When I was in High School, I took a style of martial arts called Ishin-Ryu which means “half moon”. Every move you make is done in the shape of a half moon. If you block a punch coming to your face, your blocking hand starts down near your waist and is swung upward in a half moon motion to block the punch. If you block a kick coming at your side, you start your block with your hand pointed upward near the middle of your chest and you swing downward in a half moon motion to block the kick. It’s a pretty cool form and seemed to work pretty well. I went on to become not only good at defending myself and others in high school, but by my senior year I was cocky enough to be a bit of a bully. But that’s a story for another time.

In the course of my training, I thought I had in Ishin-ryu, the best form out there. There was so much fanfare and showiness in other forms like Tae Kwon Do. They seemed to be all about the show and nothing about actually making you a good fighter. Then one day, a friend of mine started to talk to me about Thai Boxing. Sounded unglamorous to me and I thought it was just a strange idea. My first exposure to it was in a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie called Kickboxer. The character’s name was Tong Po. If you’ve seen it, you may recall that your first introduction to him has him kicking a pillar with his shin and not be phased by it. You knew from the start he was tough. When he kicked the pillar, the ceiling shook and plaster fell. When he fights Van-Damme’s brother in the movie, he breaks his brother’s spine making him a paraplegic. Van-Damme, of course, starts training and beats Tong Po in the end, blah blah, you know the drill if you ever watched karate movies in the 80s. It seemed pretty intense back then.

What set Thai boxing apart was its philosophy. While I had been training myself to learn how to block or avoid getting hit, Thai boxing taught that it’s not a matter of whether you get hit. It’s whether or not you can take it. Thai boxing asks the question, how much punishment can you take and how can you train yourself to be able to take more on an ever increasing scale.

My faith in Ishin-ryu was shaken. I had a hard time imagining how I could fight such a person. Imagine hitting a guy as hard as you can and him just absorbing it as if to say, “is that all you’ve got?”. It would completely remove your will to fight. How could you beat such a person. All you can do now is take the beating coming to you, or run. Neither choice is exactly manly.

As is true with pretty much every analogy I’m sure this one probably breaks down, however, to me it’s a picture of what the Christian is called to do when he is offended. There is definitely a time to speak up for the sake of peace and purity, however, I submit that the vast majority of offenses should be absorbed. Not merely put up with or appeased, but fully absorbed at the instant they are received.

I’ve heard it said by those outside the Church that Christianity is for the weak and is a crutch for the simple. In some senses this is a fair assessment. After all, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” Where there is weakness in the believer, there is ultimate strength. If we train ourselves like Tong Po to absorb the pain that comes from an offense, we obtain ultimate strength in Christ. We become spiritual tough guys. We walk around not with pride, but in humility ready to absorb any and every offense and letting them go–not merely paying lip service and saying “I will let it slide, this time”, but rather we view the person with compassion and love and live sincerely just as if it had never happened.

This is not our nature and doesn’t come easily. It takes training. I think we often have to process the offense, but my encouragement is for men of God to train themselves so that processing isn’t necessary. Feeling the sense of being offended is merely seeing the punch coming and readying oneself to absorb it–to show that the power of Christ love is in us and we will absorb with no thought of vengence or personal justice. We will glorify God in our pursuit to love not in spite of the offense, but because the definition of love is to absorb the offense. Jesus was flogged, tongue lashed, beaten and crucified. He took it. He absorbed it for all of God’s elect. I think we could all stand become a little tougher like that–like Jesus.