Humiliation

I have already mentioned in an earlier post that the Christian martial way will, of necessity, require a rather more unique training than most martial ways demand.  It will require a training in the acceptance of humiliation.  In keeping with my latest post, I am continuing to read The Ball and the Cross, and have now come to one of those scenes which taught me this secret before I had ever thought of a Christian martial way.

I, like many men in the world today, always had a vague sort of understanding that what made murder evil, what made fighting wrong, was the physical violence it entailed.  Particularly now, there is an instinct that violence is, in and of itself, evil.  Many have this sort of reaction to violence that, no matter the cause, one should avoid it.  I had to read this particular passage to really begin to learn the truth:

"You may grow fond of that mire of crawling, cowardly morals, and you may come to think a blow bad, because it hurts, and not because it humiliates.  You may come to think murder wrong, because it is violent, and not because it is unjust."

A few paragraphs before, the same character had noted that there is no sin of bloodshed, only the sin of murder.  He is correct.  God never forbids violence, God forbids murder.  God forbids the unjust taking of human life - unjust because our lives are His, and His alone.  They are not even ours.  To take our own life or the life of another, without clearly justifiable cause, is the sin.  It is to deprive another of the gift of life which God gave that person, it is, in fact, to attempt to steal from God.  It is a spiritual incident, which is what makes it a sin.  It is the negation of good, the deprivation of life, which makes it so evil.  The violence with which it is accomplished isn't material to the sin at all.  Killing a man in a fight is no more and no less murder than smothering a child with a pillow, or poisoning a person's food.  Indeed, if anything, it may be less.

I have taken some pains to outline some understanding of the heart of a Christian martial way.  I want to take this chance to say definitively what a Christian martial art is not, and cannot ever be.  It cannot ever be cowardly.  It cannot fear violence, in and of itself.  I have taken into great account the very real truth that it is humiliation, not pain, which drives so much of our fighting amongst ourselves.  I admit readily that the Christian martial artist must be prepared to accept humiliation, to accept the true spiritual violence of a blow, to accept the evil of a strike.  To accept it and not respond in kind.  This is, to my mind, meeting evil with good.  Likewise, I own that I have counseled others in training that when responding in a situation of some difficulty, to escalate to violence, especially to humiliate another, is only to invite more trouble.  To pacify those in a rage or attempting to hurt another, we must be at pains not to humiliate them, not to wake their pride even further.  That is where there would be evil, that is what we must avoid.  But this is not avoiding violence, this is not to lack in fortitude, but to exercise justice and prudence.

There will come times when violence will be absolutely necessary, when one man's pride will be weighed in the scales against another's life or health, and the scales will and must tip.  Part of our training will be to not only accept humiliation and avoid humiliating, but to bring our minds to understand when prudence and justice have had their due, and now demand an immediate, and violent, resolution to a situation which has become untenable.  When that time comes, there can be no hesitation.  Other means having been exhausted, one will have to strike.  We cannot fear violence, or we will hesitate.  If we hesitate, some great good might perish.  We cannot ever forget that we are in a war, a war of good and evil, a war which is fought all around us between angels and demons, and amongst ourselves.  Wars involve violence, but wars call men to great courage, and they challenge men to remember what is good, true, and beautiful.  To remember that there are things which are worth fighting for, that there are things which must be defended, and that evil must be opposed wherever we meet it.

