August 10, 2026

Respect: It’s More Than You Think

Respect isn’t another word for nice. Of course, a man or woman who has respect will, of course, be nice, but that’s just the outward manifestation of a much more comprehensive character quality. What we mean is that to say “respect” in the martial art usage of it, whether karate or kung-fu, is to say that one has a code. In our day it’s rather easy to dismiss this out of hand as some type of archaic thing, a remnant of a bygone era not to be seen again in our day of iPhones and social media. It’s quaint. It’s nice. But it’s hardly relevant in our time. That’s the thing most people think deep down.

The reality is that we all have a code. If you want your child to start karate training, or martial arts in general, one of the things that generally motivates you is that they learn respect. It’s baked into the cake. You see the students bow to the teacher and stand at attention and you think, “yeah…my son/daughter could really use a good dose of that.” That’s one of the big reasons parents go searching for “kid’s karate near me” in the first place.

When I started training in 1981 (yeah….I’m that old) i was by far the youngest person in my class. I was 11-12. I was in a class with much adults. That changed after The Karate Kid came out in 1984 and Americans saw a Hollywood version of how martial arts training developed Ralph Macchio’s Daniel into a bully beater. When Daniel started with Miyagi he was impetuous, reckless, and argumentative. But he learned through the submission to discipline that strength was impossible without self-control. But there was something else too. It was that ego had to be defeated. The whole contrast of Miyagi-do and Cobra Kai in the original movie was the difference between a martial artist and a fighter. For the teacher, and here there was a massive difference, Miyagi was respected because he led by character, not fear. Miyagi, as we learned, loved his teacher and his heritage and so he inspired the same in Daniel. Daniel loved Miyagi because Miyagi was a man of honor. A man of honor, as we saw, is humble as well as disciplined. In martial arts, karate and kung-fu, humility and strength are flip sides of the same coin.

This wasn’t the case with John Kreese who was the instructor of Cobra Kai. And again, we’re talking about the original movie just to be clear. Kreese was a fighter and former soldier who led by fear. Kreese loved no one. Except himself. He loved power and those that followed him were molded by his warped ethic of use and abuse. The motto, “strike first, strike hard, no mercy,” was never contextualized by the teacher. An enemy was anyone outside the school. Whereas Miyagi’s first priority was the character of his student, Kreese taught for pride. This message wasn’t necessarily articulated but it was so clearly shown that no one missed it. The real goal of martial arts, America saw, was character. It was code. And that code was that true strength came from discipline and humility. And just as important, it showed the true relationship of a teacher to a student. There was discipline but it was enforced by the heart, not by fear.

The sad thing is that America has way too many Cobra Kai schools and hardly any Miyagi dojos and kwoons (school in Japanese and Chinese respectively). The former seeks trophies and power; the latter seeks character and skill through discipline. The former has a warped view of the use of code and honor, using the words to force others to obey them even as they obey no one; the latter live out their code and honor the past and the teachers that have built them. Cobra Kai sees strength as the only thing that matters; Miyagi saw strength as the result of character.

It was at that point that kids started to flock to martial arts schools. In Greenville and everywhere else in America parents put their kids in karate classes as young as they can. Four years old. Some even try for three! Why? Because every parent deep down knows that the true lessons of character are the key. They want the strength of a bully-proof kid but want the package-deal that true kung-fu/karate is supposed to give.

To that end, a martial artist bows to show respect, yes. But let’s explain that.

To bow to one’s Sifu (Chinese for “teacher”) or Sensei (Japanese for teacher/master) or fellow classmates serves a dual purpose. It shows respect for the other. What does that mean? It means, that by bowing we show that they matter. They aren’t a thing to be used, but a person, a human being. On the martial arts level, far from being a casual greeting like shaking hands, a bow is a sign that you see and recognize the humanity in another person. This isn’t a small thing. Consider for a moment that every single conflict on earth begins because one person (or group) views another as a means to an end. In the old way of saying it, we’re supposed to love people and use things but we reverse the order. A martial artist, whether they’re in a karate or a kung-fu class, must recognize this as the core fundamental of their discipline. A martial arts school that teaches violence without code is like a corrupt police force.

But there’s another element to it as well. Showing respect to the other person carries with it the public demonstration that one has a specific code they intend to follow and carry out. In other words, respect is a quality one has by virtue of submitting to a transcendent standard. A Samurai’s highest authority was the emperor. Their teacher and clan leader were intermediate authorities. To bow, to show respect, therefore, is a way of displaying in public, that one is a person of and under authority. This type of language very often rubs Americans the wrong way because we like to think of ourselves as “free” people except that what we mean by freedom is autonomous. Autonomy means self-law. This means that modern Americans by default think of themselves as a law unto themselves. This is the philosophical and theological “soil” we’ve grown up in. And that’s exactly why parents fear it and want their children’s character planted and watered in the soil contrary to it. They want the respect of true martial arts even while not being fully conscious of everything running in the background.

The philosophy of hedonism is the code of the day. To say, “I just want my child to be happy,” is to say that their immediate gratification is the highest good and standard of their evaluation. In other words, that’s the code they’ll follow. “Am I happy?” That’s a question that lacks context and begs the larger question of by what standard? Can you see how easy it is to raise up civilized savages with a code that basically boils down to “be nice to people but make sure you get what you want in life?” Is it any wonder why America keeps lawyers so busy? Over against that the martial arts code is that one seeks to serve. In our case, not being a samurai, when I bow I’m saying that God, not the emperor is my highest and His word is my law. To love my neighbor as I love myself is my ethical goal. And I’m showing that my direct family, my Si-Fu (my teacher) and Si-Gung (my teacher’s teacher) have poured knowledge into my “cup” (my mind and heart). As a teacher, I’m saying that my goal is to pour this code and knowledge into my student’s cup. When the student bows to me, they are showing their similar code except that they’re submitting to thte mutual discipline so as to have their cup filled with the knowledge of their instructor (me).

That’s what a bow means. It shows respect to a code that’s above us and one which we all submit to as a family. I did not learn Wing Chun or Jeet Kune Do on my own. I had teachers. None of these teachers were God but they had derivative authority under Him. We must not define freedom as the freedom to self-indulgence. True freedom is the discipline of service to the truth that’s over us. One’s code is, therefore, one’s ultimate allegiance. Respect is the manner in which we live out that code.