Lamar Howell's Weblog

Jeremiah 6 The Message (MSG)
A City Full of Lies

6 1-5 “Run for your lives, children of Benjamin!
Get out of Jerusalem, and now!
Give a blast on the ram’s horn in Blastville.
Send up smoke signals from Smoketown.
Doom pours out of the north—
massive terror!
I have likened my dear daughter Zion
to a lovely meadow.
Well, now ‘shepherds’ from the north have discovered her
and brought in their flocks of soldiers.
They’ve pitched camp all around her,
and plan where they’ll ‘graze.’
And then, ‘Prepare to attack! The fight is on!
To arms! We’ll strike at noon!
Oh, it’s too late? Day is dying?
Evening shadows are upon us?
Well, up anyway! We’ll attack by night
and tear apart her defenses stone by stone.’”

6-8
God-of-the-Angel-Armies gave the orders:

“Chop down her trees.
Build a siege ramp against Jerusalem,
A city full of brutality,
bursting with violence.
Just as a well holds a good supply of water,
she supplies wickedness nonstop.
The streets echo the cries: ‘Violence! Rape!’
Victims, bleeding and moaning, lie all over the place.
You’re in deep trouble, Jerusalem.
You’ve pushed me to the limit.
You’re on the brink of being wiped out,
being turned into a ghost town.”

9
More orders from God-of-the-Angel-Armies:

“Time’s up! Harvest the grapes for judgment.
Salvage what’s left of Israel.
Go back over the vines.
Pick them clean, every last grape.
Is Anybody Listening?

10-11
“I’ve got something to say. Is anybody listening?
I’ve a warning to post. Will anyone notice?
It’s hopeless! Their ears are stuffed with wax—
deaf as a post, blind as a bat.
It’s hopeless! They’ve tuned out God.
They don’t want to hear from me.
But I’m bursting with the wrath of God.
I can’t hold it in much longer.

11-12
“So dump it on the children in the streets.
Let it loose on the gangs of youth.
For no one’s exempt: Husbands and wives will be taken,
the old and those ready to die;
Their homes will be given away—
all they own, even their loved ones—
When I give the signal
against all who live in this country.”
God’s Decree.

13-15
“Everyone’s after the dishonest dollar,
little people and big people alike.
Prophets and priests and everyone in between
twist words and doctor truth.
My people are broken—shattered!—
and they put on Band-Aids,
Saying, ‘It’s not so bad. You’ll be just fine.’
But things are not ‘just fine’!
Do you suppose they are embarrassed
over this outrage?
No, they have no shame.
They don’t even know how to blush.
There’s no hope for them. They’ve hit bottom
and there’s no getting up.
As far as I’m concerned,
they’re finished.”
God has spoken.
Death Is on the Prowl

16-20 God’s Message yet again:

“Go stand at the crossroads and look around.
Ask for directions to the old road,
The tried-and-true road. Then take it.
Discover the right route for your souls.
But they said, ‘Nothing doing.
We aren’t going that way.’
I even provided watchmen for them
to warn them, to set off the alarm.
But the people said, ‘It’s a false alarm.
It doesn’t concern us.’
And so I’m calling in the nations as witnesses:
‘Watch, witnesses, what happens to them!’
And, ‘Pay attention, Earth!
Don’t miss these bulletins.’
I’m visiting catastrophe on this people, the end result
of the games they’ve been playing with me.
They’ve ignored everything I’ve said,
had nothing but contempt for my teaching.
What would I want with incense brought in from Sheba,
rare spices from exotic places?
Your burnt sacrifices in worship give me no pleasure.
Your religious rituals mean nothing to me.”

21
So listen to this. Here’s God’s verdict on your way of life:

“Watch out! I’m putting roadblocks and barriers
on the road you’re taking.
They’ll send you sprawling,
parents and children, neighbors and friends—
and that will be the end of the lot of you.”

22-23
And listen to this verdict from God:

“Look out! An invasion from the north,
a mighty power on the move from a faraway place:
Armed to the teeth,
vicious and pitiless,
Booming like sea storm and thunder—tramp, tramp, tramp—
riding hard on war horses,
In battle formation
against you, dear Daughter Zion!”

24-25
We’ve heard the news,
and we’re as limp as wet dishrags.
We’re paralyzed with fear.
Terror has a death grip on our throats.
Don’t dare go outdoors!
Don’t leave the house!
Death is on the prowl.
Danger everywhere!

