Lamar Howell's Weblog

Just suppose God wasn’t rich

Imagine him never coming to visit.

What if he didn’t bring gifts

and never lifted anyone’s spirit,

and the Holy Ghost chose not to be close?

Just suppose you never felt his touch.

Imagine living with barely enough.

What if  he ignored prayer and persuasion

and missed sharing special occasions,

would you still embrace the cross?

Face every loss with courage?

Would you love him simply for life eternal

and long only for his return?

Suppose seeing Christ were enough!

Imagine his life being enough!

What if he came to take everything from us?

To divinely exchange, and leave us with a promise

With a hope that never fails,

one that propels us into the world

with one thing worth more than life

so much more than healing

or emotional well-being:

A mark, a scar, a Christ-brand

something like that –

anything that proves we’re his.

I may be imagining this, who knows?

But just suppose . . .

For those of you who read this blog, I may not be writing anything for a while because I am busy with family issues. If you want to know more, please contact me.

I just returned from watching Peter Jackson’s film “District 9” and (apartheid aside)  here’s a perspective:

I see everything through a kaleidoscope with colored jewels forming crosses in various shapes and colors, and so it is with District 9. If find it both refreshing and alarming that filmmakers and script writers tend to go with their intuition, even spiritual prescience, more than do most spiritual leaders of the world.  Let me explain:

I believe that intuition is a faculty of the human spirit, just like conscience and communion. Because of our fallen humanity, or imperfection, people intuitively, as individuals and even on a national level, have an innate desire for a savior-hero. Thus the range of heroes from national epics down to folk-heroes.  District 9 is awash in this intuitive impulse within humankind, as are many modern superhero films. Spiritual leaders, conversely, often get stuck in the sentimental platitudes and prosaic formulas of religion.

There are several symbols or motifs which I saw in this film which had messianic undertones. First of all is the search for and discovery of the indispensible fluid needed for joining the command module to the mother ship. The recovery of the fluid took over twenty years. The vial containing the fluid was to be protected at all costs.

The second strong messianic symbol was in the name of the one who gathered the fluid, along with the help of his son. Christopher Johnson  is the alien hero the film. He leaves earth with a promise to return with help from his home planet in order to rescue his fellow aliens, derisively called prawns, and to restore the hero of the story to full humanity.

Wikus (pronounced Vih-cus), the protagonist of the story, is infected by fluid from the vial and his arm becomes alien. The arm becomes a rare commodity. The government wants to use it to fire the alien weaponry, and a Nigerian mafia boss wants to eat it in a witchcraft ritual for the same purpose.  In a sense, Wikus suffers [vicar]iously because his arm is exposed to humanity.

Near the end of the film, a full long shot of the camera is on the side of a building painted with graffiti. The huge letters fill the background and spells the word “NAME” two times.

Finally, Wikus’ recovery as a human and his restoration to his wife has to be sacrificed for the race of aliens. Christopher has to use the fluid to power his ship’s return to his home planet for help rather than using it to save Wikus.

In summary: The fluid is what can save the aliens, like the blood of Christ saves humanity; Wikus’ [a vicar is a priest] arm is symbolic in that the arm  and the  hand (not the left, but the right  hand in particular) are universal symbols of military deliverance and divine salvation, and especially in that the arm is exposed, or laid bare.

The alien Christopher Johnson (Christopher means “Christ bearing”) prepares 28  years for the fluid which will save his people, much like the preparation time of Christ. He survives a beating where blood runs down his face. Finally he escapes and leaves the earth with a promise to return to save his people, as well as the restoration of the protaganist, an shadowy allusion to resurrection, in three years, compared to three days of Christ’s resurrection.

You may think this is all a stretch, but remember this fact: an overwhelming majority of people think there will be some kind of apocalyptic [hero-revealing] event in the near future, something not even the churches are talking about much now, at least not until they see this extraordinarily crafted film.

This film is rated R because it deals briefly with prostitution and drops f-bombs in strangly-accented clusters.

That’s how I see it!

I have seen the Death Star,

wandered through the universe —

where I carelessly jettisoned my heart

So many failed attempts at reversing course,

but in my vagrancy I found

the cosmos to be spiral — nearly round

Always bringing my hollow capsule back 

to where it all began —

Somewhere between the flaming start

and the sputtering, gasping end

Lies my heart

Is it too large a thing to ask,

too colossal a task?

To Infinity it must seem infinitesimal

Yes, my heart is small, inconsequential

If you should see it – it looks like this:

It’s shaped like a fist, sorta

With chambers and aortas

And it’s leaving a thin trail

Of red and blue

Unless it’s all bled out

Out there all alone

Somewhere between the Death Star

and its Home

Where’s my GI Joe? My two-year old son’s first sentence. The almost-six-inch camouflage green, or white, or black-uniformed soldiers with hinged hips, elbows, and knees, always squeezed by Jonny’s baby-fat fingers. His little regiment of toy soldiers lived in crowded and merciless toddler-service in a shoebox quanson hut under little Jonny’s bed. Continue Reading »

Love God with all your heart,

with all your guts, with all your sweat

and every muscle and pound you pile on Continue Reading »

To me something is conspicuous by its absence. What is absent from the body of Christ today is the understanding and practice of the millenial truth that Christians are in almost every sense a family, and brothers and sisters in particular.

How long has it been since another believer has called me brother? Many moons, sir and ma’am. If anyone else who knows me and is a believer calls me sir, I swear I’m going to let loose with a tacky non-christian word Continue Reading »

There was something troubling in Rick Warren’s prayer at President Obama’s inauguration. His choice of words for invoking God sounded eerily like something from the Koran: “And you are the compassionate and merciful One.” The Muslim wording is “In the name of Allah, the merciful and compassionate one.”

