the Minotaur metaphor from Yanis V.

The day after we arrived in Greece for a vacation, they

held an election there.

The leftist Syriza party won, propelling Alexis Tsipras into the office of Prime Minister. With no delay, Mr. Tsipras appointed Yanis Varoufakis as the new Finance Minister for Greece.

Before that week was over, these two men were visiting national leaders all over Europe. They were abruptly leaping into the Continental fracas of unbalanced financial equilibrium between their bankrupting government and the Euro creditor overlords up north.

Messers T and V immediately let it be known that their negotiating strategy on behalf of the Greek people would be very different from that of their predecessors. Austerity was not working to solve the problem, and would no longer be tolerated by the poor people of Greece. And it was time to acknowledge that fact. Something had to change.

That was about 3 and a half months ago. Now, in May 2015, the then-newly-appointed finance minister Mr. Varoufakis has already been replaced; he is now moving on to other roles in the international order of things (if "order" is an appropriate word for whatever it is that holds our nations together.)

As I write this, on a Sunday morning in May, in the USA, I am 2/3 of the way through reading Mr. Varoufakis' book The Global Minotaur;

http://www.amazon.com/The-Global-Minotaur-Financial-Controversies/dp/1780324502

I can tell you I am not surprised that his role as a negotiator was so brief. The man is a truth-teller. (of the leftist type; there are truth-tellers on both the "left" and the "right".)

As a regular ole conservative-leaning working-stiff kind of guy, I've done quite a bit of reading on this financial Crisis that has engulfed us since the fall of '08. Mr. V's explanation of that 6-year devolving tsunami is the easiest to understand that I have seen.

Yanis' strategy is centered on what we call these days a narrative. That is to say, a kind of story. He converts the whole unfolding circus of events into a story based upon the ancient Greek mythical tale of a terrible flesh-devouring beast, the Minotaur. If this sounds far-fetched, it is.

My conservative brethren these days disdain the narrative approach to elucidating current events; they prefer, as Sgt. Friday used to say back in the day. . . just the facts, ma'am.

As if such a thing--separating facts from fluffy hype--were possible in this day and time of cyber bewilderment. Even statistics, raw numbers, are near-nonsense nowadays; they're almost useless for making sense of contemporary fiscal/financial conundrums.

One has to survive by intuition in the 21st century.

There's "spin" imposed on everything! Consider the unemployment figures that the BLS cranks out every month. Talking heads await those stupid numbers on the first Friday of every month, so they can have something to talk about, forming projections and predictions about future events based on stuff that already happened last month. Looking for the "trend."

To hell with the trend! What's the truth?

Unemployment rate, or Labor participation rate?--you tell me which one really tells the tale.

It's like the CPI, Consumer Price Index. They leave fuel and food costs out of the equation, when those two factors comprise the biggest impact on every "middle class" household budget. Go figure.

But I digress.

Here's this lefty, Mr. Varoufakis, an economist. He writes a very interesting book, using the Minotaur analogy narrative, and helps me understand what the hell has been happening in the world of money, which is to say the real world.

And though he claims to be some kind of neo-Marxist, I don't care. If some conservative can do a better job of explaining why the free market has been buried under a landfill of toxic assets and leveraged finance-babel, let him/her do so.

I've blown my wad here in ranting, which is something I hate to see in other blatherers online, so I'll not weary you with more of this grievance;

I'll not explain the Greek's minotaurial metaphor. Except to say it involves the global recycling of economic surpluses since the post-WWII Bretton Woods financial arrangement that slanted everything in the world toward American advantage.

But now, since 1971, when Nixon shut down the gold window, all of that US-favoring international baggage has been lost in an airport somewhere between Brussels and Beijing and so the great recycling flow of surpluses has reversed. So that now it morphs into recycling deficits instead of surpluses and the winners will someday be losers and vice versa and so austerity is for the birds and now Mr. V thinks the Bretton Woods potentates should have listened to Mr. Keynes in 1944 instead of Harry Dexter White.

