore any "righteous act" that creature may perform would simply sit right next to its last unrighteous act before God, the two both being eternally present in His face for all eternity.

Now you may think that this state of affairs is okay with God. But you would be wrong. In the Record, there is a incident where God commanded one of His prophets, as a visual metaphor, to eat bread that had been baked by using human manure in the process. (Ezekiel 4:12-15). In another place in the Record (Isaiah 64:6 to be exact) God likens our little acts of righteousness to used menstrual rags. The point is that God does not like righteous acts mixed with unrighteous acts. The unrighteous acts of a creature in time are simply not erasable by that creature in time.

The other problem is with actually being able to perceive what the Creator’s desire might be at any given moment. I.e. with defining what a righteous act would be. It is the problem of determining what would not run contrary to His fundamental nature and character.

Remember, from the first people we all have our defective, time-based Chicagoland Version 1.1, out of which the contemplation of the Creator has been dropped so that we are blind, deaf, and dead to the Creator. We are all morally stupid enough not to know that a term of abuse we leveled five years ago is worth the perfect Creator’s everlasting wrath.

Who among us is a good enough accountant to keep books on what only eternal God can see?