Prime example of where I would not be able to meet the 100% that we talked about before. I am not going to go out looking to start fights with people, but I am not just going to stand there and let someone beat me down either. I will do what I can to avoid conflict, but sometimes it can not be helped.
Texas, A lot of hatred towards hypocrisy, yes; "do as I say, not as I do" is not an attitude that impresses me. But again I'd like to state that the hatred is direct towards characteristics, not the people themselves. To the people I direct a mild amusement (really this is just my own arrogance). The amusement tends to increase as the hypocrisy grows. The Pope and Queen of England I feel the most intense mirth towards - how people that live in such comfort have the audacity to call themselves Christian is quite beyond me! I'm flattered that you will take the time to pray for me - but generally I've found that prayers do nothing to alter anything other than a person's peace of mind. Only action can cause change. And only action can demonstrate true adherrance to a code of conduct. An example: Lets say you are a new vegetarian who is objecting to cruelty towards animals, but has always had a love of a good, juicy rare steak. Now claiming you a vegetarian but occassionally giving in and eating an afore mentionned steak does not make you a vegetarian. No matter how much you advocate animal rights and how few times you eat a steak - you are no vegetarian. Just someone trying to convince themselves and others that you are. In the same way you cannot blame failure to adhere to a set belief system on the fact that you are imperfect - imperfect is a characteristic you give yourself by virtue of acting in an imperfect way. In this case any failure that you have to turn the other cheek is not down to in innate inability to do so - you can, you just choose not to let yourself get beaten up every time there is a violent confortation. But this contradicts a fundamental part of Christianity's moral code. As a result I do not think anyone who claims to be a Christian can have a fight and keep the right to claim they adhere to their faith. No matter how much a person believes that they are a Christian they cannot possibly be if they don't act in such a way as to adhere comandments of the religion. Claiming you believe in Christianity is fine - but you have not established yourself as a Christian unless you act like one. This is why I hold I have never met a Christian. Hence this Christian Tae Kwon-Do place is a bit weird. Christians training to fight? Nope, can't see the compatibility. Alexander
ill pipe up with my two cents I personally dont see anything wrong with having a religon "mixed" with martial arts. Both are things that tend to become an integral part of the person. Also martial arts have been used by relgious groups as long as they have existed and always will be. Now as for Christian TKD i have a slight problem with it. Simply because of the fact that there are already MAs that have a long history of being associated with Christianity, various forms of celtic wrestlings and medieval knightly martial arts, so there is no need to take a MA that came from another culter, strip out the philosophy from the culter teh MA came from and put christian philosophy into it. Now as for it bein hypocritical or wrong or whatever for Christians to be learning to fight, I have to disagree, however I dont have my Bible handy to pull up support but I will say this, it seems that the majority of people who think that it is wrong or hyopcritical for Christians to learn to fight areny themselves Christians but as a whole seem to be anti-Christian and probably dont know all that much about it. And I will end this post witha link to a Catholic organisation that teaches wrestling http://www.catholicwrestling.com/
Sounds Like you (A Non-Christian) are dictating what it is to be a Christian. You cannot do this. As an outsider you can comment on your observations, which you have. But this in no way gives you the right to say to those of us who are Christian "You are not Christian because I as a Non-Christian say so based on my limited knowledge of your faith" which is essentially what your argument is all about. I feel that you do not understand the Christian faith at all, which is why I encourage you to sek out Christians and ask questions. Better yet, get a copy of the Bible and read the gospel of Luke. I am constantly frustrated by people who make unfair generalisations about Christianity without any sort of study to back it up. All they have is their own observations to back up their arguments. This is both self obsorbed and wrong. Sorry if that offends anyone but I have taken a lot of abuse from people (mainly Non-Christian) who thought that they knew the Christian faith better than anyone purely based on their own observations and without any study on the subject. As to your main argument that Christians should not train in martial arts because of the "Turn the other cheek" teaching, there are plenty of websites that address this issue from a Christian point of view. The best that I have found so far is: http://www.pastornet.net.au/response/ This site contains articles on this exact subject and others including what influence that martial arts could have on the Christians who train in them. I would implore anyone who has a problem with Christians doing martial arts to hold off with their criticism. There would be undoubtedley some aspects of your life that Christians would find abhorent.
To be honest there are probably many aspects of me that Christians would abhor, yes. But that is currantly irrelevant to this thread - if you wish to attack my views, do so, but the religion forum would probaly be more appropriate for the disscussion of atheists and their view of morality and the world. I'd also like to draw your attention to the fact that unless there is a single way of interpreting the bible and its commands then there is no real level of religion at all: The fact that "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven" can probably be turned under 'interpretation' into: "Well... money, see, its really all relative. The American dream and stuff really has no problems with this issue - I mean what Jesus mean't was undoubedly that, y'know, we should all work as hard as we can to earn what we have and that giving it away is only really necessary when your local church asks for money." Or, alternatively, the passage which Christian fundamentalists in the deep south of America quote that supposedly justifies them shooting and terrorising people who have abortions along the lines of: "Before you were born I knew you" (I don't remeber it off by heart). But I do know the full passage actually is about Jeremiah fullfilling his destiny as a prophet and God using some flowery language to say 'Get to work!' Generally when people look to the scriptures for guidence they already have their mind made up - they just want a justification of it. So they find a passage and use ('interpret') it, regardless of what it really says. The interpretation of 'turn the other cheek' by C.S.Lewis is not necessarily wrong; I believe he never actually advocates using violence. But he cannot advocate harming the homicidal maniac - really only restraining him with a big hug of brotherly love. Any harm done to the homicidal maniac is wrong according to Christ's commands. Hence looking at it from a 'Christian point of view' tends to mean all too regularly 'to want to do something, be forbidden by religion, so re-interpret the religion so it can be done'. Whatever happened to the fear of God that characterised true Christianity? I mean, COME ON, if you start re-interpreting rules (which is akin to saying that they are not true in literal form) then you reduce your holy book to nothing more than a little fairy tale (as it could be about absolutely anything). The issue has no grey areas, they are just black areas in disguise - procrastination and sin causes those.
hey guys, i'd just like to remind you that the topic of this thread is ''christian taekwondo school' and not christianity, faith, religion and similar issues. let's not get too much off topic.