Or something like that. More about this later, probably next week after I finish the book. I suppose I'll have to jump over to Hayek or Schumpeter or Mr. Volcker for some right-leaning controlled financial disintegration explanations after this tragi-comedic death-toggle with Greek mythology.



Glass Chimera

Be aware of Greeks bearing debts

Greece is, you see, the opposite of California, and I'll tell you why.

The first thing is: Greece is very old. California is, on the other hand, very new.

The "West"--that is to say, California and all the rest of us New World types-- actually started in Greece about three thousand years ago. Greece was the "West" because it was westward from what was, in ancient times, the Old Country, the region we now call the Middle East, or Levant, or Holy Land, depending on your point of view.

Long ago, after Alexander and his military legacy turned the Persians back at the battle of Marathon, long about 490 b.c.e., the people of the Greek city-states began joining together to form an historical entity that we now call Ancient Greece.

And since that time, the whole thing of Greek culture moved westward and northward over a couple of millennia of time. The great thrust of Western thought, anchored in a mental discipline called philosophy and a political idea called Democracy, inspired empires and nations from those ancient days until the present day.

We still dream about governing ourselves in this thing call a democracy, but it has never quite manifested in a way authentic to the original concept.

Probably never will, but it's a nice thought.

A couple hundred years after the Greek Golden Age, the Romans came along with their Republic and their empire. Much of their marvelously innovative empire-building was rooted in Greek thought and mathematics (Euclid and Pythagoras). A lot of what the Romans did was direct imitation of Greek stuff. A good example of this is their omnipresent use of Columns for holding buildings up.

You've heard of Doric columns, Ionic columns?

That's Greek stuff. Except that--guess what!--the Doric and Ionic names originated across the Aegean sea from Greece, in a region called Asia (Minor), which is now Turkey. Go figure!

A couple hundred years after the Greek Golden Age, along came the Romans. What they ended up doing was much grander and more elaborate than what the Greeks did. They took Greek columns and turned them into a universal architectural art-form. Those two earlier Column designs--the Doric and the Ionian-- were not fancy enough to suit the Roman sense of grandiosity. So the Romans decorated the capitals (tops) of their columns with new, leafy frou-frou carvings and castings which came to be called Corinthian.

The Corinthian name, however, was not Roman, but Greek. Corinth was an important city in Greece. So once again, go figure.

Figuring is important to the whole advance of Western civilization. Everywhere Greeks and their European progeny went, they were figuring stuff out.

Thus did Western Civilization expand over millenia of time. Along came the Germans, French, Spanish, British, all of them making ever grander plans, striving to construct their own versions of civilization.

When the Greco-Roman enterprise got to the big Sea at the end of Europe--aka the End of the Earth--its expansion was delayed for a few hundred years. But then along came Cristoforo Columbo and Presto!, Western civilization took a grand leap across the Atlantic Ocean.

Now we Americans know about Boston, New Yawk, Philly, etc etc etc; and we are intimately familiar with Paul Revere and Grampa George Washington. Why we even know about Charleston and Savannah and all that unreconstructed goings-on down south, but what's important here is California!

Why?

Because Americans are adventurers. Our forefathers and foremothers hit the ground running after we got off the boat in Baltimore or Ellis Island or wherever it was.

Before you knew it, we were all the way over on the far other edge of the continent, in California, baby!

Or bust! That's what the Okies said.

And that was, if you think about it, the very end of the Greek frontier. From Athens to Anaheim, westward ho all along the way. That's all she wrote.

The westward expansion of Greek culture ended at California. It couldn't go any farther. Why, even when they o'erleaped the wide Pacific, what did they find?

China!

It doesn't get any older than that--China. No Westward expansion there, although the Brits made a few dents, and of course there was Marx and all that People's trial and bloody error.

