My son Jeremiah, age 16, my daughter Christina age 7, and I are in Karate together. (To the left is a shot of Jeremiah and I during our blackbelt testing.) There are quite a few different styles of karate. Our’s is traditional Okinawan, bone breaking, karate, Shorin-Ryu Shorinkan. It’s a lot of fun. We get to play at “The Matrix” or “Kill Bill”. I get to spend time with my kids. Karate helps develop discipline and teaches submission, respect and honor. It gives me something to do to take my mind off of church business; which can at times be an insatiable black hole for energy. It’s great. I love it.
But karate doesn’t serve any real purpose, i.e. the karate we learn will probably never be used for the purpose for which it was created. We are learning how to fight fights which will never, ever happen. We’re learning how to disable enemies we will never encounter. Karate no longer serves its intended purpose. I think the decision makers at the top recognize this and so have developed new rationales for Karate’s continued existence. They talk a lot about Karate helping children to develop discipline and learn respect. But those are obviously not the real reasons for the existence of a "martial" art. Karate no longer serves its true purpose. That’s why Karate is such a good analogy for Christianity. Christianity no longer serves its true purpose either.
It’s kind of hard to nail down the real history of karate. It may be something that evolved over many centuries of contact between Okinawa and Shao-lin monks from China (Shorin, as in the name of our style of Karate, is the Okinawan equivalent of Shao-lin.) Or it may be only a couple hundred years old. One of the most common stories told about the development of Karate is that it developed in response to the Japanese conquest of Okinawa. The Japanese conquerors are said to have prohibited Okinawans from owning weapons apparently as a means of insuring their control of the island. The Okinawans developed karate, literally "empty hand", as a means of protecting themselves from brigands, criminals and their Japanese conquerors. Karate was taught in secret only to trustworthy individuals.
I like that story. I like to imagine a sensei, i.e. teacher or master, using his karate skills, developed over many years of disciplined training, to protect the community. I see him raising up students to help him and teaching the members of the community how to defend themselves. That’s also why I think that karate is a good analogy for what Christianity is supposed to be.
Karate no longer serves it’s true purpose because the times have changed. We’ve become more civilized and there’s very little need for anyone, at least living in the westernized part of the world, to be able to kill someone with your bare hands. We have policemen and soldiers to do that kind of stuff. You can imagine the dilemma that poses for the students of Karate. They love it. They greatly honor the senseis who taught them. They want to see it continued. They may even have some financial stake in its continuance; although my experience indicates that that is almost never the case. What to do? How do you motivate people to years and years of training to learn an art they will never, ever use?
More later.
Never say never! You never know when you may need to defend yourself or your family physically or emotionally. We know that sometimes the police don’t show up on time, if at all. Karate perhaps one day could save your life, as Christianity most definetly will.
Where do you get this idea that karate doesn’t serve any real purpose?? I am karate instructor and a Christian and I do not teach my students that kind of misguided idealogy. Karate does serve a purpose – building character, confidence, health, defense, and over all well being.
In the real world which we all live in karate has been used for self-defense. I hope you never have too but one day you may need to protect yourself or your family. Tell me if you don’t have a prayer or weapon what are you going to use?? I would think your karate. If you have no confidence in it from what you are saying in your post why practice it. Karate is after all a martial art period.
I guess I’m not making myself very clear.
I didn’t mean to say that the technigues of karate are not effective at self defense. I believe they are. I believe you could seriously injure someone or even kill someone if you are skilled at karate. My point has more to do with the original purpose of karate. According to the traditional karate story, karate was originally designed to provide self defense when weapons were outlawed and Okinawans had no way to defend themselves against criminals and their Japanese rulers.
That purpose for the study of karate does not exist for most people today. That’s why most karatecas will never use their karate in a self defense situation.