Imperial Valley Christian Center

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.