Now We Americans have a saying: as California goes, so goes the nation.

That means that, from the 1849 Gold Rush on, the great exploratory thrust of American ingenuity and creativity originates in place called California.

The land of fruits and nuts.

And broccoli, lettuce, grapes, wine, silicon, integrated circuit chips, beach boys, beach girls, computers, iPhones, movies and pop culture, etc etc etc.

So once all the migrant Europeans got themselves planted on the East Coast back in the 1800s, they built so many cities, and built them so quickly, that before you know it they got overcrowded and pulled up stakes to head West.

Go West, young man, wrote Horace Greeley, about a hundred and fifty years ago.

And very quickly. We developed America from raw earth, from Schenectady to San Francisco in less than a hundred years, blazing a yankee trail all along the way.

And when we hit up against that great Pacific rim, the grand tide of our exuberance struck a sea wall and then it swayled back the other way: Disney in Paris, McDonald's in Athens, Kennedy in Berlin!

But now--and my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars--our grand millenia-old Restatement of Greco-Roman expansionism strikes, back at its ancient nascence, an Athenian rampart.

So I see the next phase of history this way: As Greece goes, so goes the West. And this is what it looks like, according to a pic I recently snapped in Athens:

Which is to say, a propped up portal. Where can we go from here?

Glass Chimera

Persian ram, Grecian goat

If you wonder where all that Iranian bluster comes from,

take a look at what in Persia, long ago, was done.

Out in the Zagros mountains about 2500 years ago,

a band of Persians came together to put on quite a show.

They spread out in a way to make the world's first empire;

from Nile to Indus, from Caspian to Gulf, they did not tire.

A fellow named Cyrus, who was known to be Great,

subjugated peoples far and wide to start this ancient state.

Before anyone named it Iran, or Persia, it was called Achaemenid,

like the name of former President Ahmadinejad, and what he thought they did.



After Cyrus the Great had died, and also Cambyses his son,

a Magian usurper tried to abscond their royal Persian run,

but Darius, distant relative of Cyrus, slew that pretender,

then gave credence to Zarathustra, and whatever Ahuramazda might render.

Darius the Mede, who ruled from Persepolis to Phrygia,

extended Achaeminid lands from the Hindus to Lydia.

But Persian conquest was in Greece contested;

its expansion was halted-- at Marathon arrested.

Then young Pheideppides ran 26 miles from Marathon to Athens

to tell Athenians about their defeat of Darius' Persian I'ryans.



This fierce Persian/Greek contention had been foretold in a biblical vision

by the Hebrew prophet, Daniel, with symbolic precision.

He saw a ferocious horned goat attacking a great horned ram

which is what happened, metaphorically, when Alexander conquered anciant Iran.

These days it seems them I'ryans are on the move again,

now declaring Islamic Republic, Shariah, and all things Shia Mohammedan.

Their hegemony looks restrictive, legalistic and Islamist totalitarian,

with dissidents imprisoned, like Daniel in lions' den.

Now ayatollahs want to raise new Islami-I'ryan Persian empire

with Shia militia, Hesbollah, and centrifuged ire.



If we be lucky today, the Greeks will again stop them Persians.

But it may not happen; Greece has gone broke with too many dispersions.

So what will the world do when I'ryans insurge to destroy Arab leagues?

Will it be like the last Reich, in Aryan blitzkriegs?



Smoke

What Glezos the Greek says

Nursing homes across the world are full of old folks who would love to tell you a thing or two about how things were back in the day. But how often does someone (you or me) stop to listen to their incomprehensible memories? It seems they are just rambling on about things that happened seventy or eighty years ago.

For most young folks these days, including me at age 63, life seems to be whizzing by at 70 miles an hour. So why should we spare the time to consider what events were shaping the world 70 years ago?

Nevertheless, such shared recollections can happen, and be beneficial, and even in a very big way.

