Which is best, to stand on Asian marital arts, and all that means, and pull Christian principles into that art, re-explaining the Asian concepts with Christian explanations; or to stand wholly apart from the Asian pulling only the technique mastery into a wholly Bibliocentric concept?

Is it not what Catholicism has done for centuries in adapting pagan worship systems by changing their pagan names to Christian names and concepts? Where does the halo originate? Not from the Bible. Where does “Mary veneration” originate? Certainly not from the Bible. And a host of other non-biblical issues in several “christian” religions could be mentioned.

Why not stand where the Lord stands, solely in the truth, and question every little thing that does not pass through the filter of the Holy Scriptures? If Christian martial arts did this their teaching about “Hara” would be different. It does not filter as commonly taught. And rather than trying to re-explain it according to Biblical concepts, retaining its Asian body, why not debunk the whole idea and search the Scriptures for its doctrine of “loin center” and use this Biblical concept rather than the Asian terminology?

Proverbs 31:17 “She girdeth her loins with strength...” Here is where the Bible points to for physical force. “But that is Hara,” they say. And I ask “why would a Christian come to truth from a Japanese anatomical term, rather than to the Japanese from the Bible’s term and concept?” Why not go to the world from the Bible rather than come to the Bible from the world? Why not give out the position that we begin at God’s Word and try all by that rather than give out the position that we continue to use the world’s concepts we just Biblically adapt them.
A person’s loins is where God put physical force. Call it what you will, I will call it by God’s terms. Making or breaking centers here physically.
Ezekiel 21:6 “Sigh therefore, thou son of man, with the breaking of thy loins...”
Jeremiah 30:6 “...wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness?” Herein is where weakness or strength rest.
Here in is where God centers His focus on man.
Ezekiel 1:27 “...from the appearance of his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward...” 8:2 “...from the appearance of his loins even downward, fire; and from his loins even upward...”

Here is the true source of “natural” force. Get an enemy here and he is not able to rise again.
Job 31:20 “If his loins have not blessed me...” The true source of “life” force in in this location. Why not focus the world toward such that is of God? We are told in the Scriptures that true manhood is from there.
Job 38:3 “Gird up now thy loins like a man...” Job 40:7 “Gird up thy loins now like a man...”
Job 40:16 “Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.”
Daniel 5:6 “...so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another.”
Nahum 2:1 “...make thy loins strong, fortify thy power mightily.” We may strengthen this force.
It just seems better to dig around in our Bibles and if Christians, use Biblical terminology. That would even be a much better witness, and it would certainly teach true concepts rather than trying to twist pagan concepts like pretzels to make them sound like truth.
Just a thought.

Ron Tottingham, PhD, LitD
Theologian & Grandmaster 9˚
Colonel, US Corp of Chaplains