Apologetics

At the moment I am re-reading one of my favorite books.  The title is The Ball and the Cross, written by G.K. Chesterton as a sort of fictionalized version of his masterpiece Orthodoxy.  I admit now that this book planted some of the seeds of what is growing into this Christian martial way, years and years ago.  So as I began re-reading it, I thought as I came to those parts which struck me now as inherently related, I would note them, and write on them.  This is one:

"If he had said of my mother what he said of the Mother of God, there is not a club of clean men in Europe that would deny my right to call him out.  If he had said it of my wife, you English would yourselves have pardoned me for beating him like a dog in the marketplace.  Your worship, I have no mother; I have no wife.  I have only that which the poor have equally with the rich; which the lonely have equally with the man of many friends.  To me this whole strange world is homely, because in the heart of it there is a home; to me this cruel world is kindly, because higher than the heavens there is something more human than humanity.  If a man must not fight for this, may he fight for anything?  I would fight for my friend, but if I lost my friend, I should still be there.   I would fight for my country, but if I lost my country, I should still exist.  But if what that devil dreams were true, I should not be - I should burst like a bubble and be gone.  I could not live in that imbecile universe.  Shall I not fight for my own existence?"

I recommend the book on the general grounds that it is a fantastic story, well written, with enjoyable characters, and with very substantial thought behind it.  It is the sort of fiction one can chew on, so to speak.

In terms of this Christian martial way, I have mentioned already the need for a unified defense of the human person.  And I have spoken of the need for training in every one of those principe areas, of body, mind, and spirit.  This challenge, though offered as pretext for a physical duel between two men, always struck me more as demonstrating the need we all have to be able to answer the blasphemies and attacks upon the Faith which are rather constant in Western Civilization today.  I don't believe physical violence the best strategy for most such attacks, though I am tempted in this case to excuse it.  After all, as a friend of mine is fond of noting, Christ bore everything they did to Him with perfect meekness and humility and submission, but nobody messed with His mother.  Some things men are not meant to take meekly, just as is noted by Mr. Evan MacIan in the quote above, precisely because they aren't about ourselves, or if they are about ourselves, they go deeper than ourselves, to the Will which Loves us into existence at every moment.  For every man's mother has loved him into existence.  Every man's mother is the image of God.

What we all have need of in a world which attacks God constantly is the ability to defend our faith.  The world perceives things like "faith" and "reason" (both in caricaturized forms) as opposites which must necessarily clash and war.  The Christian faith sees them as the two beams by which Man meets God, namely the two which compose the Cross.  Each of these views presents the two at contradiction, but in one they kiss in the person of Christ, in the other they stand at eternities and shout at each other.  Theology is described as "faith seeking understanding," because contrary to the popularized secular opinion of "faith" genuine faith does not revel in blindness, but always attempts to understand more, to enter deeper into the Mysteries of God, for God would reveal Himself.  The Person of Jesus the Christ is an Apocalypse.  He is the unveiling of God, the Revelation of God, for a people who were just that: blind.  It is precisely because we could not see Him that He made Himself visible.  It is precisely because we could not understand Him - even after thousands of years of direct interaction with His People, they did not grasp Him - that He became something we could understand, something we could grasp: a little infant born in a stable.  The Christian faith may have been born in blindness, but it was born of our need to see, and today it has helped illumine so many things to which much of the world is still blind - like the innate dignity of the human person.  Science can say nothing of such a matter.  Every philosophy and rationalist view in the world has said nothing of this.  It took God becoming Man for men to realize every single human life had value, worth, and was loved beyond comparison and measure.  The Stoics never thought that.  The Buddhists never thought that.  The Greeks never thought that.  Marx never thought that.  Nietzsche never thought that.  Only the men touched by the God-Man thought this.

This defense begins in a solid enough grasp of theology that we can, in the words of the Apostle, give an accounting for our hope.  But it cannot end there.  Indeed, whether it begins there might be open to some question.  Perhaps it really begins in a life of absolute Joy fostered by that hope.  From years of experience as an apologist, I can say that very rarely did a well reasoned argument, or purely logical discourse, get me anywhere in terms of answering others.  Yes, with other rational human persons such answers to their questions at least answered, but that was all they did.  They did not witness.  They did not inspire them to say, "look how this one loves others."  Answering the stated question is valuable, correcting the misunderstanding is needed.  We cannot have people thinking Catholics worship statues, anymore than we can suffer people to believe that Christians hate the material universe, sex, food, and every other blessing of Creation.  Beyond this though, I believe the whole human person is questioning, not simply with the words by which they give voice to a particular question, but with their whole heart and soul.  They are looking for God, and even where they believe God dead, they have not given up that quest, but have merely filled it with activisms, addictions, and anger.  To answer the particular question is good.  To answer the universal human need is best.  And we cannot do that simply through a reasonable explanation of why we believe what we believe.  We must do that through a life of Joy - through love and service to others.

