A little while ago, a friend of mine lent me this book; it's meant to be the autobiography of this guy who's a Kung Fu master and World Champion who beats up a lot of people, goes to prison and then becomes a born-again Christian and then procedes to pooh-pooh the martial arts as promoting 'false spirituality'.
Has anyone else read this "true" *cough cough yep and I'm a tomato cough cough* story? What were your thoughts? Do you think he's genuine?
Don't get me wrong, I didn't object to his Christian message. I found the book to be quite inspirational. I objected to his unlikely claims and his sweeping, unclarified statement that martial arts = spawn of Satan.

Every one has there own view and control of there own actions. those with power must be prepared to deal with it. I dont trust a guy who is being a hypocrite and besides the sprituality becomes your own if you actualy learn anything from martial arts. Stay open to his ideas but dont take it to heart with out some thought

To be fair, I don't think he really claimed that the martial arts were directly responsible for his actions. I think his agenda was more to do with renouncing MA on the grounds that they in some way offer alternative spiritual messages to Jesus.
I just wish he'd elaborated on this point a little. It was almost a throwaway note at the end of a chapter; considering the way he'd structured the beginning of the book, I was surprised to find that this point was not developed at all, of faith and the martial arts and how they relate to Christianity. Much was written on all three of these points, but no discussion really of how they all worked together. Quite a frustrating read for me, as a martial arts enthusiast!

I've just ordered this and its sequel, for next week, I as a Christian myself do not believe Martial Arts are 'The Spawn of Satan'. It is the individual fighters who use it to commit murder are the Evil ones.

MA teaches humility etc, we have Kokoro (Attitude), this is a concept that crosses through many martial arts, but has no single discrete meaning. In context, it means something like "heart," "character," or "attitude." Character is a central concept in karate, and in keeping with the dō nature of modern karate, there is a great emphasis on improving oneself. It is often said that the art of karate is for self-defense; not injuring one's opponent is the highest expression of the art. Some popularly repeated quotes implicating this concept include:

"The ultimate aim of Karate lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of its participants." - Gichin Funakoshi

"The Way is not meant as a way of fighting. It is a path on which you travel to find your own inner peace and harmony. It is yours to seek and find." - Hironori Ohtsuka

Respect is another very important part of karate; it is about cleansing oneself and strengthening character. The spirit of "osu" is to push onself to the limit of one's ability, to persevere under pressure, to endure. This is why it is said that "Karate always begins and ends with rei."

This is "Christian" not "Satanic"

Well, I couldn't quite figure out why there had to be such a big difference between martial arts and Christianity - why one couldn't be used to express the other.
Please post back here after you have read it and tell me what you made of it! I know what my standpoint as a martial artist is, and the friend who lent it to me is a Christian, but I'm curious what a Christian martial artist might make of it!

Mike-san

With pleasure I will let you know what I thought of the book(s) and whether it changes my views etc

Ken

I managed to get about a third of the way through the book, by the time he got to prison I just got sick of the fantsy land fighting. True story... my a$$... unless he spent a large portion of his life eating dodgy mushrooms.

So Gavin

Does it fall into the University of Frank Dux then?

I would say it's definitely going that way. Interestingly, there's no record anywhere in the world of him having won a Kung Fu world championship. I looked.
My assessment of the situation was that he made up some kung fu type BS in order to have the book appeal to the sort of target audience he wanted to 'convert' to Jesus - maybe to good effect, since I only read it because my friend thought it would interest me as a martial arts fan. Like I said, I didn't object to his Christian message at all, I'm just not sure how spreading tales that are clearly untrue, in the name of Jesus Christ, is appropriate.

I think I should write a book myself but if you read my poll in Karate forum, I'm still searching for perfection. I'm just a normal Martial artist who doesn't have any championships etc just like 95% of MA's but would my book be read Mmmmmmmm