I am a martial artist. I’m no longer a practicing martial artist, but I’ve studied the art of war, the minds of predators, and I have taught karate and self-defense to hundreds of people all over the world. To further establish some credibility, I wrote two books on the subject of Christ-centered martial arts. From this stance, I have some observations I’d like to share about that mysterious virus we shall not name, with respect to how it operates and how we might be able to defeat it. Keep in mind I am not a scientist, and I have no expertise or degrees in anything scientific. But I am a systems thinker, and I have a knack for piecing things together and communicating.
What I remember hearing and maybe you remember also—it is the immune system’s overreaction that can make you very sick and kill you, not the virus itself. I can’t tell you where I heard that, and I don’t know where to find that information right now. But this would make sense in light of the facts. Some people have no symptoms and others end up dying in the hospital. Plus there’s a whole huge list of possible lingering problems, once you recover from the tough part. How does it physically affect different people in such dramatically different ways? I’ve been asking this question for awhile, without receiving answers, and the only thing that makes sense to me is your reaction to the virus depends on your immune system.
A recently published article in Science, How does coronavirus kill? Clinicians trace a ferocious rampage through the body, from brain to toes, implies that scientists don’t actually know if it’s the immune system or the virus that hurts you. What it says specifically is…“If the immune system doesn’t beat back SARS-CoV-2 during this initial phase, the virus then marches down the windpipe to attack the lungs, where it can turn deadly.” IF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM DOESN’T BEAT BACK, is what stands out to me. So is it saying that if we have a strong immune system that works properly, then we should not be getting sick? I’m not sure, but that’s a different message than saying the only cure for every single person, regardless of their personal health issues, is a vaccine followed by another and another and another.
Looking at the wide variety of reactions to the virus, and the gigantic list of long-haul symptoms, I’m inclined to believe that it is actually your own immune system which is being tricked into attacking itself. So back to my martial arts training, let’s talk about Aikido, Judo, and Jiu Jitsu. It’s been a long time, so I went back to my first book, Martial Arts: The Christian Way, and looked closely at the fight strategy of each style. These arts cleverly use an opponent’s own energy against them. They use their opponent’s own weight and strength against them, just like Covid turns your immune system against you. So if my opponent throws a punch at me, I might step aside while simultaneously grabbing his arm and pulling him in the same direction of his own force, causing him to lose his balance, and slam into the wall or floor.
Isn’t it interesting that the virus operates in our bodies exactly the way in which Japanese martial artists have operated against their enemies in real wars? The ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu said, “Know thy enemy.” And this is the secret to martial arts. Now, if you look at the United States, and what is happening to people here, you see the same sneaky Judo on a societal level. The vaccinated are blaming the unvaccinated. The democrats are blaming the republicans and Christians. Everybody is blaming everyone else for something that isn’t working or is wrong or doesn’t go as intended. Something (an invisible enemy) is turning Americans against each other, against our United States body, and against our own individual bodies too. It’s a very clever strategy, if it is intended to weaken and collapse the nation.
Now, let’s look at the official fix, one of the two types of vaccines. I only have time to talk about the new approach called mRNA. So according to the CDC’s website, here’s how it works. “To trigger an immune response, many vaccines put a weakened or inactivated germ into our bodies. Not mRNA vaccines. Instead, they teach our cells how to make a protein—or even just a piece of a protein—that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies.” Interesting. So the virus tricks your immune system into attacking you instead of it, and the supposed fix, which is the vaccine, reprograms what your cells do to illicit an immune response. Is that correct?
So I have a legitimate question. Why do we need more shots? Do our cells forget how to make these proteins after being taught? Or do we need more instructions to override the previous and tell our cells what to do when variants come along? Is it not alarming to anyone that science and technology are messing with the actual functionality of our immune systems in this way? Just like the virus tricks our immune system, the vaccine does too! And how many times can we override this process without causing a breakdown in our body’s machinery? It’s hard to ask questions because if you present any skepticism or doubt about the vaccines, you are ridiculed, labeled a conspiracy theorist, silenced, discredited, fear mongered, and made to feel guilty for not following what the narrative tells you to do. In addition to studying marital arts, I’ve studied psychology, and I can tell you that these are tactics of abusers.
If you are a believer of the vaccines and that any people who don’t believe in them should be silenced and forced to take the injections, then what separates you from a dictator? If you believe there are certain circumstances by which dictatorship is essential or necessary, then you have to ask yourself another question: where does it end? How is your belief in the vaccines as a savior any more special than a Christian’s belief in Jesus as a savior? If you were living in a democracy and a Christian king came along and just decided to make a law that anyone who didn’t believe in Jesus would be muzzled and forced to go to church, would that be okay with you? In such a scenario, you would then not be allowed to buy or sell unless you went to Church and took communion every Sunday. This seems ridiculous but not unheard of throughout history. Much worse has happened.
I am reminded of the teaching in Matthew 7:3-5. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Whether it’s intentional or accidental, whether the vaccines work or not, people are being naïve. They are buying into the notion that half of the country is just, well, stupid, and therefore they have to protect us. It’s interesting that the people who hate Trump the most, without realizing, are becoming everything they hate about him (by stereotyping, labeling, name calling, intimidating, embarrassing people, discrediting, silencing, fear mongering, etc.).
We all have thoughts…a trade war in China, a mysterious virus after the trade war agreement, a failing financial system, big problems such as enormous debts, climate change, global warming, an eightfold explosion in population since the 1800s, a gargantuan wealth gap, endless money printing, a stock market completely disconnected from businesses, the end of oil, a bond market at zero percent interest rates, shutting down small businesses, inflation, planetary resources, the disappearing ozone layer, and on and on. People wonder if this was indeed a fluke accident that our government really wants to fix. The World Economic Forum is talking about The Great Reset, and has been talking about it since day one of the virus. The big question is what’s really going on here and how do we get out of this as a nation? It won’t be through polarization and division, that’s for sure.
If we want to win this war, we need to learn how to communicate. People need to feel comfortable asking questions, without fear of being peer pressured, bullied, discredited, and emotionally abused. That’s what makes America great. Not the Trump plan. Not the Biden plan. Not politicians and not more money. But people, coming together, listening to each other, valuing human intellectual diversity in thought, color, expression, language, etc. It’s human relationships that will make a difference going forward; not tech devices and fact checkers. I’ve lived around the world, and have communed with all kinds of people. I love people. I learn from people. I don’t like conflict. I firmly believe it’s better to avoid one single conflict than it is to win 1000 battles, but there is a time for war.
If we are true believers of anything and we really want to help other people see what we see, then we need to learn to be better communicators. We can’t dictate. That just doesn’t work in society, and it has been proven not to work time and time again. When I lived in Africa, the local language didn’t have a future tense, so the missionaries there couldn’t communicate the concept of Heaven, which is a futuristic concept. It was their job to figure out how the natives saw the world, and find a way of communicating the main point of their message, without forcing them into doing something out of fear without understanding. What does that accomplish? There’s an old book I read as a teen called How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Consider reading it, if you haven’t already, or giving it to someone you love.
“Outstanding, sophisticated, and mesmerizing…a spiritual intrigue similar to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.” —ForeWord Reviews