Look at it this way.  It is one thing to present all the logical, historical, and theological reasons why Christians do not hate the material universe the way Manichaeans did.  It will, hopefully, satisfy in any rational person the question of whether Christians are Manichaean or not.  But not all people are reasonable.  For some, their bias is so concrete that no answer in words can ever breach it, or make room for doubt.  What I believe can crack such an invincible ignorance is the life of the Duggars.  Say what you will of them, no sane person would ever say the family with twenty children hates sex.  What people may say is that the Christian family which contracepts and has one perfect little child like so many of the other families in our world today hates sex.  But then, they would be indicting themselves as well, little though they may realize it.

The full accounting for our hope can only be given with our whole lives.  Christ, the good news, the Kingdom, is a Person.  He can only be shown to others through our persons.  Apologetics then isn't merely words, arguments, theology or philosophy.  Apologetics is how we live our lives in a Christian witness to Joy.  We defend our faith best by love in the midst of persecution.  Hope in the midst of despair.  Joy in the midst of suffering.  Because no one notices a candle in the daylight, but by night a single lamp can seen for miles.  It is in the darkness that light illuminates.  It is when you are blind that you most desire to see.  More on this to come.

Love Thy Enemy

Before I can proceed with the various aspects of training the body, mind, and soul, I must make a note of something important.  I have been searching for others with whom to explore this way, and have found several.  Last night, we began to do a bit of training, focusing on ways to protect or aid others in distress.  In particular, we focused on a specific situation and how one could address it without escalating the situation into greater violence, and most specifically how we could ensure the safety of the Other.  We found that certain responses were more effective than others, and certain techniques more valuable than others.  At the time I thought the exercise fruitful and valuable.  I realized today that if it bore fruit, that fruit tasted more like failure.

What do I mean by this?  I mean that I forgot my own lessons.  If the human person is not simply body, mind, or spirit, but all three, then any response in a given situation must involve all three.  But we focused almost entirely on the physical.  We fell into the same trap as  most martial arts.  Even focused on helping another instead of on defending the self, we did not respond with the whole human person, nor did we attempt to address whole human people, save in rare moments.  We discovered that our instincts tended towards solving situations with violence, what we didn't discover was how we objectified both the aggressor and the victim.

A Christian martial way must, by necessity, recognize the human persons involved in any situation.  We cannot deal with objects called the victim, or the attacker, or the back up, or whatever we might come up with while training.  The Christian in such a situation must give his whole self, his whole person to the saving of all the persons in a given moment of need.  The person attacking needs help no less than the person being attacked.  Both are hurting, both broken, both in terrible need and great danger.  How can we possibly do this?

I am not utterly certain yet, but one thing I have realized is that the most important technique we could possibly have in any situation is not a punch or a grab or anything of the sort.  It is a smile.  The smile disarms, instead of arming.   It blesses instead of cursing.  It invites instead of escalating.  The only way to help both persons is to meet them as persons, persons whom you love, the one no less than the other, even though their conduct may be utterly unacceptable.  St. Vincent de Paul said something along these lines, that the poor would only forgive us for serving them or helping them if they knew how much we loved them.  Well in any situation where human persons are being assaulted there is a terrible poverty present.  And any action of ours, particularly one that thwarts a selfish will, might be reciprocated with the sort of vengeful pride which we associate with even greater violence.  We must make ourselves the servants of the very men or women whose actions we despise.

