Lamar Howell's Weblog

Prophets, to be heard, must masquerade as poets. Their soliloquy, once admired, seeps into the soul, like raindrops through a nylon tent. But the art lover must reach out to touch the lining and break up the droplets. Then truth’s moist kiss moves from fingertips to shirt, then to the breast.

The fiat sword is masked as a letter-opener; the fiery words as a warm dancing glow; any divine ultimatum laid out like a lover’s desperate lunge across the threshold of a fleeing paramour. The prophet’s goat-hair garments hidden beneath a spider-web-thin sheer of rhyme and rhythm; its earthy smell muffled by lows and highs, no–aloes and hyacinth–of intonation, and the whirr and myrrh of accented, scented speech. His hewn, crooked staff doubles as a poker, ribbing now and then with eye-rolling puns amid small doses of cherry-flavored satire. He taps on the stony path, as if to clear the way for the truth-blind, yet poetically inclined 20-20 mind.

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Anatoly Siedem . .

Doctor whose daughter married a mafia boss. The mafia sandwiched him in between two cars and caused him to have an accident. They took him and demanded ransom. His daughter’s boss gave the ransom, which also included the right to marry Anatoly’s daughter. This is a true story.

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A teenager named Bratt rebels against his parents and leaves home, vowing never to return. He has his last name changed, essentially divorcing himself from them. Thirty years later he returns, demanding they give him everything he could have had during all that time and the best room in the house. Bratt wants the property and his inheritance spelled out in the will. He will not speak to them nor acknowledge their presence in the home. He lives like he is the only one there. He pays no bills, buys no groceries. He hates his so-called parents and all they stand for. Do you think the parents would accept Bratt’s terms?

A woman named Luz gets a job as an intern at a Fortune 500 company. The company requires her to start a training program, which involves college hours. Luz is asked to contribute to a 401B for her retirement. She has three weeks vacation time and seven sick days. But the woman refuses to go to college, doesn’t do what is required of her, nor does she contribute to a retirement plan. She takes more sick days than she is given.  Luz comes in late and often leaves early and takes a longer lunch. Eventually Luz is fired at age 25. When she turns 65, should the company give her a service metal and a full retirement package based on her history and performance?

You probably said “No” to the two above scenarios, but it is surprising how people are unable to transfer these obvious truths into the realm of spirituality. I know so many people whose lives reflect the following scenario:

I live my whole life rejecting God. I do not care for his life handbook and I reject his words and his authority. I decide daily to live for my own pleasure and goals. I have no fear of the consequences of living this way. I choose not to change my actions or my character to be compatible with his.

However, at the end of my life I expect him to accept me regardless of the forbidden pleasures I’ve love, the harmful secrets I’ve held, my disdain for him and rejection of his plan to save me. I insist on him accepting me into his presence where everyone is in love with him but me, where everyone worships him but me, and where I can continue to curse and laugh at his son and his followers.
It seems we normally live our lives based on logic and cause and effect. But we mystify revealed truth and live defying our own logic and ignoring cause and effect. Why? I think it is simply because we do not believe anything will happen if we are passive.

We can imagine a child predator getting life without parole. We can accept a mass-murderer getting the death penalty. But we see injustice written all over a God who cannot forgive us for rejecting his forgiveness, his exoneration, his gift of life, and most of all—the way out of our moral morass: his son Jesus Christ taking the fall.

If there is any injustice in all this, the mortal wrong is that God made the hardest of choices, and we cried ‘Foul!’ God’s toughest verdict is not turning people away from heaven’s door. He already made the hardest decision: becoming one of us at the risk of wholesale rejection.

If we really want absolution and a fresh start, we would take it while we have the chance. If we reject the saving of our souls when it is the better choice, how can we arrogantly demand it when it is no longer a choice?

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