The phrase he used is also in the Bible, yet I still question the merits of his motivation. That ecumenical inaugural prayer, done for the sake of inclusiveness, subtly and unwittingly betrayed our nation’s sacred trust with the unique God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is not the God of Islam. One example of this is in seen in Indonesia. When Muslims invoke God, they say AL-lah. When Christians invoke God, they say Al-LAH. The choice of stress on the syllables places the religions worlds apart.

 Warren also prayed, “Help us, O God, to remember that we are Americans, united not by race or religion or blood, but to our comittment to freedom and justice for all.”  That’s about as clear as a new law which would suggest that Americans may arbitrarily choose the metric system over US customary, or which side of the street to drive on. Certainly we are not united by religions (plural), but we are united under God. Americans have always been free to worship as they please, but the unwelcome truth is that Americans have historically recognized the God of the Bible as the God acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence, in our national motto, in prayers offered daily in the US Supreme Court, and — until just recently — in the prayers to open sessions of Congress.

Even sadder than the prayer was its reception. Applause broke out during the prayer when Warren mentioned that Obama was the first African-American to be elected to the Presidency. That act by an overzealous audience in effect subordinated God to a man. Let me put it plainly: while talking to Almighty God, people stop to applaud a mortal man. I’m sorry, but a prayer to God should be cognizant of God’s character, not softened to men’s affections. Far from bringing unity to the masses, a prayer which nods to every religion is at best appeasement; at worst, it is schizophrenic.

Religious pluralilsm is the twin sister of multi-culturalism, and both of them are enemies to national unity. If we are willing for the government to endorse religious pluralism, as opposed to the religious freedom all Aemericans and immigrants have always enjoyed, then we must be prepared for the government to act suspiciously toward any group which makes the exclusive claim to religious truth — Christians.

If we buy into that misunderstanding — that religious pluralism is equated to religious liberty — then official religious tolerance (all religions are equal) will lead us down a road to repression of the Christian witness. Christians will be shouted down if they so much as convey insensitivity, and censured if they criticize other religions. They will be labeled first as ignorant whiners, then as intolerant bigots, then as dangerous fascists. That is, if Christians can keep their nerve!

America has always been the nation with the greatest religious freedom. Then why the push for religious tolerance? Whatever the reasons, we must be vigilant, lest something which sounds as harmless as ‘religious tolerance’ softly strips away our rights to an inviolable conscience and to a robust proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

author’s note: This essay was written in January 2009, but it mysteriously disappeared from my blog.

I sweat when I quote poetry about my Christ

Shiny beads pop out on my skin

and I feel a flush rising from my shoulders,

flowing out my face in exhalation.

I freeze when I contemplate His Majesty

Gel into slow motion

It labors me to move

bends me,  the weightiness of His worth

moves me closer to the pavement.

It grips my gut like a vise when I feel His pleasure,

turns my center of gravity counter-clockwise

as I steady my knees, like a runner, with both hands.

Oh! but what I would give to tell the world,

to say something – one thing – that would ring

forever in their souls

even one unforgettable unrehearsed

angelicly chiropracticked

gesture heavenward.

I swallow hard to think it may never be

that I could miss the chance

to stand on a soapbox for His highest Honor

and be hidden by a passing cloud of revelation.

I’m astonished when I scream of his pierced victories

I breathe harshly, embarrassed by my  gutteral sobs

Thunder-struck by the gulf between what can be said

and all that is unutterable.

Why a cross, nails, and a circle of thorns

so conquer and occupy  my mind

is hard to say,

but God – my own dearest God –

let me try.

On Earth Day

Children planted grass in the worn out path up a hillView Post

Where Roman soldiers carried out a sentence.

Green was the bile which spewed from the spleen

Of religious men, green with envy.

Green the hind feathers of the cock that crowed

Green wood burned in a hasty fire

Greed was green in his Betrayer’s eye

Fresh green in his crown from the thorny burnet bush

Olive – the hue of the tree, deformed into an instrument of death

Its buds drying prematurely

Snakes of  jade slithered from the garden of woes

Slime – color of lime – in their wake

Verdant were the redbud leaves

that palmed the rain which flowed from angels’ eyes

Emerald the bow around the throne

as God looked away in pain

Green was the mildew in an oxygen-deprived cave

That served as the Son of the Earth’s tomb

It was the day that Saved the Earth

Remember Earth Day. . . when everything was green.

DÍA DE LA TIERRA

En el día de la Tierra

Niños sembraron la hierba en el camino gastado sobre una colina

donde los soldados Romanos llevaron a cabo la pena de muerte

Verde era el mal genio que arrojo’ del bazo

de los religiosos, verde con la envidia

Verde las plumas traseras del gallo que cacareyó

Leña verde quemó en un fuego apresurado

Avaricia era verde en el ojo del Traidor

Verde fresco del arbusto espinoso en su corona

Olivo – el matiz del árbol, se transformó en un instrumento del muerte,

sus capullos secando prematuramente

Víboras de jade reptaron del jardín doloroso

Verdín – el color de lima – en su estela

Verdeante eran las hojas de la higuera

que palmaron la lluvia derramando de ojos de angeles

Esmeralda el arco sobre el trono

cuando Dios miró hacia otro lado en aflición

Verdoyo en la cueva que faltó de oxígeno

que servió como la tumba del Hijo de la Tierra

Era el día que salvó la Tierra

Recuérdate El Día de la Tierra . . . cuando todo era verde.