Christ said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."  Today I learned that this is the essence of our way, to make peace.  I don't know the origins of the proverb, but it was said, "He who desires peace would do well to prepare for war."  I think this especially valuable.  We will only be able to respond appropriately, with love, with patience, with joy, if we prepare for such times as when they will be most tried.  We will train for war - physical, mental, spiritual, and all three commingled.  We will train for them so that when war comes, we can make peace.  We may study violence.  We may even at times be forced to use violence.  But what we must take care to do is be the one humiliated, not the one humiliating.  And for that, we have to be strong enough to take it.  Thus we must respond with our whole self, our minds and spirits no less than our bodies.  It isn't enough to interpose or intervene.  We must cajole, convince, rebuke, implore, and offer up our own pride to gain even the smallest crack in theirs.  We must recognize in them that grand beauty and divine mystery which is the human person.  We must appeal to that whole person, defend that whole person, love that whole person.  Nothing less will suffice.  More on this to come.

A Unified Whole

It seems to me that having established my purpose in the martial arts and why I am writing in previous posts some time should be spent upon the arenas in which a Christian martial way would be practiced.  A Christian martial way must involve the whole of the human person engaged in it.  It can never be purely physical, or purely spiritual.  It cannot be solely mental.  It must be an integrated path in which a complete person is formed by Christ to a life of service and the protection of others.

The Christian martial artist must therefore train not only the body, but the mind and the spirit.  How does one accomplish this, especially keeping in mind the unique purpose of martial arts to the Christian?  No martial art or martial way I have encountered spends anything like an equal amount of time on these arenas.  The vast majority of martial practice is with the body.  Very little is spent training the mind.  Indeed in most cases the mind is considered trained through the disciplining of the body.  And often spirit is reduced to breathing and vocal exercises.  The training of the body tends to focus, as noted in an earlier post, on how to block, dodge, hit, throw, break, etc. for the sake of one's self.  So not only must the amount of relative training spent on each of these change, but the sort of training we normally subject the body to must also change in the practice of a Christian martial way.

Let us begin.  A Christian martial way is about defending others.  So while that may at times involve the same sorts of techniques upon which other martial arts primarily focus, it will also demand at least one special training, that of accepting being hit.  Now, there are martial arts in which one learns how to take hits.  There are even martial artists who specialize in strengthening or hardening some part (or even all) of their bodies in order to be virtually impregnable.  I am not talking about this kind of training, though it might prove very useful to have.  What I am talking about is training the body not to respond to pain with violence, training the mind not to respond to aggression with escalation, and training the spirit not to respond to humiliation with pride.  To achieve such a thing, it becomes very apparent that the sort of training often practiced within other martial ways will not be enough, for other martial ways eventually give way to the defense of the self.  The Christian martial way is an active training in how to surrender the self to save others.

It is, in fact, relatively easy to accept physical pain from a strike without striking back.  This is something most martial artists can easily accomplish.  Training the mind not to react instinctively and selfishly to aggression towards itself, and training our spirits to accept humiliation as a key to humility rather than as a trigger to rage - these are the difficult tasks which we must somehow accomplish if we are to walk in this way.  Further stressing this need for integrated training of the human person, we can also see that the battlefields upon which a Christian must fight are not simply physical.  We are called to be able to give an account for our hope to any who might ask (1 Peter 3:15), and we are reminded that we struggle not with physical powers, but spiritual powers (Ephesians 6:12).  We are engaged not only in physical struggles, but in mental and spiritual warfare every single day.  In fact, we are more involved in these two than we are with physical struggles.  Therefore, while others might train their bodies almost exclusively, we must train all three, and their training must be integrated at some level, even if they proceed largely independently.  More on how to come.

Failure

Yesterday I failed.

I took care of one of the kids of some friends of mine, and being the spoiler of children that I am I bought him frozen yogurt after a day spent adventuring.  Walking back to my car, I heard some terrible things.  Parked a couple spaces away a man used horrible language to abuse a young woman in his car.  I mean terrible profanity.  The sort of stuff none of us should use, and yet so many of us use regularly.

