Samurai Faith
I recently painted this picture for a friend in Birmingham. It’s a watercolor. I stylized the Japanese characters a little, but the top character means samurai and the bottom means faith. As I was painting this, I began to think about how the two of them are related.
Thucydides once said, “The nation that makes a great distinction between its warriors and its scholars will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.” In my own experiences, I have always tried to marry my faith with my martial arts training. I have come to believe that Christians must take the gospel out of the church, out of our homes and into the remote places . . . to the very ends of the earth, so to speak. It’s not very popular to do that these days–we live in a culture that is morbidly afraid of pushing an agenda on anyone, especially a faith agenda. But to be a Christian is to spread Christ’s love. This is simply the great commission.
During my training in Aikido, I resonated with the Japanese honor system expressed in the dojo. The discipline of this art also caught my attention. What would happen, I wondered, if I could approach my faith with the same intensity and dedication as the Aikido practitioners around me? Would it transform my relationship to God? Would it make me more serious about practicing the spiritual disciplines. Would it spark revival in my own heart? Perhaps. So that’s what I have been attempting to do this summer. . . to take the lessons from the dojo and apply it to my every day life.
I’ll let you know how it goes.