26
“Dear Daughter Zion: Dress in black.
Blacken your face with ashes.
Weep most bitterly,
as for an only child.
The countdown has begun . . .
six, five, four, three . . .
The Terror is on us!”

27-30 God gave me this task:

“I have made you the examiner of my people,
to examine and weigh their lives.
They’re a thickheaded, hard-nosed bunch,
rotten to the core, the lot of them.
Refining fires are cranked up to white heat,
but the ore stays a lump, unchanged.
It’s useless to keep trying any longer.
Nothing can refine evil out of them.
Men will give up and call them ‘slag,’
thrown on the slag heap by me, their God.”
The Message (MSG)

Lucifer may have won more things than he lost in his epic battle with the Almighty. He went away with several things, according to Milton’s Paradise Lost:
An unconquerable will, the study of revenge, immortal hate, the courage to never submit or yield, and the hope of waging eternal war.
I might add that it seems he kept his place as a musical genius, the angel of light, and the progenitor of deceit. His beauty and attraction are as strong as ever. So, in some ways – however twisted – he won.

A poem is spontaneous combustion
of a man set on fire from the inside
Truth is the fuel and words its flame.
It is a rising on the ring of fire
gushing out in lava to the world
demanding a reaction:
move out of the way
or let it burn a hole in you.
True poetry will not be ignored
It is the perfume of life
extracted from the skunk of babble;
or diamonds from crushed carbon
deep underground on the moons of Jupiter
Every common thing consists of carbon
But then so do diamonds. . . and poetry.
JLH 2007
Reply

Marriage: It’s Child’s Play
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
Aristotle
In our rapacious crusade to equalize all under government, I wonder if we have stopped to think about the endgame of this philosophy? Plainly, where will this notion take us that fairness and equality is our highest value and must be both believed and enforced? The most obvious litmus test of equality today is in the institution of marriage. Tampering with the millenia-old tradition of marriage has resulted in some bizarre offspring. It started with the seemingly innocuous notion of a fair-minded approach to marriage: one responsible adult with another responsible willing adult. Now we have occasional stories of age-difference marriage. For example, a 52-year old man “marrying” a 26-year old man. No one is raising their eyebrows over this. Looks like father-son to me.
When Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie seemed okay with their daughter identifying her gender as male, it seemed okay with them and consequently created no great stir among their sycophantic adorers. Now it is becoming common for children to choose their own gender, and to most of us it seems fair and in line with their rights.
Well, if children can choose their own gender and act on that life choice, why then can they not make other fundamental choices about their lives?
Why can’t they choose their own parents, or no parents? Why can’t they choose their own life partner? Well, you say, they are minors – under 18. Well, that magic number does not stop them from choosing their own gender or the bathroom they want.
My proposition is this: Given that having children, or the potential for having children, is no longer a prerequisite for forming a family and as the direct result of traditional marriage; and given that two people of the same gender are now allowed to “marry,” ruling out the need for procreation to create family or define a marriage; then what would prevent two people – of whatever age – to “marry” for “love.”
What am I saying?
I’m saying that, since the walls have fallen down around the meaning of marriage, nothing can stop anyone from getting “married.” Nothing will be able to stop a “bisexual” from marrying one person of each gender, as long a “love,” which is the bottom line, is claimed. Nothing will be able to stop groups from marrying. I’ve seen eighth grade girls making posters: Amy + Karen + Jessica, so this thinking has already crept over into young minds. Am I crazy? Well, if male/female gender is no longer a factor, why would the number two put a limit on marriage? And if biological gender differences is no longer a factor and the number two can be brought into question, why would the age of 18 be a factor either.
As I said before, if our generation doesn’t protect marriage, then the next generation will not be able to protect family.
It will also seem reasonable for government or society at large to make equal, claims on the loyalty of a child that the parents make. This will look perfectly just, reasonable, and even good. If “family” can mean anything, can’t it mean the “family of man” i.e., society or government?
The answer is a solemn “yes.”

