There are two traditional ways of describing the presence of an absence we refer to as God: deus otiosus and deus absconditus. The “idle God” or the “hidden God.”

In Christian theology, the idea of the hidden God refers to a creator who, although not visibly present, is there in the very structure of our existence. To believers, existence reverberates God’s presence. The notion of an idle God refers to a creator who has withdrawn from the world and does not interfere with creation. To Agnostics, a silent chord in our memory is what is at most present in the structure of our existence.

An atheist has no time for either position: existence simply is. Nothing echoes now nor was played eons in the past.

I begin this way in order to understand a delicate tension I find in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

On the one hand, there exists a reverence to tradition and to foundational people in this martial art whose revolutionary principle was to demystify the martial arts. Sometimes, this respect for the founders has caused a rift between those who are the inheritors, the second and third generation Gracies, and those who at the other extreme eschewed the founders (and the attire and the bowing and memory and formed their own jiu-jitsu planet).

In either camp, jiu-jitsu is revolutionary for its no-nonsense nature.

My first school’s logo is emblematic of jiu-jitsu’s un-hidden, test-us-if-you-dare, reality-based craft. It simply said, “because it works.” This highlighting of functionality refers to both its history, the 1st UFC and the Gracie challenge stories we’ve heard and seen with Rorion’s voice-over and its present practice. By it’s very ethos, jiu-jitsu hides nothing. It’s principle is not myth (the mystical aura one associates martial arts with when watching a movie).

Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a pragmatic teleology of submission.

The ends – a submission of an opponent – is the thing itself, the structure of its existence. The means is its philosophy and theory of gentleness. The art, therefore, is an open, demystified, test-it-everyday-on-the-mat practice with a genius paradox at its heart. It approaches the force directed at you by teaching you to yield, give way, redirect, catch, leverage, then submit.

Yet, there’s a real rift between true-to-the-streets jiu-jitsukas and those that do a more “sport” oriented kind. The degree of this rift is up for anybody’s guess, but we do hear it from time to time. The streets are usually very closely associated with the founders and stick to a style as applicable to a live self-defense situation as possible. They admire the berimbolo from a distance but panic slightly that their art is becoming less relevant for what it was intended and design to be. The sports, on the other hand, speak of jiu-jitsu as always-evolving, that new things are changing with new people practicing and that is what makes jiu-jitsu great *and* keeps it relevant. They look at the berimbolo up close and study its principle, wonder if they can pull it off, experiment with it, and think of the founder’s fear as an irrational reaction to not owning the art anymore.

Is there a hidden God in jiu-jitsu? Are the creators of this art now mummifying the very world they created by rejecting its technical advancement? Or are they protecting jiu-jitsu by remaining firm in their insistence on the reality-based foundational structure of their world before new jiu-jitsukas start treating them like idle Gods?