Should Christians Practice Martial Arts? (Part 1)
By Mark McGee | Plus, The Argument from Reason
by Mark McGee
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words “martial arts”? Bruce Lee? Chuck Norris? Kung Fu Panda? Lots of little kids in cute and colorful uniforms punching, kicking, yelling and having fun in an after-school program?
What’s the first thing that comes into your mind when I say “Christian martial arts”?
I’ve been involved in martial arts for almost 60 years. I’ve rarely heard anyone who has a problem with children, teens, and adults learning martial arts like Judo, Karate, and Kung Fu. Even older adults get into the game with T’ai Chi. Most people realize they are great for health and self defense. So, why would anyone have a problem with a Christian learning martial arts? Here are the two I’ve heard most often during the last 50 years.
Reason One: Eastern Mysticism
One of the reasons I stopped going to church as a teenager was because of the influence of Eastern Mysticism I encountered in martial arts classes. I found Buddhism and Taoism far more interesting than the Christianity I knew from attending church.
Fast forward ten years from my humble beginnings in martial arts and the very thing that had attracted me to it pushed me away from it. I had become a Christian and realized that Christianity and Eastern Mysticism didn’t mix. What was I going to do with martial arts? I loved teaching and training, but how could I do something that was contrary to my new love for Jesus Christ?
I struggled with what to do for about a year until our church hired a new youth pastor. He introduced me to a group called Judo and Karate for Christ (now known as Karate for Christ International). He taught me how to use martial arts to introduce people to Jesus Christ through demonstrations and classes. That’s when I knew what I wanted to do. The Apostle Paul wrote Christians in Corinth that they had been bought with a great price and should glorify God in their body and in their spirit (1 Corinthians 6:20). I began teaching and demonstrating martial arts from a Christian perspective in 1972 and am still doing it today.
Chi?
One of the aspects of Eastern Mysticism that people often bring up as a negative in martial arts is chi. The word chi (ki in Japanese and Korean) means breath/vital energy. There are some in Eastern Mysticism who believe chi has magical powers, so Christians believe we should have nothing to do with martial arts and training in how to use chi to break boards, defend ourselves, improve our health, etc.
I had a similar problem with that as a young Christian until I realized that the energy and breath we expend in any activity comes from God.
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” Genesis 2:7
Christian martial artists look to God for their strength and know it comes from the way God created humans and the “breath of life” God breathed into the first human being. Christian instructors have no need to rely on Eastern Mysticism to teach their students how to use their bodies powerfully and effectively to defend themselves and others. Everything we need to know is written for us in God’s Word.
Martial arts instructors have a big influence on their students: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. Children and teens are most vulnerable to an instructor’s influence. That’s why I highly recommend learning from a Christian teacher in a Christian program if at all possible. Many Christian martial arts programs are held at churches, which should make it obvious to students that there’s something different about the class and its purpose.
I tell parents to be very careful when selecting a martial arts program for their children. Get to know the instructors and their philosophies and goals. Also, attend as many of the classes as you can, especially during the beginning of your child’s training. If you see something you don’t think is right, talk with the teachers. If you’re not satisfied, look for another place for your child to train. Parental involvement is key to helping children walk the right path. Many communities don’t have a Christian martial arts program, so parents need to be sure they select one where Eastern Mysticism is not promoted.
Reason Two: Christians Should not Fight
Martial arts, if taught and practiced correctly, is about self defense—not fighting. Many people have quoted to me and other Christian instructors these words from Jesus: “whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also” (Matthew 5:39). While we can talk about some of the cultural aspects of what Jesus meant in that first-century setting of living in an occupied country with foreign troops around every corner, a simple question might be whether we want to tell our children to become punching bags for bad people.
Here’s an example that might help. If you as an adult or older teen saw other adults or older teens beating up a child, what would you do? Call the police? Great first move. Then what? If you yell at the adults or older teens to stop beating the child and some of them run toward you to beat you up while others keep beating the child, what would you do? Call the police again? Run away for your own safety leaving the child to endure the beating? Or would you try to defend yourself and intervene on behalf of the child?
