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The
remnant of party politics has been in
Vlashaj for years. Rusting
and resting on top of this cement post on a back street near the olive
grove, it symbolizes all the past bad things that happened to a good
country.
Dictator Hoxha’s propaganda program listed, among others, the
probability that American paratroopers were coming to invade Albania. So to
show Albania’s strength and fortitude he made an order that all gardens,
borders, hedges and fences were to be topped with spear points.
The thought was that when American soldiers came at night (the US
was seen as too cowardly to come in the daylight) thousands would be impaled
by falling into a countryside dotted with these points. Propaganda taught
that Albania’s countryside would be defended by the populace and the party.
There are thousands and thousands left here and there as a testimony to the
strategy to crush the American invasion.
Year by year went by, morning after morning with no invasion, still
the propaganda continued. Albania’s lying machine was trying to fool all of
the people all of the time. The Communists could only lie, trying to trap
the people with falsehoods to corral them mind, body and soul.
With the fall of Communism came truth and God. God frees the mind,
body and soul with His exalted calling to be holy. That calling, when
demonstrated by a believer’s walk, is the ethical backdrop to everyday
Christian daily life. The Albanian Communist lived in an unregenerate state
(leaving God out of country and self)! Their actions of lying to the people
continued the cascade of immoral conduct and did nothing to “lay aside the
old self with its evil practices.”
“Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its
evil practices.”
Colossians 3:9 NAS |