Take, for instance, the infamous Greek Debt Crisis. In the midst of it, here's one old Greek over in the left corner going on and on about stuff that happened 70 or 80 years ago. What's his problem?

Well first, we need to understand that the old guy is not just any old Greek. This man was there when "it" happened, and he lived to tell about it.

"It" being Nazi occupation during the Second Big War. Mr. Manolis Glezos was there, and he did live to tell about it. And he wants you to know about it.

You should know about it.

Mr. Glezos was not only there when the Germans took over Greece in 1941-- he resisted the Nazi way of doing things in a very big, and public, way.

Now we know the situation in Greece has greatly improved since those dark days of the Second Big War. Make no mistake about that. But push comes to shove in this debt-burdened year of 2015. Half of Europe (the northern half) is twisting Greek arms for repayment of huge, admittedly irresponsible debts.

So it's no surprise that an old geezer like Manolis Glezos would remember--and call the world's attention to--what Europe and the Greeks did to bail Germany out of their failed attempt to conquer the world back in the day.

1953, to be exact. That was the year of the Agreement on German External Debts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Agreement_on_German_External_Debts

But is debt forgiveness that was given to Germany in 1953, a few years after the Second Big War, even relevant in today's fast and furious world?

You bet your sweet drachmas it's relevant! Lest the Greeks be forced to drop out of the Euro and fall back into their drachmas, leaving the other Euro nations with a dismembered collection of blithering technocrats.

Mr. Manolis Glezos, now the grand old man of the Syriza party, ought to be pleased about how far we've come since 1941, and here's why: His now-majority party, and the Greek people, are presently contending with EU technocrats and bankers over austerity issues. As difficult as this current debt impasse is to resolve, such crisis is small change compared to surviving the Nazi occupation that was imposed on Greeks during World War II.

In the contemporary war of words and EU budgets, Wolfgang Schaeuble, Angela Merkel and the taxpayers of Europe are surely more amenable opponents than Hitler and the blitzkrieging Wehrmacht of the Third Reich.

Appropriately, a 93-year-old guy is trying to drag the issue of that debt forgiveness for Germany, back up into highlight of Euro-consciousness.

But as I mentioned above, Mr Glezos is no ordinary old geezer Greek, and here's why:

Back in the day--April, 1941--Manolis did something that forever defines and inspires the very character of the Greek people. The situation was this: the bullying wehrmacht of Nazi Germany had just rolled into Greece and taken control of the country. One of the first things the German soldiers did was to publicize their newfound dominance by raising a swastika flag atop the Akropolis, which is a great rocky outcrop in the middle Athens, and an ancient national landmark.

Manolis Glezos--only 19 years old at the time--along with his compatriot Apostolos Santos, climbed under cover of night, up the stony face of the Akropolis, to the highest place, where the Nazi flag was flapping in the breeze. Their mission was to establish, in a highly visible way, the resolute resistance of the Greek people against the tyranny of Nazi occupation.

When the daring duo reached that flagpole, they lowered the swastika rag, shredded it, and replaced it with the bold blue and white stripes of the flag of Greece.

This, the people of Greece never forget. Furthermore, this American will never forget about it, after being told of the incident while I was in Athens a few weeks ago.

Now with a little help from the old hero, Manolis Glezos, Europeans will not neglect to remember what their nations did collectively back in 1953, so that Germany could recover and rebuild.

Nor should the Germans forget (nor the French, Belgians, nor everybody else) to remember what creditable grace was extended to their defeated parents/grandparents back in the day--post World War II.

Forget it not, while working together toward a restructured Greek debt in 2015.

After all, is mismanagement of a national economy a more grievous offense that trying to conquer the whole damn world?

We think not.

Get your house in order, Europe, and give the Greeks a break. Let them get busy again reconstructing their nation, instead of being strapped to the whipping post of old debts. They can rebuild, as they have been doing for 2500 years. They've done it before, and they can do it again, with a little help from m'friends.

