President Theodore Roosevelt was a very well rounded martial artist, best known for his boxing and wrestling which he had studied since he was a student at Harvard. However he was also known for the indulging in a type of fencing called "Single Stick" which he practiced with his friend Leonard Wood (Governor General of the Philippines.) Single stick is a type of western fencing where a cudgel is used instead of a foil, so that the practitioners can hit any target on the body and can do so with full contact impact (as you would expect from boxing) while the weapon remains solid and hefty:
Some contend that Roosevelt & Wood were actually practicing Canne De Combat from France rather than "proper English Single Stick". However, I insist this hardly matters, because if you take Single Stick as practiced in the video above, and make it continuous without stop and go point-counting, you end up with more athletic, flowing and energetic techniques (see also the difference between Karate "point fighting" and Kickboxing), so that no doubt Canne De Combat is simply French Single Stick:
Single Stick was used as training in the US military during the Spanish American War which Roosevelt fought in as a founder of the "Rough Riders." Single Stick was in the Olympics of 1904, and continued to have competitions held within the UK's military until the 1950's. In other words, for most people who practiced fencing for self-defense or to learn to use a sword for actual combat, fencing was a type of stick fighting all the way through the first part of the 1900's. In traditional ancient Filipino Martial Arts the stick is still used to prepare for sword fighting up to the present day. Before you write off my controversial correlation here, consider that the primary form of sparring for the martial art of Gatka from India is clearly also a type of Single Stick:
But a swordsman is not complete with fencing skills alone. One lucky punch can drop an attacker, but the vast majority of the time it takes many more punches. Likewise a lucky slash or stab from a bladed weapon can end a fight, but from a self-defense perspective it is unwise to expect that it will. The odds that someone can and will get past your sword into close range grappling are good. As Roosevelt got older he became more and more interested in what he called "Jujitsu", the grappling martial art of the Samurai which was developed specifically for grappling encounters while sword fighting. Roosevelt was actually studying Judo, which at that time was much more like what Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is today:
Thanks primarily to MMA and Filipino Martial Arts (but also thanks to numerous other martial arts) today in the USA this type of training is widely available; you don't have to go to Harvard and then join the military to pick up single stick, boxing, wrestling or jujitsu. The best of the best of these types of martial artists meet regularly at events called "gatherings" (translated from the word "Tipon" in Tagalog.) The most famous gatherings are the "Dog Brothers Gatherings" in California and Europe, but there are local Gatherings such as the Northwest Warrior Tipon-Tipon in the Seattle area and the various "Beat The Crap Out of Cancer" gatherings in Canada (notice the Gatka fighters doing Teddy-style Single Stick at 12 minutes 30 seconds):
WARNING: This is an overtly religious post, though it does have implications for anyone interested in the general subject of religion.
As I see it, there are 3 dimensions to "faith in Christ," and probably faith in other God/s, though certainly the first two dimensions must apply to most religions:
Acceptance
Accordance
Action
Thus someone's over all volume of faith in Christ could be measured by multiplying their Acceptance by their Accordance by their Action.
Acceptance
By Acceptance I mean how much do you believe that the God/s you are thinking of (Jesus or otherwise) exists. But I hereby suggest that there is a massive range of depth in Acceptance. For example:
A secular humanist declaring "I don't think Jesus ever existed, but I do think he exists as an idea as a set of teachings that can help people become better people" is a legitimate depth of Acceptance of Jesus.
A less shallow depth of Acceptance would be "I think Jesus was a historical figure and a great teacher, but I don't think there was anything supernatural about him."
A slightly deeper yet level of Acceptance would be "I really like the story of Jesus, and I want to believe there was something divine about him."
This continues to progress into slightly deeper and deeper levels of faith in Christ, all the way down to the hard-core follower believing in miracles.
Accordance
However, just because you accept a God/s existence, doesn't mean that you agree with (or are in "Accordance" with) that God/s agenda. In James 2 v 19, as part of the debate on Grace vs. Works, James quips "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder." In other words, the devils who openly oppose God/s have a powerful Acceptance, but they fundamentally disagree with the God/s agenda.
Consider this classic from Blutengel:
The story goes that a girl was rejected by her Christian neighbors, got no answers from praying to God, but had a different experience when praying to the Devil instead for the help she needed, which resulted in her falling in love with him and finding a far better level of happiness. This is a great example of how someone could easily decide to disagree the God/s agenda.
Does punishing those who disagree with you, really sound like a good idea to you? It's easy not to be on board with the God/s agenda. Jonah and the Whale in the Old Testament provides a clear example of a follower of the God/s having a problem with the God/s agenda, but generally any time any biblical prophet is chastised by God/s we see this same issue at hand.
Do you agree with the God/s actions, instructions, or agenda? To what degree you do agree with all that is what I call Accordance.
Action
Our actions reveal our true belief more than anything else. I look both ways (action) before crossing the street, because deep down inside I truly believe that I could be hit by a car if I don't look both ways.
Christians add that God/s actually showed up and demonstrated the best way to be mortal in the flesh. In so far as Jesus was actually born, lived, and died, he left an example for how we should behave. He left an example of how to follow his own teachings.
When Christians think "Jesus doesn't happen to be standing right here right now, but I can feel his love, so it is my responsibility to be Jesus right here in this situation, right now" they are realizing their need for Action. Certainly this is what the Jesus archetype suggests in Mathew 22 v 37-39 "‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’"
When we see some major Christian figure doing truly things which Jesus would do if he was here, such as Mother Teresa taking care of the poor, or Pope Francis openly attacking income inequality, there we see examples of Action.
There are Jews and Muslims who believe that Jesus was a great teacher who taught the will of God, that as Jesus taught we should be nice to each other and not let our own egos get in the way of our own happiness. In so far as they allow this limited Acceptance and greater Accordance lead to Christ-like Action, they have a greater over all volume of Faith in Christ than do Christians with high levels of Acceptance and moderate levels of Accordance, yet very little Action to demonstrate faith in Christ. Consider this speech at Christian establishment Liberty University, by Bearnie Sanders, a known Jew:
Product
"Christians" who embrace and take Action on unkind ideals like what Ayn Rand preached, can not be said to have very much faith in Christ at all. Ted Cruz quotes Ayn Rand here in the act of objecting to medical coverage for the poor:
Ted "Son of the Devil" Cruz can have profound Acceptance and Accordance with Jesus, but if his Action is polar opposite of what Jesus would do, Ted's volume of his faith equals nothing at best. As the Apostle James said (2 v 18) on this topic, "Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds."
In fact, the teachings Ayn Rand have been codified in the opposite of Christianity, Satanism. Just because you call your god "Jesus" does not mean your Jesus is my Jesus. If you read the New Testament and walk away with Ayn Rand as your Accordance, and your Action is based on her words, the religion you are embracing in practice is Satanism:
Quite frankly I know many secular humanists who are far better "Christians" and have vastly superior "Faith in Christ" than Ted Cruz does.
