Highlight: Should Christians Practice Martial Arts?

Apologia Studios

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So it's interesting because when we engage in this discussion of the martial arts, I mean,

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I saw someone in the feed here saying they're taking mixed martial arts now. That's wonderful. I, uh, I'm a,

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I'm so passionate about the martial arts. I love the martial arts. I train as much as I can. I was just training before I came here.

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I throw a couple hundred kicks and punches a day. I, I do like an hour and a half of martial arts training, uh, at least three times a week.

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Um, I've never lost my love for it, uh, competed, um, all through my teenage and young adult years.

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Um, uh, went to all the most important tournaments in the country, uh, won those, won the grand championships and went to the junior

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Olympics and did Ninja Turtles and all that stuff. And so I'm super passionate about it. And so they're oftentimes, um, within the

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Christian community, people will often approach it in terms of like pacifism, like Christian shouldn't learn self -defense or engage in self -defense because we just need to be pacifist.

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We've done a lot on that, uh, refuted that, refuted that biblically with the word of God.

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Um, that sort of perspective really, uh, destroys a lot of God's reputation in scripture. Let's put it that way.

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Um, and so you have, you know, texts in scripture that, you know, say things like Psalm 144, one blessed to be the

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Lord, my rock who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. Uh, that's part of the songs. If we were singing the

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Psalms, maybe we wouldn't be pacifists. Um, but there, there is, there needs to be like a proper, uh, order of category categories and thinking.

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When you think about the martial arts, there is, there is the martial arts that is focused upon combat, self -defense, pain compliance, uh, protecting victims, protecting yourself, protecting your family, the preservation of life in a fallen world.

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And it's just a focus upon combat. Um, you're, you're focusing on how does the human body work?

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How is it able to move? And how can I stop it from hurting me? Or how can I use my body to hurt the person? And so very, very important things.

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And I would say, you know, police officers and military people are very, very thankful for the martial arts and the martial arts tradition that gives them the ability to control somebody who's acting like an animal.

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Um, and, uh, so it's very, very important, but then there's, there's another aspect that you have to acknowledge as much as I love the martial arts, as much as I'm passionate about it,

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I love for everybody to learn some self -defense. I think it's important, especially for men, uh, to learn some self -defense.

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Um, I, I recognize, and we recognize, and we'll get into this here, even in discussing ninjutsu, um, that there are elements to martial arts training, uh, that Christians must avoid.

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You have to avoid, you have to not compromise with, uh, because they're deadly and dangerous.

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They would fall into the category of what I read at the beginning of the show in Deuteronomy chapter 18, and that's God's forbidding his people to engage in practices that try to communicate with the dead, divination, sorcery, that sort of stuff.

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And yes, there are martial arts systems that are hitched up together with the occult.

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Um, I've mentioned before, you can look at something like Tai Chi. Uh, the system was built upon the philosophy and worldview.

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And so what you're, the moves themselves arise out of the comp, first of all, it's a garbage combat system, but, but the moves themselves arise out of the philosophical worldview situation with Chi power and all of these points of energy in your body connecting to the earth and all that nonsense.

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But you have a system like, this is interesting too, I want to ask you about this, Justin Jonas. Um, Justin, I want to ask you to engage with this because I would say ninjutsu, um, has his deficiencies as does every martial arts system.

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Like Brazilian jiu -jitsu be like, just, just engage in Brazilian jiu -jitsu. I'm like, well, you're in big trouble. If you get attacked in the parking lot with two attackers and all you've been doing is

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Brazilian jiu -jitsu, is it the best, is it the best ground game? There is no question. Absolutely.

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Brazilian jiu -jitsu, the best in terms of on the ground grappling, nothing better, but it has its deficiencies.

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If you don't recognize it, it's just prideful. Um, ninjutsu has good stuff to it, but it's all, it also has its deficiencies, but ninjutsu also, even with the really positive stuff, it has an element to it.

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And I engage in this as well, Justin, I got into this before I was a professing believer. I got into ninjutsu, uh, cause

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I wanted, I was, I was like you, I grew up like, you know, idolizing the ninjas and ninjas and movies and, you know,

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American ninja and all that. I broke the tapes. I watched it so much. I wanted to do,

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I wanted to do ninjutsu. So I want to kick this over to you. I got into it. And in order to get into it the way

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I was, you were learning techniques, but also I was being told by my instructors, the guys who were teaching me, you need to do this too.

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And so I, I had the situation in my room where I, for hours a night, I was going into a dark room and I was trying to do remote viewing.

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I was trying to be able to get out of my body so you could view the, you could view the enemy. And so I was trying to do transcendental meditation, all that stuff, remote viewing.

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And let me just tell you some scary and spooky stuff arose out of that. So could you engage with that?

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That what we're talking about here is the distinction between the greatness of the combat in the system. And then also what do you need to worry about as a

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Christian? Yeah. Yeah. Big time. And I agree with everything you just said. And I'll add some more to my story that I didn't say where I go.