You should know there are bigger problems on the horizon for Europe than old debts between members. You better get it together. It's time for the strong to bolster the weak, not humiliate them.

Humiliation is what ISIS does, not civilized Europe.

Smoke

Back to the future of Religion

Human history is full of walls. Everywhere people have gone upon the earth, they have built walls. Walls can keep good stuff in and bad stuff out, or the other way around.

For instance, consider this wall, which we encountered in Rome when we were there a few weeks ago:

Beyond this wall lies the body of Western Civilization. . .

if you consider the history of the Christian Church as a primary trunk of Western Civilization.

Not everybody does of course. Some folk are not believers, but rather thinkers, like the early, pre-Christian Greeks. . . Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. etc. . . Descartes, Locke, Marx . . .etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_philosophy

Many people in Western Civilization understand the difference between thinking and believing this way: they are mutually exclusive, two different animals. You either spend your life thinking, or you spend your life believing what is taught to you.

This is not true; it's a false dichotomy.

I myself am living example of this. I am a Christian believer, and yet I do like to think analytically about everything, including faith itself.

This I have concluded: Faith is what you find at the end Thought.

In other words, when you've exhausted your brain in trying to figure life out, then you start believing in something besides thinking itself.

In my youth, I considered the Catholic Church, in which I was raised. And I decided it was for the birds.

I took a look at Philosophy, and decided I couldn't not understand enough of it to make sense of the real world.

I studied the Law of Moses, and learned that I could not live by it.

Recently, I studied a little bit about Mohammed, because, well, you know. . . he and his followers are all the rage. Mohammed was a very smart guy, probably even a genius, but he was obviously a man, like me and you. His visions and ultimate indoctrinations were human, not divine. The outcome was True Religion by Intimidation.

Jesus Christ, on the other hand, laid down his life rather than settle for merely human solutions to our predicament. Now there's a man I could follow, even though he went to the cross and suffered death. He was pure goodness, and I could follow him through death's door, all the way to eternal life.

Of course that's what Peter, his right-hand man, said about Jesus: I will follow you.

Then he went on to stumble through life, like me or you or any other human being. I look forward to interviewing him in heaven. I can relate to his resolution to follow Christ, even though he screwed up on more than one occasion.

A lot of things were done, in subsequent Christian history, in Peter's name. There's the Chair of St.Peter, St. Peter's Basilica, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church

Which leads me back to Walls phenoma. . .people building walls. Consider the one pictured above, in the great city of Rome. This wall was built by the Catholics to protect the museum part of St.Peter's Basilica (in the Vatican.) Pretty impressive wall too, don't you think. I was quite moved by its immensity; that's why I snapped the photo. It seemed so . . . medieval.

On the other side of it, as I later learned, is the Vatican Museum, which is why I say therein lies the body of Western Civilization . . .

In a metaphorical kind of way, and even then only if you're a person inclined to place value on religious traditions and institutions.

Like Tevya, you know. . .Tradition! tradition. Tradition.

Well guess what. Life goes on. That day in Rome, after the big brown wall image was safely in the iPhone, Pat and I resumed our walking tour of the city. It was a beautiful experience.

But just so you'll know what a backward thinker I am, here's a different photo that I had snapped about a week earlier, in Athens:

This is a statue of Constantine XI Palaiologos. He was the last emperor of the Byzantine empire.

He was killed by the invading Ottoman Turks in 1453. He died defending Constantinople, the epicenter of Orthodox Christianity during that period of history. The empire that he ruled, the Byzantine, had been trying to build a Wall, of sorts, a wall of Christian religion and dominion that would withstand the onslaught of Muslim Ottomans, but Byzantium could not withstand the Ottomans. So now the place is called Istanbul.

But such is the fate of Western Civilization's aspirations for world dominion. Orthodox Christendom and the Byzantine empire that defended it could not stand against the onslaught of Islam in 1453.

