Are martial arts spiritually dangerous?

Question 08110.

Whether martial arts are spiritually dangerous depends almost entirely on which martial arts you mean and who is teaching them, which is why a blanket answer will always be wrong for somebody. The category covers everything from an Olympic combat sport to a discipline that opens with meditation before a shrine.

So rather than issue a verdict, I want to give you the questions I would ask, and the biblical principles that govern the answers. That way you can assess the club in your own town rather than a caricature of one.

The Enormous Range of Martial Arts

Judo, boxing, wrestling and Brazilian jiu-jitsu are sports. They have rules, referees, weight categories and no religious content whatever. Karate, taekwondo and kung fu occupy a middle position, carrying etiquette and philosophy from their cultures of origin, which in some clubs amounts to bowing and respect and in others goes considerably further.

Then there are martial arts taught explicitly as spiritual disciplines, where meditation, energy work and the cultivation of chi are integral rather than decorative. Aikido in some schools, tai chi as usually taught, and certain traditional lineages fall here.

Lumping these together and asking whether martial arts are dangerous is like asking whether music is dangerous. The honest answer is that it depends what is being played and in what room.

It is also worth remembering that the same label can cover very different things in two towns. One club calls itself traditional and means that students bow and keep the grading syllabus intact. Another club uses the same word and means that training begins with twenty minutes of meditation. The name over the door tells you almost nothing, which is why I keep pressing people towards questions rather than categories.

Where the Genuine Concern Sits

The concern with the third group is not the punching. It is the metaphysics. Where a class teaches that there is an impersonal energy flowing through the universe which the student learns to gather and direct, that is a religious claim, and it is not one a Christian can hold.

Scripture knows nothing of an impersonal force to be harnessed. It knows a personal God who upholds all things by the word of His power, and Colossians 1:16 puts every invisible authority under Him as created. Swapping a personal God for a manipulable energy is a serious exchange, even when it arrives in a tracksuit.

That is why I would look carefully at any martial arts class where meditation, breathing to gather energy, or bowing to a shrine or a founder’s image forms part of the training. The physical technique is not the issue. The frame around it is.

Bowing, Etiquette and Culture

A great deal of anxiety here turns out to be cultural rather than spiritual. Bowing in Japan or Korea is what handshaking is in Britain. A student bowing to an instructor is showing respect, not offering worship, and treating every eastern courtesy as idolatry says more about our unfamiliarity than about the practice.

The line falls where the object of the gesture changes. Bowing to a person as a mark of respect is one thing. Bowing to a shrine, an altar, a portrait treated with veneration, or an ancestral spirit is another, and there a Christian should politely decline and be willing to explain why.

Most instructors, in my experience, respond well to a student who asks quietly and respectfully rather than making a scene about it in front of the class.

The Question of Violence

There is a second question that gets less attention and deserves more. Should a Christian train to hurt people? I do not think Scripture forbids it. Self-defence is assumed in the Old Testament law, soldiers who came to John the Baptist were not told to leave the army, and Jesus’ teaching about turning the other cheek addresses personal retaliation rather than the protection of the vulnerable.

But martial arts do shape the character, and that cuts both ways. Trained well, they produce self-control, humility and the confidence to walk away. Trained badly, they produce someone who is looking for the opportunity to use what they know. Proverbs 3:31 warns against envying a man of violence and choosing none of his ways, and that is worth hearing.

Ask what the club is producing in its senior students. That will tell you more than the syllabus.

What Martial Arts Can Offer a Christian

I would be unbalanced if I only listed concerns. Many believers, particularly young men who need somewhere to put their energy, have benefited enormously from martial arts. Discipline, respect for authority, the experience of losing gracefully, physical fitness and a community that is not the pub are all genuine goods.

For a child who is being bullied, the confidence that comes from competence can be transformative, and it very often removes the need to fight rather than creating it. Bodily training is of some value, as 1 Timothy 4:8 puts it, provided we keep it in its place beneath godliness.

So I am not looking to close the clubs. I am looking for Christians who train with their eyes open.

Assessing Your Own Club

Here is what I would want to know. Does the training include meditation or energy work, and if so what is it said to be doing? Is there any bowing to a shrine, altar or image? Does the instructor teach philosophy alongside technique, and what philosophy is it? Are students encouraged towards eastern religious practice outside class?

If the answers are no, no, not really, and no, then you are dealing with a sport and I would train happily. If the answers run the other way, you are dealing with a religious discipline and you should think again, or find another club. There are usually several within driving distance and they differ enormously.

None of this requires suspicion of your instructor. It requires you to know what you have joined.

Conscience Again

As with so much in this territory, believers will land differently, and Romans 14 governs how we treat one another when they do. If your conscience will not permit martial arts, do not train, and do not let anyone shame you into it. If your conscience is clear, train, and do not look down on the brother who stayed away.

What neither of us may do is invent certainty. I cannot tell you that a demon travels with a black belt, because Scripture does not say so. I can tell you that a worldview travels with some teaching, and that worldviews are the enemy’s preferred instrument. See my answer on spiritual warfare for how that battle is usually fought.

What About Chi and Energy Work?

The sharpest question in this whole area concerns chi, or ki, the life energy that some martial arts teach students to cultivate and direct. Take it as a metaphor for breath control, posture and the efficient transfer of body weight, and there is nothing to object to. Skilled practitioners really can generate force that looks impossible, and the physics of it is not mysterious.

Take it as a real impersonal energy pervading the universe which the trained student learns to draw upon, and you have crossed into religion. That is a claim about how reality is constituted, and it competes directly with the Bible’s account of a personal God who upholds all things.

The trouble is that many clubs are genuinely unclear about which they mean, and the instructor may never have thought the question through. If you ask and get a shrug, you can probably treat it as metaphor. If you ask and get a lecture on universal energy, you have your answer.

Children and the Local Club

Most parents encounter this question because their child wants to join something, and the practical decision has to be made in a fortnight rather than after six months of theological reflection. Here is the short version. Go with them to the first session. Watch what happens. Talk to your child afterwards about anything that was said as well as anything that was done.

In the overwhelming majority of British clubs you will find a sport with some borrowed etiquette and no religious content at all, run by someone who wants your child to be fitter, more disciplined and less likely to be pushed around at school. Those are good things and I would not deprive a child of them out of a vague unease.

Keep talking as the years go on, because the philosophy, where it exists, tends to appear at the higher grades rather than in the beginners’ class. A child who knows they can raise anything with you will tell you when something odd is said. My answer on protecting children from spiritual attack takes that further.

So, now what?

Go and watch a session before you sign up, and pay attention to what happens in the first five minutes and the last five. That is where the philosophy usually lives. Ask the instructor directly what the meditation is for, if there is any, and listen to the answer.

Then decide with a clear conscience and without judging the Christians who decided differently. If you are already training and something has been nagging at you, name it rather than ignoring it. What is it that you have not wanted to ask your instructor about?

For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

1 Timothy 4:8 (ESV)