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.
A Christian Martial Way
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Saturday, June 1, 2013
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.
"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.
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