Christian Manhood

Very good. Thank you.

 

Careful! A lot of women are studying the martial arts nowadays! :smilewinkgrin: My organization has four woman instructors, and another wanting to be certified next year. But I believe being a good protector is essential to Christian manhood.

I remember a black belt in the martial arts style I was in when in college who made the mistake of slugging his wife once. She told him, "You'd better not go to sleep tonight!" He did, and while he slept she broke his arm with a baseball bat!

 

Another good post!

As I just told Luke, I believe being a protector to be an important part of a man's character. A woman can certainly be strong, though she is a nurturer, since the "ideal woman" of Prov. 31 "girds her arm with strength." However, I believe a man should strengthen himself with sports, and even a martial art, so he can be a good protector.

 

Excellent post, Scarlett O! Your father is exactly the model for Christian manhood I've been thinking about.

I describe my own father in one word: faithful. In spite of disappointment, failure, opposition, sickness and many other things that would stop a less than faithful pastor, he preached the Gospel for 60 years!

 

Part of the gentle side of the "strong and gentle" Christian man is that he should be a gentleman. I remember the father of my martial arts teacher in college, who was the dean of the seminary.

Dr. Douglas Cravens was a short, balding man who loved the Word of God and puns and family and friends. But he was the consummate gentleman. I remember seeing him open the car door for his wife when he was in his 60's and thinking, wow, what a gentleman, and that must be a great marriage! Several years later his wife was killed by a young lady who ran a stop sign. Dr. Cravens went to the young lady's hospital room and gently reassured her that not only did he not blame her, he knew God had a plan in the whole thing!

The concept of the gentleman seems to be disappearing from American culture for a number of reasons. I've not had the experience, but I've heard of women berating a gentleman who opened a door for them on the grounds that they were just as good as a man, and could open their own door! Very sad. It's not a matter of equality or superiority, but of a man being "strong enough to be gentle." A real man is sure enough of his own strength that he can show softness without feeling he is being less than a man.

 

Excellent illustration!

And as I'm sure you know, judo is usually translated as "gentle way" and jujutsu as "gentle method." The idea here, as in many martial arts (we call it "yielding" in our art) is that we succeed in throws and joint locks by feeling the other person's strength and letting him defeat himself.

There is also, of course, a Biblical concept that is similar that I like to call "verbal judo"-- "A soft answer turneth away wrath" (Prov. 15:1).

 

I first began thinking seriously about Christian manhood when a deacon in my Dad's church gave me a high school graduation card with "If", the poem by Rudyard Kipling.

If
By Rudyard Kipling​

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

 

My close friend who is a policeman and an expert in Chinese chin na joint locking (a master instructor in my style) would disagree. He has used his traditional skills to subdue suspects many times.

Again, my pastor friend in Florida (another master instructor in my style) has used his traditional Chinese martial art in real encounters and won. This includes once when a man high on drugs came into the church and attacked him, even taking him to the ground. Pastor M. subdued him from the bottom position with kung fu, then called police.

As for myself, I also disagree. In the 70's I used to participate in bare knuckle karate tourneys around the south, and the times I got knocked out in supposed semi contact tourneys (and occasionally clobbered someone else), convinced me that my traditional martial art would stand the test. What the Brazilian jujutsu guys assume is that the average "street fighter" has grappling skills, which is a fallacy.

Sport is the correct word. My kung fu friend and I have watched many UFC shows here in Japan. I have UFC 1-7 on DVD, and they started out with supposedly "no rules." But even then they had rules, and we used to laugh to each other and say in unison "no rules!" And of course now the UFC has many more rules than they did in the original UFC.

In a deadly encounter I would use many techniques not allowed in MMA sport matches. And yes, I've trained on a heavy bag and other equipment and with other martial artists in these techniques.

One thing the Asian martial arts still have that you see little of in MMA is respect and dignity. The karate proverb says, Rei de hajimari, rei de owaru, "Begin with respect and end with respect." Most MMA fighters are foul mouthed and undisciplined in their private lives, as "The Ultimate Fighter" proves (count the bleeps in that show some time), though I admire the discipline it takes in training to produce a top MMA fighter. And I appreciate the occasional Christian with a good testimony I see participate.

Don't even get me started on Royce Gracie. He's not very manly in my view. He's a cheater (steroids) and a whiner (had to have precisely his rules here in Japan in 2000, and still lost to Sakuraba). I do respect some of the other Gracies like Rickson.

Don't get me wrong. I'm cross-ranked 2nd black in a non-Brazilian style of modern jujutsu. MMA is definitely an excellent discipline. But there is still much to offer in the traditional Asian martial arts.

Actually, some of the top MMA fighters in Japan have Judo backgrounds: Yoshida, etc. Judo is just not very common in the US. (And FYI, judo started out as Jigaro Kano's traditional jujutsu.)

Actually, it's not just Greco-Roman, but freestyle as well, which is an outgrowth of the catch-as-catch-can I trained in in high school.

But as for Asian martial arts being a "myth," which art are you talking about? There are literally hundreds, and some of them train with similar techniques to MMA. In fact, you are apparently not aware of the history of Brazilian Jujutsu. Gracie Jujutsu was originally based on traditional Japanese jujutsu taught the Gracie family by Esai Maeda.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention master instructor Steve, a retired cop, who one time had a perp charge him. He hit the perp one time over the heart with a traditional reverse punch and stopped his heart, killed him! Fortunately for the perp, Steve was also trained in CPR, and brought him back to life.

And you have finally come to the crux of the matter. It's all in the training. I'd never beat a pro MMA dude because he can train all day. But at one point in my life I was training for hours every day in a traditional martial art (back before MMA), and feel that at that point I could have done well against a variety of opponents. An MMA man who doesn't train well or long may lose against anyone else who trains well and long.

Again, remember that MMA is a combative sport. My own style is designed for self defense in particular, not for competition, so we train differently from MMA guys. While an MMA practitioner will do well in most self defense situations, there are some that MMA is just not designed for (multiple opponents, opponents with weapons, etc.). And someone trained solely in my style would do poorly in MMA. The goals of the styles are just too different.

A couple more points and I'm done. What you forgot is that a wrestler must add striking to his repertoire before becoming effective in MMA. Wrestling alone is not a total art. I remember a street fight I had in high school where as a wrestler I took the guy down and got the "mount," then didn't know what to do. When I first took karate in 1971 it was a revelation! If you watch the MMA debut matches of some famous wrestlers you'll see what I mean. Dan Severn is one example. Couldn't punch his way out of a paper bag in his early matches! He could have used a little bit of traditional karate then.

Secondly, you don't seem aware that many traditional martial arts train full contact: Kyokushinkai Karate, Seido Kan Karate, kung fu sanshou fighting, etc. Some of those guys have done very well in Japanese K1 kickboxing. Once again, though, to have a total art they have to learn grappling.

And "Hollywood styles?" What in the world is a Hollywood style? I've trained in various traditional martial arts that I've never seen in a movie: Pai Lum, Tan Tui, chin na, Wing Chun, etc. And those arts are very effective--without using any of the the silly stuff you see in the movies.