I don't think he was doing anything of the sort. Like a number of us have done, he was simply pointing out how the subject of this thread (a Christian Taekwondo school) is at odds with Christian scripture. If you feel that doing so is showing a limited understanding of Christianity as you say, then maybe this debate can help to correct that. Like you said - seek out Christians and ask questions. That is exactly what we are doing. Again. we're just quoting scriptures. If you think that we are misinterpreting them then let's have a friendly debate. It's one of the great things about MAP that we can debate things with people we wouldn't otherwise get to meet, so let's make the most of it! I've had a look at his link, and I'm afraid they are a bit sneaky on this particular bit of scripture. They take the line that although Jesus said it, he didn't actually practise it. Although they give examples of Jesus not responding to violence with violence, they say that because there is no specific reference to him physically turning the other cheek, therefore it does not really apply. I know that scripture is open to interpretation, but in my opinion whoever wrote this is a bit desperate to make it fit their own agenda. It's not a critisism - just an observation. If you don't like the scriptures of your own religion then there are plenty of others to choose from! This isn't really relevant in the slightest, is it?
Tae Kwon Do teaches and allows us to practice self defense. If someone physically attacks us or those around us, we have the right and obligation to use necessary force to ensure our safety and the safety of others. To my knowledge, a Christian should not have to stand by and allow himself or others to be attacked because he interprets his faith as saying "No violence at all". Tae kwon Do and Christianity both teach non violence in the face of verbal threats or intimidation, but a physical attack is something else. Everybody regardless of belief has the right to physically defend themselves. And for the record, several of our Instructors are active and devout Christians as well as traditional Tae Kwon Do students. Obviously they see no conflict in Tae Kwon Do versus Christianity.
i don't see any reasons why tae kwon do and christianity should exclude one another, but no matter what my religious orientation is, when i go to the dojang i'd like to be taught tae kwon do and not religion.
And that's why I have a problem with Instructors (like the Sells) who manipulate Tae Kwon Do to promote their Christian agenda. Go to class to practice Tae Kwon Do. Go to church to practice Christianity.
Christian Taekwon-Do Religion is part of the spiritual training in Taekwondo. Spirit, Mind & Body. All make the human harmony for hapiness. So religion is part of the TaeKwon-Do training. You can make a website search of the World Christian Taekwondo Federation (WTF) and wake up because the World is changing.
Having a christian MA school is just stupid. You don't have to be buddhist to learn Choy Li Fut. You don't have to be taoist to learn T'ai Chi Ch'uan. You don't have to be shinto to learn Aikido. Why should you have to be christian to learn Tae Kwon Do? TKD doesn't even have christianity in its history!
It's clearly a school made by Christians for Christians, for people who'd overwise get no MA experience. What's the problem? You don't have to be a Christian to learn TKD, hence all the other clubs. This is a Christian club that teaches people TKD. Some people want to mix their faith with their MA. It means it kind of excludes this club from non-Christians but it's not like they don't have other TKD clubs to go to.
The Christian TKD Clubs are made for Christian people that don't want to compromise their faith and Christian values with other mess. If you are not a Christian we respect that, so go to another school; you have many. But I will be teaching Christian MA and winning tournaments too, and if I and my students demostrate in the fighting arena how to win; That is all for me. Remember that in MA you have to teach the student what is wrong and what is bad. You have to teach the kids that drugs and MA don't mix. If you not teach them how to use correctly the MA they can be using all the taechings for wrong purpose that is not self-defense and make their self a criminal person unarmed. In this wrong and bad issue the instructor will be teaching at School Values or a Code of Ethics, or a Military Code of Discipline/Conduct. The MA for many years have involve the training with the philosophys of the Taoist people religion (Ying and Yang). We just replace all those conduct codes with the Christian Values code of conduct and the Biblical Way to fight the battles, we just replace the Ying and Yang religion Philosophy's with the Christian religion Philosophy’s.
The christian way of fighting hmm? So you get them in line and slap them, and make sure they turn the other cheek for the whole lesson do you? :Angel:
Yes, NaughtyKnight. Like Christian we are the God Instruments to control the Evil in this World! God is an undefeated Champion from the begging of the Creation to the End! He call Itself: "Jehova God of the Army's". The name Jesus means: "Jehova Saves" and the word Christ means: "the Messiah of Menssenger"; so the name JesusChrist means: "God saves thru his messenger". The Violence is Saint if you use it under the right authority. A Cop can use their weapons because they have the authority by Law to do it. Like Christian I don't want ever to Kill someone, but if the Goverment send me to War, I will do it, because I have the authority from the Goverment to do it and for defense my self. The Bible says that we have to be under the authority of God and the Goverments and we have to be obedience to this authorities because they have be put it by the Goodwill of God. We just have the power to disobey them just went they call us to be disobedience to the Word of God.