My whole point in practicing the Christian martial way is to protect others.  I did not protect that young woman.  Hearing those terrible things, I thought only of getting the child who was my charge away from there, I didn't stop to address the horrible treatment of a human person.  Driving away I felt shame such as I have rarely known.  And regret.  And burning rage.

I seriously considered fighting this person.  Or at least yelling at him.  Or something.  But every thing I thought of only meant it might be harder to protect the child.  If I spoke up, not only would it draw the boy's attention to what was being said, but it would likely have brought more abuse directed towards us.  If I physically acted, what message would I be sending a young man whom I have tried to drill lessons into regarding the appropriate times for violence?  He didn't know what was going on.  I didn't want him to know what was going on.

Worse yet, had I been injured in some way, this child would've been by himself, without even a phone, as mine had broken a couple hours earlier.  And if I'd been arrested for fighting?  I don't even know what would've happened to him.  Or his parents for entrusting him to me.  After I dropped him back off with his mother, I spoke to a moral theologian at my parish about the situation.  I didn't know what else I could have done.  I still don't.  He said because there was no physical violence being directed at the young woman in the car that my primary responsibility was to do exactly what I did, which was get the child away from the situation.  Everyone else I have told about this has said exactly the same thing.

I am not soothed by this.  I am still ashamed.  I should've been able to do more.  That woman was someone's daughter, someone's sister.  In fact, I know exactly whose.  She was a daughter of God.  I failed to protect her.  That man was a son of God, I failed to teach him a better way.  There were three people who needed help.  I only helped one of them.

I realize it isn't enough to talk about moral problems or dilemmas.  I just lived the sort of situation that sometimes we only theorize about.  I pray to God I chose well.  I pray both for the man and the woman.  But what good is prayer when one whose hands should be Christ's, whose feet should be Christ's, whose voice should be Christ's drives away silent?  He has no hands or feet on Earth but ours.  He had none there but mine.

So I pray for the Grace and knowledge to do better next time.  And I pray He will forgive me for not doing more.  I pray He will teach me His way, the way to help every soul in need.

The Heart and Soul

Having established my purpose in writing, a greater task yet remains before I can really enter into the meat and potatoes of a Christian martial way.  That task is to outline the purpose of martial arts for the Christian, as opposed to their purpose in the general population and within their normal context.

It should be noted in advance that the martial arts can be said to have many purposes.  Ask ten martial artists why they practice the martial arts, and you are likely to receive ten answers - answers which will vary by extraordinary degrees, and yet share certain common points.  Such answers might involve everything from the desire to be more physically fit, to gain inner peace and calm, to develop better focus and concentration, to be better able to defend one's self, to engage in competitions, to be the best person one can be, etc.  Each of these are legitimate reasons to practice the martial arts within the traditional Buddhist structure, and one can reasonably expect to combine any or all of them within one's personal practice.

I don't have anything against any martial artist who practices martial arts for these reasons, but I don't think that any of them can be the basis of a Christian martial way.  For a thing to be Christian it must necessarily aid us in cultivating holiness - communally within the Body of Christ and personally within the framework of our daily lives.  I submit that there is one basis upon which one can practice the martial arts as a Christian and grow in holiness - and that most of these other reasons may be use in conjunction with or support of that one reason.  The purpose to which I refer is to defend others, but not one's self.  Why do I believe this?

One could argue that the most purely practical purpose of martial arts is the ability to defend one's self from an aggressor.  While calm, focus, compassion, competitiveness, physical fitness, et al are notable accidental benefits, they still come about as a result of learning how to block, punch, kick, throw, lock, and all manner of other essentially violent actions of the body.  These actions, varying in form and style from one branch of the arts to another, yet remain the substance of martial arts.  These are the things with which we have to work, these are the building blocks of any martial art.  They give the essential martial character.  Which really means that they can be used in only a very few ways.