Later however, the Ottoman empire suffered its own demise, in 1924, after Western Civilization imposed a new victory over the Ottoman Caliphate in the aftermath of World War I.

Alas, nowadays we Civilized persons of the West face a new Islamic Pretender. This one, arising in ancient Syrian lands, is claiming to recover the lapsed Caliphate mantle which had been worn for a few centuries by the Turks, even though the arrogant ISIS brutes do not acknowledge the Ottoman legacy as a legitimate Caliphate.

Consequently, we survivors of Western Civilization are now building a new network of Walls: digital walls, firewalls, psychological walls, spiritual and moral walls, to arrest the shock and awe of "violent extremists."

Ultimately, we will have to erect some military walls, both defensive and offensive, before it is all over with, the end of the world or whatever.

Or just the end of Western Civilization. Then where will the body lie?

Whatever happens, our opposition to the jayvee-team fascists of the Khilafah will not end as Constantine XI's last stand ended in 1453; nor is it likely to be enshrined within the walls of the Vatican Museum.



Smoke

A Tale of #GreekDebt

A New swelling of national Debt, in a country as old as the hills
compels northern EU partners to halt Greece's spending thrills.
So they bind up Hellenic budgets with a cord called Austerity;
It's the only way, they say, to get back to Euro-prosperity.

A few years down the road, and Greece is really hurting;
the Greeks are sighing, even crying: this Austerity's not working.
We need our jobs back; we're tired of all these layoffs,
Just give us something Greek to do besides supplying EU payoffs.

Now along comes a liberator, a homegrown politician, Alexis Agonistes.
He's got homegrown renown and resolve unbound, to set free the Economy of Greece.
Chosen by the Austere-stretched people of that ancient Hellenic polity,
Alexis steps up to the mike to strike, and dispose of austerity.

With his fearless finance guy, Yanis the Untamed, standing at his side,
bold Alexis tells all the Eurocrats it's time to let the Greek debt slide.
Growth is what we need, says he, invoking the holy grail of the economic world.
Just release this Troika bondage, and scrap these EU rules. Let Greek flags fly unfurled!

You've worn us out with repayment plans, and schedules without end.
Let us do the hire and fire; we'll pay you when we can,
'Cause we're Syriza 'bout strong labor, wages and good jobs for our nation,
And we will rescue our Hellen from your Troyka domination!

Now the Germans told the Belgians and the Brits told the French,
Beware Greeks bearing debts; they'll sink our Euro inch by inch.
But here's the message from Syriza, and it surely isn't funny:
Beware the Troikan horse, and Europeans demanding money.

Glass Chimera

Road to a Grecian Turn

With apology to John Keats, a new poem for 2015:

Oh, You unbridled bride of Entitlement,
Can you still afford to pay the Rent?
You, love-child of Austerity and Free-spending,
Is your ambrosia Never-ending?

Paid debts are sweet, but those unpaid are sweeter
says your new Syriza leader,
'cause we've got to get the people working,
so in Unemployment they'll not be lurking.

Ah, happy, happy days that cannot end,
as long as EU-lovers still do send
debt forgiveness and, and credits new
so you'll never bid EU adieu.



Who are these coming to the Sacrifice?
a little help from Euro friends would sure be nice.
The Germans, the French, will surely come
and Play the Games until they're done!



Oh Athenic State, on marbled path of Austerity
Can you reach that elusive peak of Victory?
Winged Athens, her goddess wings now torn away--
Has she lost her head in heat of the fray?



Oh, for ever may you live, and Greece be fair!
as long as EU pals still care.
Austerity puts Prosperity on the go--
That's all you really need to know!




Glass Chimera

The Ongoing Project: Greece

Discover



Recover



Reclaim



Renew



Rebuild



Restore and Shore up



Reinforce and Support



Repair



Reconstruct



Religion.



Remain.