I need a center for my life today, a rock I can anchor to, something unmovable. It’s you. I call out to you from a soul that seems intent on being adrift, an amateur Spiderman who is falling and desperately shooting out unsuccessful webs, trying to attach them somewhere. I tend to look to new or changing relationships, to my bank account, to plans for the future, to my past skills. I find that none of those things buttresses me, none feel solid in my grasping hands. They are all like water droplets that fall suddenly off a leaf once its moved. Nothing temporal and earth-born soaks into my soul to refresh me.
Heaven is what I need—an infusion of everlasting serum, a slab of granite truth underneath my path, a word that drips from God like cool water and forms a stalactite over my head, pointing downward directly to an undeserving, pitiable me.

Lord, don’t let my life become frayed, like so many ribbons flying in the wind. The scissors of time are relentless and loud, snapping and clipping away at the shredded ends. This can’t go on forever. Eventually the scissors will get too close to my fingers and I will have to let go. I must have something more solid than streamers—fleeting desires, thoughts, and plans. I must have a solid core—packed, dense. It must be you-there-with-me. That’s my core! Then I can be surrounded by my surface self, the part everyone sees. Don’t ever let my true insides burst out like renegade rubber bands, so that all the world can gawk at my effusive and gushing unwound naked self. But when I bounce into a room or onto a sidewalk, let me remain coiled up tight, my spirit impenetrable by anything worldly, fleshly, carnal. Yet remain permeable to your Spirit, soaking in your rain and dew, the moisture from your breathed Word and heart-whispers.

I wish I could say it in a way that could really change me, and in which I could get a check-plus mark on my daily schoolwork paper. But, I don’t know how to be honest being so self-deceptive for so long. I could lie on the floor of a supermarket and kick and scream this prayer like a three-year old child, and it might get some attention, but not the right kind. I could put my hand in paint and ask you to be very still, then place it gently against your chest. Removing it I would giggle with glee because now it’s permanent and you can’t get away from my touch. Or I could ask you to go with me and be my invisible Friend, like Germs, the imaginary dog.

I have an idea: I will hide somewhere in you, and then laugh as people try to find Me. Would that work? But I’m so big and bumbling and loud that that would be hard. So, that is the dilemma I find myself in. My faults rumble in like a Sherman tank hung with Christmas bells. Can you help me get quiet. I need stealth. Hammer me into a shape that won’t bounce back onto people and let them see me. I desperately want people to see you, Jesus!

Thanks for listening today. If you were a regular guy, you wouldn’t have understood this bizarre prayer.

Some places in our lives are anchored to the bottom of the ocean by 360-pound chain links, unmovable. Others though are held tenuously by a delicate, intricately-woven spider’s web. Sometimes we stand Atlas-like, bearing up a cruel world, or like Samson, a pillar of strength in our own temple. But alternately, there is also the singular thread we grip tightly with two blanched fists, our back arched, head back, and feet dangling–all the while rotating slowly and straining the uncertain hold.

Either way, we eventually fall, from the weight above and below, or from our own weight.

I like the way Lois Lane put it as Superman zoomed under her as she was falling from a skyscraper and said, “I’ve got you!”

Looking up at him and then down at the ground, she asked the question we all unconsciously ask of God, “But who’s got you?”

There is only one person who can anchor us like a rock, yet hold us as tenderly as a feather. Only one person whose back still holds up the cruel world and keeps the roof from crumbling down in our earthly temple. Only one who can catch us when we’re falling, commanding gravity itself.

So, chains or spider webs, fleshly brawn or pillars of stones–however I stand,I trust.

Or dangling by a thread or in accelerating breathtaking descent–however I fall, I trust.

The looting and violence in Ferguson Missouri should not surprise us. It is simply a reflection of worldview. Opposite philosophies where fair means either opportunity or distribution, justice means law or vendetta, and wealth means commerce or conquest.

The lawlessness sown by Eric Holder is bearing fruit. People now feel they can cherry-pick the laws they like. Our attorney general sees laws through a racial lens. The danger of this is that if we rule out laws indiscriminately, we diminish the law as a whole.

I was struck today as I read I Samuel 15 where Jonathan dipped his staff in a honeycomb and got strengthened for battle. He was unaware that his father King Saul had forbidden anyone to eat a single crumb that day. When the men saw that Jonathan had eaten, they slaughtered animals from the herds and ate them, blood and all. Then, and only then, was Jonathan punished for eating honey.
I see a striking parallel in our culture today. When liberties, specifically religious liberties are restricted, the result affects the whole culture.