They can be used as the tools of an aggressor.  They can be used as the tools of the self defending itself from an aggressor.  They can be used as the tools of a self defending another from an aggressor.  To the best of my knowledge, there are no other options.  One can either attack, defend one's self, or defend another's self.  I here leave out the competitive aspect, because I believe the competitive usage of martial arts a further secondary aspect, not a primary or essential feature of them.  One can be a martial artist without competing.  One cannot be a martial artist without learning punches, et al.

For the sake of clarity, let us understand from the beginning that when I refer to an aggressor, I refer to someone who unjustly attacks another person.  Any given combat will, if it is of more than the most cursory duration, involve a certain give and take between offensive and defensive movements.  "Aggressor" does not refer to one using offensive movements, but to the primary motivation for engaging in physical combat.  That the attack is unjust is of crucial importance, because justified violence would mean that an action was of its nature defensive, even though it might appear otherwise.  That which does or does not justify violence will likely be a further post in and of itself.  To be an aggressor is not acceptable in any martial art that I am aware of, nor is it justified by any martial way I know.  More to the point, it is certainly not acceptable to mine.  A Christian cannot be the aggressor, ever.  Nor can the Buddhist.  We are all agreed on this critical point.

The two remaining possibilities present an interesting issue for examination.  Typically, one hears more references to self-defense within the sphere of martial arts than to the defense of others.  The various ways of practicing martial arts, whether sparring, forms, one-steps, or some other strategy almost exclusively work from the perspective of protecting one's self.  In years of study, I never once learned a form that was about protecting another.  I never once sparred where the purpose was to protect someone else or something else.  I never once blocked a strike intended for another.  Perhaps there are schools where this is the focus, but I have not encountered any.  In truth, this should really not surprise us.  The martial arts in their Buddhist context were about the self, specifically, as already noted, about destroying it in accord with the four Noble Truths of the Buddha's teaching.  And it is not as if there was the same sort of chivalric tradition in Asia as in Europe, indeed the same philosophic path which resulted in Hinduism and Buddhism could never have produced a chivalric code which placed the weaker on a pedestal to be protected.  Why not?  Because in a world of karma and reincarnation, those who are weaker are weaker because of their choices (principally their failings) in previous lives.  If they are poor, weak, helpless, feeble, or what have you, it is nobody's fault but their own, and to succor them is to thwart justice.

This understanding clashes violently with the charity of Christian practice, which sees our God who willingly forsook the splendor of divinity for a life of hard labor, poverty, betrayal and ultimately total self-sacrifice in every person - especially in all those who we see hungry, naked, homeless, and suffering.  Buddha renounced Earthly wealth, Christ renounced something far greater.  Buddha came to the conclusion that suffering should be defeated by destroying our selfish desires.  Christ showed us that suffering must be embraced, the Cross must be carried, to destroy our selfishness and yet live more fully.

Therefore, we can see that within the Buddhist sphere, the truly substantial core of practicing the martial arts is the defense of the self.  Their martial character serves only one purpose, all other purposes are secondary and accidental to it.  I propose that the Christian martial path follows the other - that is: it defends others, but not the self, in imitation of He who said not one word in His own defense, struck no blows against His assaulters - nay even healed the one who had been struck by His followers!  I understand this to be the heart and soul of the Christian martial way.  I also know it will be intensely difficult to accept.  I'll be writing more on this, on its necessity and on its fruits, in later posts.

A Christian Martial Way

The hardest thing about starting a new blog is knowing what to talk about in the first post.  Do you just dive right in?  Do an introduction?  Be completely and utterly inane?  Or some combination of all three?

A beautiful woman once told me that I was rather full of myself.  I don't know if I will ever see her again, but I know I will remember her words forever.  I am full of myself.  My friends can verify that I have actually compared myself to Adonis, and upon being forced to reconsider my hubris, instead described myself as being like King David, viz. ruddy cheeked and comely.  I actually used to introduce myself as an asshole, and I'm fairly certain every girl I've ever dated has considered me to be an arrogant prick at least once during the course of the relationship.  Most probably thought so before the relationship even began.  You called it, Lady.  I am more full of myself than I can stand.