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I'm very, like you said, I'm very appreciative of the martial arts and very appreciative of everything I learned. I'm very, I don't want to say

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I sound cocky. I'm very, I feel good about myself if I, if something was to arise and I had to protect my family, let's say it that way, because I have a wife and three daughters and I'll do anything to protect them.

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So combat, protecting your loved ones is something that a man should do is something the head of the household should do and be responsible for.

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Our culture has went the way of not that kind of man, but we need to bring our culture back to that kind of man.

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But what you said, as far as the remote viewing and all the different situations like that was tied into the martial art that I was training in industry.

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And so, like you said, there's aspects of it that can be very good, but the remote viewing, the meditation, one of the things before class starts, you come in and you bow.

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And in karate, we had a traditional bow, which you're just bowing to the instructor and it's showing respect for the instructor.

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But with the ninjutsu, you come in and I wasn't told what was going on here. There was a thing that looked like a little house on the wall above your head on a shelf.

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And when I came in, I was like, that was kind of strange, you know, but I was told that, hey, look, this is showing respect for Japan.

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We're bowing to it to show respect for the grandmaster over there, the teacher over there.

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Yeah, so we're bowing down to this thing. And so, I jump ahead 12 years and I found out 12 years into it that it's actually a temple, a shrine.

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So, in that 12 -year process of figuring out that was a shrine and not just showing respect to Japan, we're bowing down to foreign or false gods.

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And so, a lot of things started happening in that 12 -year period that was very demonic in nature. Supernatural experiences, we were taught remote viewing like you was talking about a while ago,

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Jeff. I have experience in that. I can tell you, we can touch on that or wherever else you want to talk to, but a lot of the same things you went through.

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Yeah. Yeah. Weren't you talking, Justin, about when you started getting into remote viewing as you're progressing in ninjutsu, historically, was that something that they would use sort of like, because the thing that they are known for is just that being very stealth like.

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Yeah, espionage. Would they utilize astral projection or remote viewing to kind of view what's in the next room before they ambush it?

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Yeah. Because if you think about combat, the ultimate thing in combat is what every military around the world is doing right now, and that is to figure out what your next enemy's move is.

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So, if you can predict your enemy's next move, you've got a pretty good hand in cards there.

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Yeah. And it's something you can actually learn about this today. There's some really crazy experiments that our government was involved in with the occult in even the last generation, and they dabbled in remote viewing and those sorts of things.

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I mean, it seems nuts and seems crazy conspiracy theory kind of stuff, but it's the truth. You can look it up. I mean, our government was dabbling in remote viewing and all the rest to try to figure out can we view our enemy from afar?

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Can we even kill an enemy via remote viewing? And the only way into that world is through sorcery, divination, and all the rest.

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And so, when I was learning ninjutsu, and I wasn't doing it full -time, but I had somebody who was teaching me ninjutsu wherever I had spaces.

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I was training for competition, and I loved ninjutsu at the time, because I grew up, again, idolizing ninjas.

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But when I was learning it, well, I was taught the keys to meditation, the rules of meditation, and I was taught specifically,

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I'll never forget, I was taught to specifically try after I got my body into a state of meditation or even a trance to essentially try to escape my own body and begin going into my neighborhood.

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I was told to try to essentially get out of your body and literally walk a mile from your house and those sorts of things.

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And there was some crazy stuff that was happening in my life once I let that into my house, and I wasn't even a

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Christian yet. And we can go on for days about the stories and my experiences. But yeah, it is true.

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There was a connection to the art, to that occultism, and that must be avoided as a

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Christian. You can't compromise with it. You can't say, well, you know, just turn a blind eye to it. That's occultism, it's divination, sorcery.

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It's engaging with communication with the dead at times. And so we have to abandon that sort of a thing.

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And I want to just highlight once more, one more time, the difference between a combat system, like say, for example, let's name some, kickboxing,

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Muay Thai, combat karate system, Taekwondo, Wing Chun, yeah, even

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Kenpo, you have Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, Judo, those systems, like those systems are built as a martial science, a fighting science.

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Like, this is my area of specialty. I'm going to work the ground. What's the best way to overcome an attacker on the ground?

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This is my area of specialty, Judo. How do I take the person's force and power, make them fall down, flip them over me, that sort of a thing.

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Like they have an area of specialty and they focus on the martial science aspect. All of that, you can do totally detached from any worldview issues that say the practitioners had when they were creating the science behind the arts.

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But there's no disconnecting some systems, you have to be honest about that. Some systems like Tai Chi, or Qi Gong or whatever, you can't take away the occultism from it because the occultism was first, the worldview was first, and then it grew from those worldview issues into the techniques.

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The techniques flow from the worldview or philosophy. There's a major difference between that and say

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Muay Thai, where you're kicking a banana tree. You know what I'm saying? How do

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I throw this bone into my attacker's leg in such a way that he can't stand up again?

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Nothing there has anything to do with the occult. I mean, it's just pure scientific method of how do