The government seems intent on punishing us for the honey, the freedom to spread the refreshing Word of God, while ignoring the consequences of removing God as the overseer of public peace, order and governance. When there is no God, soon there are no absolutes, and laws become numerous, weighty, and oppressive. The new society soon experiences the law being both arbitrarily enforced and universally ignored.

The removal of Gideon Bibles from US Naval base hotels and the rioting in the streets of St. Louis seem to have no connection. But, when you read the story of Jonathan and the honey, its charm seems to have no connection to a subsequent ravishing hunger that leads to the drinking of blood.

Spread the honey around, and there will be no occasion to shed blood.

When a free society creates a protected class, all institutions and individuals will eventually be forced to serve the interests of that class. Those new ‘human’ rights will trump all other rights, even the First Amendment.

Speech: you can’t criticize the protected class.
Religion: you can’t question the behavior of the protected class.
Press: you can’t print anything which would ‘shame’the protected class.
Assembly: you can’t exclude the protected class for any reason.

This doesn’t protect anyone’s rights, only their feelings.

We attempted to create a protected class when we instituted affirmative action. It has not has the desired effects and resulted in strange quotas, lawsuits, and not a little resentment.

We are doing the same thing today by creating a protected class based on sexual orientation. It we think it will be settled once this new class has marriage rights in every state, think again. It will only be the beginning of long, protracted confusion, contradictory regulations, family lawsuits, court battles, and broken lives.

Roe v. Wade was thought to have solved the rights of a newly protected class (the unwanted pregnant woman). But forty years later we find ourselves still fighting that battle, with the most vulnerable as its victims.

The Civil Rights Act of 1965 was supposed to settle all claims of racial injustice. We are coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of that watershed event next year, and we are no closer to a settlement than we were then.

My point is: we cannot safely, let alone constitutionally, create a protected class. As Ayn Rand said, The smallest minority is the individual.

America is not too big to fail,

but it’s too important to neglect;

It’s too beautiful to be marred;

too costly to be thrown away.

We can’t surrender our nation to evil.

America is gold, and it cannot exist for common purposes.

It mustn’t end up on the ash heap of history

like Persia, or Egypt or Greece or Rome.

We owe future generations a free America;

we have to give no less than what we received

Our freedoms and values were fought for,

Labored over, sweat out, bled out over

God has blessed America and we must

cherish it,

care for it

and preserve it

Too many lives have been lost for us to

forget who we are.

Too much blood has been shed for us to

hang our heads

and throw up our hands

We have to speak up; we are compelled

to resist darkness and the forces of hell

Ask the soldiers in Flanders Field about income equality

Ask the thousands under Omaha Beach about gov’t dependency

Ask the cold ground at Gettysburg if this nation is worth saving

Ask the sailors on the USS Cole if Muslims should be invited

to pray on the White House lawn

Ask the chaplains who died in our World Wars if

“So help me God” is a worthy Air Force motto

Ask Seal Team Six’s widows if Islam is a peaceful religion

Ask the 5,281 Iraq War dead if they want a muslim advisor in the White House

Ask the 1,432 Afghanistan War dead if they want a mosque at Ground Zero

What will we say to those soldiers we meet one day

How will we excuse these things? What will we tell them.

Here’s what you tell them:

Tell the Band of Brothers who buried their buddies

about how we condone and even lionize men lying with men

Tell the paraplegics from roadside bombs about the Americans

who are tweeting and sexting on their Obama-phones

Tell the lonely soldiers in far-away deserts away from their wives

about the low-life fornicators carousing in warm beds spawning

illegitimate children

Tell the soldiers who can’t get health insurance or who are waiting for benefits

            about the bums here who are falsely on disability and

unemployment compensation

Tell our men and women who are eating from tin cans about

            Food

If we don’t take a stand, then we be telling our grandchildren

about the days:

When a man was different from a woman

And when love was sacrifice and not indulgence

When courtship was an ideal and marriage was holy

and there was a virgin in every househould,

When children had no doubt about their gender,

When teachers told kids the truth

and citizens had moral fiber

When churches were on fire

            When the name of Jesus Christ was not thrown around

and people trembled at the word of God

When righteousness was a common word

and people feared the judgment and wrath of the Almighty.

Will every former generation of Americans and people all over the world

Rise up and condemn us at the judgment?

I hope not!

God bless America. America bless God!

Honor and tribute and thanksgiving and blessing to our veterans and troops

Glory and honor and power and majesty and dominion to our God!

Salvation belongs to our God!