What's up man? I met and trained with you a few times at Braga's academy in Knoxville. Hope you are well, Sir. Congrats on the brown belt.

Martial arts has been the greatest conduit for personal development and improvement since I was twelve years old. I avoid calling it "religion" because I'm not a fan of the word. But certainly, Martial arts/jiu-jitsu are a way of life. I have spent a lot of time over the last five years or so, studying Stoicism in conjunction with the martial way and found many correlations. The combination of both have aided me in increased professional and personal achievement.

Hope your studies and your success continue!

Excellence…… you would like the book!!! Good hearing from you!!!

I've been training martial arts religiously for about 20 years now, Kenpo Karate, Judo and BJJ. So yes, I believe martial arts is a very effective conduit to self-betterment.

I do BJJ for fun, though also money, as it's my job. Best thing about it for me has been the community, I've met most of my best friends through BJJ (there are plenty of arseholes in the sport too, but they're normally easy enough to avoid).

So I wouldn't say there is anything religious about it for me, though that might be a matter of semantics. I'm put off by words like spiritual, religion, faith etc, not my kind of thing. To each their own, as long as it doesn't get into weird cult territory (hello TLI).

I feel similarly. I think "lifestyle" would be a more accurate description for my relationship with jiu-jitsu.

It's a lifestyle. I do it for fun first, health or friends second. Money is involved too, as I used to make my money with jiu-jitsu before the big C happened.

But I do think it's better to trust jiu-jitsu than any totem or spiritual being. So in that sense I guess yes, I do it "religiously".

"I believe I can fly : in armbar or a guillotine ??"
Seriously, for me, jiu-jitsu it's essentiel, it's in my mind, my hearth and my soul...

Thanks to you all … your comments are thoughtful and honest. Of course the title is provocative and the serious responses to it shows the character that you Ave molded through the practice of Jiu Jitsu.

I am, among other things, an academic. The book shows in its first pages the context by which I use the provocative word: Religious…. And then it weaves through the science of process as it effects the visible and invisible parts of our martial and civil behavior..,, and then it performs open survey on my modal behavior…. Thinking, actions and feelings… as they pertain to my journey in life and from purple to brown belt.

Along the way I give a metric account that explains my success in ways that others can observe, measure and hopefully replicate

Interesting point of view as training is part of the very fabric of who I am and my successes in life are based on applying what I have learned in training to the rest of my life.

I am not religious but spiritual I do see your point and like it but to me the martial arts fit more into the paradigm of Buddhism a practice of self discovery but that is really semantics as I said great concept for a book as I always preach the unseen benefits of training are far more beneficial than learning a bunch of techniques

Thanks for the great post topic! I admire your quest of self-betterment and have been challenged by the quest myself. This is certainly a topic I have thought much about and this post is a little long winded because of it. My response is a reflection of how I have come to understand and relate to this topic personally and maybe just challenge.... a little bit... the concept of "Best Self" and how jiu-jitsu relates to that. I don't mean in anyway to be confrontive. It is hard sometimes with text to properly relay the attitude behind the words. My intent is just to express my thoughts on the topic in a spirit of gentleness and hopefully encourage more conversation. It is a little all over the place but I do connect the dots and wrap it all up in the end.

I am a 43 year old Christian who has also been practicing martial arts since I was 5 years old. I have been doing BJJ for the past 30 years. Growing up in martial arts, I have always seen and used martial arts as a tool for self-improvement. On the same note, as a growing Christian, I have also struggled with the promotion and concept of self-improvement. I have always had this struggle between trying to do better (promoting virtues such as self-control, self-discipline, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and so forth…), and knowing that, “we all fall short of the glory of God.”. - Romans 3:23. Not that these things aren’t good, but the struggle has been more about the promotion of self (knowing we fall short, even at our best) vs. God’s glory in all he has done, and continues to do in us.

What is the end goal of self-improvement or becoming our best self? What are we working toward when we pursue this goal? Are we trying to be the best human we can be in order to better serve our friends, family and community? Is it more of a self pursuit in the sense of being able to accomplish more, achieve a higher status, and or make a bigger impact? A little of both? When we say “best self”, what is the standard for that? What is better or what is worse? What is right or wrong? What is good or what is evil?

My point is, when we follow the thread, it ultimately comes down to this question, “What is righteousness and what is wickedness? Or better yet, who is righteous and who is wicked?”. I say this because righteousness is the highest form of our best self.

The problem is, everything that, and everyone who isn’t righteous, is wicked. To the extreme of what righteousness is, we have…faultless, pure, clean, without blemish, unstained, or holy. We can’t be faultless and have any fault, pure or clean and have any spot, speckle or stain. We can’t be righteous unless we are perfect in all ways. If we are less then pure, we are impure. If we are less then clean, we are unclean. If we are less than righteous we are unrighteous or wicked.

To strive to be our best self would ultimately be striving for righteousness. If we are pursuing our best, there is no other standard to go by. So what is the standard for righteousness?

