Of flesh and truth

By Johnny D. Symon

As I put down the final lines of last week's ed and continued to ponder on all facets concerning the right to own and apportion personal property, I also began to lower myself to comprehend the depths of a Liberal politico's recent absurd statement:

" ... the Spartans trained their people to be homosexuals,
because they're better fighters."

This statement serves as a prime example of what's commonly termed "economical with the truth."

I regard Mr Gravel's statement as absurd because it's an isolated one, quarantined from the rest of history, chiefly the history of the Spartans, because as homosexuality, group sex, orgies, and child molesting formed part of the everyday life of ancient Greece, its days were numbered. Pretty soon they discovered that their gods had departed and the Roman Empire and the armies of Israel would wipe them off their map. Israeli soldiers were taught to be heterosexual, yet they burned out the Geeks who, according to Mr Gravel, held the "advantage" of being limp-wristed, spear-pokin', gay-boy warriors.

Apparently Gravel's enthusiasm for some kind of Ancient Greek Gay Third Reich does not spill over into the contrary wisdom contained in something we still call the Holy Bible.

In Romans chapter one, Paul the apostle begins his discourse to the Romans by alluding to two entities, namely the Greeks and the Barbarians, and as the chapter unfolds he fixes down on the most important items framing the death and extinction of ancient Greece and its people. He said,

"Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped
and served the creature more than the Creator,
who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections:
for even their women did change the natural use into
that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the
woman, burned in their lust one toward another;
men with men working that which is unseemly,
and receiving in themselves that recompense
of their error which was meet."

— Romans 1:25-27

What the apostle Paul describes above as "vile affections," Mr Gravel presents as "positive attributes," a dichotomy of views that must be addressed, especially since Mr Gravel is currently poking toward the Presidentials.

Can the average Christian, Jew, or Muslim voter find common ground within their own Books to accommodate Mr Gravel's dubious wisdom? Well, the answer is a strong negative, for even in the Old Testament the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed due to those very acts. In fact one section of this Biblical account serves to outline the genuine nature of sodomy, where it quotes its immediate proponents as stating;

"And they said, Stand back. And they said again,
This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will
needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with
thee, than with them."

— Genesis 19:9

There is in my opinion an even clearer translation of the above verse from the original Hebrew text of VaYerah;

"... This one man came here as an immigrant, and
now all of a sudden, he has set himself up as
a judge! We'll give it to you worse than to them!"

"We'll give it to you worse than to them!" clearly proves that sodomy is not an act of love, but of violent aggression. Ultimately this people's fate was signed and sealed, and so too followed the Greeks. The life and times of ancient mankind, through Greece, Rome, onto the present day, are one and the same. We have a tendency to call that which is evil "good," and that which is good, "evil."

But as I pointed myself Westward last week, turning my life and thoughts away from Europe, yet another example of the fall of mankind displayed itself in the heart of Spain, for in the same 24 hour period both a famous writer and a famous Spanish soccer player passed away. Both were indeed a tragic loss to the Spanish people, but something else was for me of greater tragedy, for as the news broke of the loss of both, the Spanish media discarded the writer in favor of the soccer player.

Without a doubt, soccer player Antonio Puerta's passing away, age 22, and leaving his seven and a half month pregnant wife behind, was tragedy enough, but for the media to overshadow the death of Francisco Umbral, having passed away after several years of ill health and being the writer of more than 80 books, and a man who challenged the Spanish world to think deeper and more clearly on a plethora of subjects, was in my opinion an almost unforgivable sin. Francisco Umbral lived according to the advice of Francis Bacon, who exhorted us to ...

"Let the mind be enlarged ...
to the grandeur of the mysteries,
and not the mysteries contracted
to the narrowness of the mind."

Quite recently Francisco stated that the Spanish people had become weak and feeble thinkers, and for me the Spanish media proved that point when they flooded the TV and radio, magazines and newspapers, with Antonio Puerta's death, neglecting to pay tribute in any deserved form to the life, service, and work of the great Francisco Umbral. It took those out-with the media, except for those from the El Mundo newspaper and a few others, together with quite a few Conservative politicians, to fill the void that the media neglected to fill. They preferred to follow the sporting ways of ancient Greece and Rome, to elevate something least important above that which is most important of all; they chose to worship sporting prowess over the greatness of God-made human wisdom as it reaches upward to reconnect itself to the Divine.

But you know? I believe God works in mysterious ways, and the death of a great Spanish thinker and a great Spanish sportsman could well hold a mysterious example, for the sportsman's surname, "Puerta," means "door," whereas the writer's, "Umbral," means "lintel," and the message therefore is clear because no doorway could exist without a strong supporting lintel above it. Alternatively, a lintel can serve as the bearer above the entrance to an open threshold, with or without a door.

"He (God) delighteth not in the strength of the horse:
he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man.
The LORD taketh pleasure in them that fear him,
in those that hope in his mercy."

— Psalm 147:10,11

The Greek Empire evolved first into its spartan ways, the ways of the lusts of the flesh, and then disappeared up its own self-fashioned black hole, and the Roman Empire soon followed suit.

Now I'm witnessing the decline and fall of the West through a similar procedure. We're becoming a "Tyrannous-sore-a$$-wretch," Masters of our extinction.


Will next year prove to be the proverbial "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," and Gravel to the White House? Somehow I doubt it. But with the road we've chosen to travel over the past few decades, I'm starting to think we've earned it.

We don't need a new start in 2008. We need a new stop!

© Johnny D. Symon