If you did try to defend yourself, would you know what to do? While some people have weapon carry permits, many don’t. What would you do if you didn’t have a weapon available for self defense? Martial arts training teaches people how to use their hands and feet and anything they can grab as defensive weapons.
Let’s make it even more personal. What if the child being beaten was your child or grandchild or your younger brother or sister? Would you leave them to endure a beating by bullies? Or would you intervene and try to defend your child, grandchild, or sibling? If you did intervene, would you know what to do?
If someone broke into your home and attacked you and members of your family, what would you do? Calling the police is a great idea, but what would you do while waiting for officers to arrive? Would you turn the other cheek and refuse to defend yourself and your family? If you did try to defend your family, would you know what to do?
Christian martial artists believe that Christians have a right to defend themselves, their families, and people in danger. We see no law, principle, or suggestion in the Bible against Christians defending themselves or someone else in danger of physical harm.
Fighting or Self Defense?
Fighting and self-defense are not the same thing. Fighting because of greed, jealousy, or the desire to dominate or harm another person is wrong. Christian martial arts instructors teach students to defend rather than fight. The word defend means “to make or keep safe from danger, attack, or harm.”
The sole purpose of self-defense is to protect your life or the life of someone in your family or an innocent person who is in danger from attack or harm. We believe that is well within the framework of God’s Word and will.
In part two of this series, we will look at some examples of God’s people practicing martial arts in Scripture.
— Mark McGee has been training in martial arts for almost 60 years. He has earned Black Belts in various arts and is a 7th Degree Black Belt and Black Sash. Sensei McGee teaches classes in Florida and Alabama and also teaches privately. He teaches all of his classes from a Christian perspective and is a member of several Christian martial arts groups. You can read more about Christian martial arts at GraceMartialArts.com.
The Bulletin Bookshelf
From the hallowed bookshelves of The Worldview Bulletin, literary insights worth sharing.
The Argument from Reason
When attending to [arguments for God’s existence], one must think carefully about those arguments. It's at just such times, though, that one is most likely to overlook the subtle fact that one is thinking. As C. S. Lewis observes, such “instances show that the fact which is in one respect the most obvious and primary fact, and through which alone you have access to all the other facts, may be precisely the one that is most easily forgotten—forgotten not because it is so remote or abstruse but because it is so near and so obvious.”
Our capacity to reason—that is, to draw rational inferences—is another example of internal evidence for God. The version of this argument from reason we shall consider points to God as a more plausible explanation of this capacity than is naturalism
According to naturalism our capacity to reason is the result not of the purposive creation of an essentially good and rational God, but rather of the purely naturalist process of Darwinian evolution. On this view our capacity to “reason” evolved over a long period of time. As Richard Dawkins explains.
Natural Selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparent purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If [Natural Selection] can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.
In other words, our cognitive faculties gradually developed pursuant to the dictates of the laws of physics, implying that instances of “thinking” are occurrences that ultimately are likewise expressions of the laws of physics.
Much could be said about this account of the origin of our capacity to reason, but let us focus on just one subtle challenge: if human reason is the result of a blind (i.e., purposeless) and nonrational process, then the deliverances of human reason—our thoughts—cannot be the results of rational inference and are therefore not trustworthy. Interestingly, Charles Darwin himself shared this concern. He confided in a letter: “With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?” This is a formidable problem for naturalism, because the door seems opened to our common experience of “thinking” (regarded as a rationally valid process) turning out to be an illusion. If this is so, then the naturalist faces the untenable situation of affirming a view that undercuts the trustworthiness of the reasoning process. In light of this realization, Alex Rosenberg's claim that “the ‘thoughts’ in the brain can't be about anything at all” so that our experience of thinking is an “illusion” is striking, to put it mildly.
The Christian theist's explanation of humans as created in the image of a good and rational God, however, has no trouble explaining the reliability of human reason. In this purposive account we find a plausible explanation of the human capacity for valid reasoning. This is not to say, of course, that human beings are perfect reasoners; humans’ ability to draw valid inferences, rather, is a finite reflection of God, who is supremely rational.
From Stand Firm: Apologetics and the Brilliance of the Gospel by Paul M. Gould, Travis Dickinson, and R. Keith Loftin (B&H Academic, 2018), 45-47.
Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay
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