Righteous has a standard and we all fall short of it. God is righteous. No one else. The standard is perfection in all ways. God gave us a simplified list of righteousness which is His ten commandments. If we hold ourselves up to just these 10 commandments, we fail miserably! “We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags.” Isaiah 64:6

The only way to be in relationship with the righteous is to be righteous yourself. Otherwise, we would blemish His righteousness. You cannot mix a clean rag with filthy rags and have it remain clean.

The GOOD NEWS is….by grace, through faith, God imparts His righteousness on us! God chooses to have a relationship with us and since we cannot earn our own righteousness, He came to this earth in the form of Jesus Christ, lived the perfect life on our behalf and offered himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins on the cross so that we could be made righteous through Him. Through Christ we are made righteous by the law of righteousness that he fulfilled for us. This is known as justification. We are justified by law before God through the works of Christ. This does not mean we are righteous in our works. We still sin, but our sins are forgiven once and for all in Christ. So by justification, we are righteous in accordance with the law, but the process of becoming righteous in our thoughts and deeds is called sanctification.

This is where the struggle gets real. Sanctification is a lifelong process of choosing Gods will over our own by the power of the Holy Spirit. A process of dying to self and living for God. Dying to yourself, doesn’t necessarily sound fun but it is where we find true Joy, Peace and Contentment. It is where we truly find ourselves. Christ said, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” - Matt 16:25 Sanctification is a lifelong process that we will not achieve until death when Christ finishes His work in us fully.

There are two kinds of works, the works of the flesh and the works of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. The works of the flesh will always glorify self and the works of the Spirit will always glorify God.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.[a] 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you[b] free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,[c] he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus[d] from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” - Romans 8:1-9

All this said to get to my main point, when we are pursuing to be our best self, what is the standard? Is it even possible? Maybe, but your best self is not enough! Your best self still falls way short of righteousness. Sure, on a horizontal scale, we may be able to call ourselves good. Man to man and by the standard of man, I do ok. I can strive to be my best self and to the world, I may seem like a good person. But on the vertical scale. Man to God, I am wicked beyond measure. Why? Simply because He is Holy and righteous. He can’t be anything less. I can admit that I am wicked only because I understand righteousness to the extent that I know I can’t even come close to being so by my own thoughts and deeds.

So now we have a comparison between “Self-Improvement” which is obviously done by the power of self, and “Sanctification” which is done by the power of God through the Holy Spirit. When we are “born again” or “born of the Spirit” we begin this process of sanctification. But sanctification is not becoming a better version of yourself. When you are born of the Spirit, you are made NEW! “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17

Ultimately we become sanctified through Gods word. “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” John 17:17. Faith in Gods word begins to work itself out in our life by how we live. The book of James says, “Faith without works is dead.”. Our faith will begin to produce good works in us. Our faith will continue to grow as we read Gods word and apply it to our lives.

God also gives us awesome tools, like jiu-jitsu to use as part of that journey. For instance, jiu-jitsu is the gentle art, I can learn about gentleness through training in jiu-jitsu. I can become a more gentle person through training in jiu-jitsu. But my definition and understanding of gentleness is going to fall short unless I am seeking what God means when He calls us to be gentle. Jiu-jitsu doesn’t provide us with a definition of what it means to be gentle. Especially what it means to be gentle off the mat. When I am seeking how God defines gentleness, I can then approach jiu-jitsu and use it as a tool to help me develop gentleness. More importantly, I can take this understanding and by the power of the Holy Spirit, I can be a gentle husband, father and friend.

Within itself, Jiu-Jitsu doesn’t have a standard for goodness. Jiu-Jitsu doesn’t teach us how to become better people. It does provide an opportunity and a format to try and correlate these things if we want, but there are many wicked human beings out there who practice jiu-jitsu and use it as a form of power and abuse. I actually wrote a blog about this years ago…

http://www.clinchacademy.[...]eaching-it

So while I love jiu-jitsu and I love to use jiu-jitsu as a tool to help me grow, jiu-jitsu within itself doesn’t provide a standard for my best self and if it did, it would fall short. My personal standard for my best self also falls short. God alone has the power to make us righteous and will graciously do so when we draw near to Him.

I love to see others using jiu-jitsu as a tool to improve in all areas of life. To me this is the way of the warrior! I support and encourage this in my own Academy but have also come to understand that even in my own personal best efforts, I fall short and am still in need of a savior.

Hi to Chris and Luke. Thanks for your responses. I will be short.

Both of you have clear perspectives. The first is a dualistic perspective from a doctrine that at its highest affirms the only aspect of Christian dogma I have ever been inspired by…” The Kingdom of God is within you…” Experientially I know this is true as it says it is true in the Rig Veda and several other books of spirituality. But in order to understand that and apply it one must realize denotological views lead to the fallacy of the consequent outside of those that follow other ways. However the work presented by Luke is significant and I thank him for the hard work he put into trying to communicate his position.

The second perspective is very telling of his life journey as does my post. His point as I see it has to do with terminology meaning and veracity as it pertains to some of the things I mentioned that I see relates to Jiu Jitsu as a martial and civil reflective discipline. He does not really see a connection worth exploring. I thank him for his position and the time he took to communicate his viewpoint….

I will bruddah… I will!!!