Glass half-Full

Turning the World upside qomu in Greece

I am 63 years old now.
But a long time ago, when I was 27, my life changed in a big way.
I had made a mess of things, having tasted too freely of the pleasures of this world. My own lusts and weaknesses were dragging me down into a terrible moshpit of overstimulated sensuous confusion.
When I finally hit bottom, I turned to Jesus and he dragged me up out of all that depravity. He set my feet upon a rock,

and gave me a new start in life.
After a while, a year or so, of getting straightened by God and his ways and means committee, I got some definite direction. Many good things happened during those days. I met Pat, who became my life-mate, and has been so for 35 years, as of yesterday, January 26, 2015.
We gravitated to a small town in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, USA; there we joined a little New Testament church and linked up with some other like-minded Christians, many of whom were, like me, refugees from the rat-race world of 1979.
Our little flock was led, New Testament style, by a pastor, Tom.
Tom had read the Scriptures quite a bit, a lot more than I had, and he was teaching us about the message of the gospel proclaimed therein.
We had a little community of believers--all of us young, in our 20s and 30s mostly--and we were determined to do things right to live in Christian community, doing it "by the book."
The "book" being the Bible.
It was a great life. Still is, but there have been some changes.
Tom taught us quite a bit from a New Testament book called the Acts. In the Bible, Acts is the first book after the four gospels.
We learned a lot. Pat and I like to think we had a lot going for us, raising our three children in a little Christian bubble of the Holy Spirit's (and our) construction.
Tom was heavy into the book of Acts. Acts of the Apostles.
A very important part of that great narrative in Acts is this:
The eleven men (of the original "twelve apostles") who walked this earth alongside Jesus stayed in Judea after Jesus' death by crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. Then the Lord brought forth, from the Pharisee sect of the Jews, a really zealous preacher who spent most of his life traveling in the eastern Mediterranean, delivering the message of Jesus to his fellow Jews, but also to Greeks and Asians and anyone else who would listen.
I must say that, over those first twenty or so years of living in tight Christian community and implementing the gospel as preached by our pastor Tom, then Ben and others, I got a little tired of hearing about Paul all the time.
Paul this, and Paul that. What about the main man, Yeshua haMeschiach, Jesus?
But this is no simple question to answer, although the gospel itself is simple--it had to be, so that all men and women could comprehend it and receive it.
This is what frustrates intelligent people so much about the gospel--that it is so dam simple.
The gospel had to be simple so that it could be accessible to all men and women. The message is: Jesus was crucified by men for our sin (he had no sin of his own) so that we could believe in his resurrection and be rejoined with God.
Now it just so happens that today, as I write this, Pat and I are in Athens, a great city of the world. What a city! Such a city.
I love the place.
And because of what we saw and heard yesterday from Jimmy, who led us through a tour around the Aereopagus and the Acropolis, I have gained a new appreciation for old brother Paul, who traveled through here about 1,950 years ago.
Because, as Jimmy put it, Paul stood at the Aereopagus, the place where seekers gathered on a hillside in Athens, and he told all those wise folks that the "unknown" God whose identity and works so were so elusive to them--this unknown God-- had indeed been revealed to us through the eternal life of Jesus, the Christ, Messiah.
And, as Jimmy put it, Paul sought to convert these Greeks (who worshipped a multiplicity of gods) into Christians. Good luck with that, Paul!
Here's the rock from the top of which Paul probably addressed the Athenian seekers:

Quite a task that was, that Paul took unto himself.
And so I learned yesterday that Paul wasn't such a stodgy old religious guy. Rather, he was spiritual revolutionary, trying to turn the religious world upside down. And because of his trailblazing work, and the work of many others who have followed him through history, the gospel of Jesus has trickled through history and time to me, an American wandering through the city of Athens in the year 2015. Pretty revolutionary stuff. Paul did indeed "turn the world upside down."
I hope you an relate. Thanks for stopping by.

Glass Chimera