The,forgotten,secret,the,Ancie family The forgotten secret of the Ancient Greeks that shows us how

A lot of women avoid wearing nice clothes when they getpregnant because they believe that they look fat or ugly. You know that there’snothing more beautiful than a pregnant woman glowing and smiling, so youshouldn’t hide your body during p Raising a family can be challenging and stressful at times. However, the common goals and emotional, financial, and physical investments made can be a common bond between husband and wife. One that compliments their marriage relationship.Of

To every thing there is a season,and a time to every purpose under the heaven:A time to be born, and a time to die;a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;A time to kill, and a time to heal;a time to break down, and a time to build up (Ecclesiastes 3:1-3)Four of the boys at training tonight are preparing themselves fortheir first fight at our forthcoming Christians vs. Lionspromotion, scheduled for only three weeks hence. All of theselads are boxers.Three of those four - Joel, Daniel and young Dave - are friends,finishing their last year of school together. They are a greatexample of how guys from different ethnic backgrounds(Australian, Latin American, and Lebanese respectively) can stillbe the best of mates. The fourth guy, Louis, is an enormousIslander man. I’m not sure whether he’s Tongan or from the CookIslands, but he’s a gentle giant really. He reminds me ofMahendar - a regular here at the Youth Centre. They’re both big,black and burly, but with gentle hearts. Louis has a few years onthe other boys who were there tonight. He’s a natural in thering, and plays the role of the older brother very well indeed.These four boys are the cream of our crop in the fight club atthe moment. They are all capable pugilists, but more than that,they are each a good embodiment of what our club is on about -courage, integrity, self-discipline and teamwork. This isn’t tosay that none of them have ever been troublemakers. Indeed, I’vegot a court appearance coming up with one of the boys, scheduledfor shortly after his fight, and he’s on quite serious charges.Even so, I’ve seen nothing but positive growth since he joinedthe club, and I’m hoping for positive results both in his fightand in his court case.What is it that makes fight training such a powerful tool in themolding of young lives? There was a time when I thought offighting as just another form of sport. I have come to believethough that fight training taps into something deep in the malepsyche, in a way that no other sport does.When I used to talk to my old girls in the church about theproblems we had with our young people, they often used to say‘what we need is another war’. I always thought that that was aterrible thing to say - that a war was the last thing thatanybody wanted. And of course the girls didn’t really want a war.They had just experienced the benefit of being part of acommunity that had learnt to pull together through difficulttimes. And they had seen the positive effect that soldieringcould have on the lives of young men.I believe that men were made to fight. It’s part of our geneticmakeup. We may have managed to emerge from the jungle, butthere’s still a bit of the jungle in each of us, and pugilisticactivity keys right in to those ancient impulses - releasing thewild man within.This theory isn’t original to me of course. It’s part of thefabric of the Bible - there behind every great warrior-king whoshowed himself to be a ‘mighty man of God’ in battle, and behindJacob, who went toe to toe with God Himself and yet lived to talkabout it (Genesis 32)! These were men who knew how to fight andpray and bleed and serve.For a more philosophical exposition on the significance offighting, we need look no further than Plato’s Republic.For those who haven’t read it, in the Republic Socrates exploresthe concept of justice through examining both the just societyand the just individual, and then he goes on to delineate theircommon elements. On the societal level he notes that a justcommunity is made up of a number of vital components parts:rulers who govern, workers who labour, and an army that functionsto protect them both. In the individual he finds a similarconfiguration - the mind that governs the body, the limbs that dothe work, and the ‘themos’ (which is often translated as ‘temper’or ‘aggression’) that plays a parallel role in protecting theindividual. Justice in the Republic consists in having all of thecomponent parts (in either individual or society) being presentand working together properly.In the wisdom of the ancient Greeks then, the ‘themos’ is thevital third component in the human constitution, along with themind and the body. Without the ‘themos’, no individual iscomplete, and at a social level, no society will ever achieve atrue state of justice.It is my opinion that one of the negative legacies of feminism inWestern culture has been an attempt to deny the ‘themos’, whichseems to be more strongly present in men than in women. This hasbeen for the most understandable of reasons - because of theexcesses of male violence. But perhaps it’s time that we realisedthat trying to eliminate ‘themos’ from society altogether is liketrying to eliminate spiders and snakes because we find themdistasteful. We soon discover that the created order needs all ofits creatures - even those that some of us find ugly - if it isto function properly.My experience with a vast number of men is that they tend to beeither functioning as doormats to their wives and girlfriends, orthey’re beating up on them. This is a reflection of the samecrisis in dealing with the ‘themos’. When we attempt to repressthe themos’, it often spurts out in the most horrible anddestructive of forms. When we successfully repress it, weemasculate our men, so that they’re no longer able to stand upfor anything. Ironically, of course, such modern day men are notonly unable to offer any strength to society. They’re no longereven attractive to the women they sought to please.The only constructive alternative is for us to reharness the‘themos’ and channel it creatively. We need to get in touch withthat distinctive male energy - recognise it, affirm it, and thenlearn to bring it under control so that it can be put to gooduse. Perhaps when we are able to do this, then we will see thiscountry produce leaders of the calibre of Martin Luther King Jr.,Mother Theresa, or Mahatma Ghandi - strong people of principlewho stand up powerfully for what they believe in. As it is, ourleaders always seem to come across as being either ‘wooses’ orcriminals or both. God knows we need some real men in thiscountry who know what it means to love their women, to be fathersto their children, and to serve God and their community withtheir strength!Fight training, I do believe, is a means to getting at that‘themos’ and learning to bring it under control. When done in theright way, fight training can help a young person to discover whothey are and can help them to bring their futures into focus.They can then come to see their role as warriors in this societywho will stand up and use their energy to build a bettercommunity and to fight for things worth fighting for.What about these boys who I watched training with me tonight?Will they go on to become ‘mighty men of God'? I don’t know. Butthey’re on the right track, and they’re further ahead now thanwhen they first started their training..