This probably seems like an odd way to begin a project whose purpose is to outline a Christian way of practicing the martial arts.  At least, it probably seems odd to those who don't practice.  Many of those who do practice will probably recognize the essential need for humility in the martial arts.  Arrogance is self-deceit, self-deceit prevents self knowledge.  Without self knowledge, what can one be arrogant about?  Self-knowledge requires humility, and the martial arts involve an ever deepening awareness of the self.  The Buddhist philosophical underpinnings of East Asian martial arts especially use martial arts as a tool for the destruction of the self.  There's really no room for arrogance.

My name is Evan, and I am full of myself.  I am a cocky, teasing, know-it-all, jerk.  There you have it, straight from the horse's mouth.  Yet for some strange reason, people still seem to like me - God love 'em.  I know that when it comes down to it, I would die for those people.  That is really what this blog is about.  The essence of the Catholic martial way is not defeating another, it is knowing when to allow yourself to be defeated, and through defeat to attain the victory and the crown.

I have told you the truth about myself so that from the beginning it will be clear that I am not a saint or a master or anything.  I am just a man.  Everything I write here is ultimately about being a better man, and I may talk about things that I have done, am doing, or still need to do.  I confess my need for improvement, I admit my imperfection.  This is how the way begins.  Acknowledging that I am a sinner, and I need a Savior.  The person, Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the Master.  He is the Way.  He is the Truth.  He is the Life.  I will sit at His feet and listen.  I will follow in His steps.  Every Christian understands this basic first step away from pride and towards humility.  Every martial artist should as well.  But why write a Christian martial way?

The essential difference between the Buddhist martial artist and the Catholic martial artist is that the first seeks to destroy the self, the second seeks to resurrect it after death.  Christians are not nihilists, Buddhists are.  The Christian must die to himself, not so that his self will be destroyed, but so that his self will be raised up and glorified.  Even that is yet superficial.  The Christian is looking for his self to become Christ, as opposed to Nothing.  So the Christian martial artist needs a way of understanding martial arts which frees him from those Buddhist underpinnings.  One cannot blend Buddhism and Christianity.  I tried for years, but ultimately the Christian concept of love and the Christian understanding of the universe and God, forbid any entanglement with Buddhism.

"All well and good," one might say, "by all means do not attempt to mesh them, then!  Simply don't practice the martial arts, and there you have an end to it."  I cannot accept this solution for two simple reasons.  The first is simply that I believe there is great value in the martial arts, utterly independent of their philosophical origins.  The second is that Christendom has a martial character and history.  What do I mean by this?  I do not deny that Christ loves peace, He taught that peacemakers are blessed, that they shall be called children of God (Mt 5:9).  But there are those who see the person of Christ through the filter of their own pet ideology. Pacifists, for instance, see Him as a pacifist, emphasizing His teachings on peace.  Yet it is the truth that Christ also says such remarkable things as, "I have come to bring not peace but the sword" (Mt 10:34).  Christ's Way requires a radical self-denial, and brings into our lives a sundering so severe that He literally states one's enemies will be one's own family.  The truth is that the Christian way is a martial way.  It is a way that will involve enemies.  It will encounter hatred.  It will be met with violence.  It will be assaulted in every manner conceivable.  The assault has already begun, it began two thousand years ago on the Cross, and the Church Militant has not stopped fighting yet.

This is for all of us who want to better understand what we are fighting.  How we are to fight.  Why we are to fight.  This is for all the girls who know they are princesses.  This is for all the boys who would be men, and the men who would be knights.  Chesterton said that fairy tales taught us truth not because they taught that dragons were real, but because they taught that dragons can be slain.  This is for everyone who wants to slay the Dragon.  This is for every David who has to defeat Goliath.  This is for you.  This is for me.  And this is for Him.