What's in a Name: Iron Sharpens Iron

People see "2717" and assume it's an address. Or a founding year. Something administrative. It's neither.

2717 comes from Proverbs 27:17: "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another."

I want to tell you what that verse actually means to me, because I don't think most people stop long enough to sit with it. It's easy to read "iron sharpens iron" and picture something simple: training makes you tough, pressure makes you better, that kind of thing. That's not wrong, but it's not the whole verse either. Iron doesn't sharpen iron by being gentle with it. It takes friction. Contact. Resistance. Two pieces of metal grinding against each other until something sharp comes out of it. That's not a comfortable picture, and I don't think it's supposed to be.

We Cannot Get Better on Our Own

Here's a philosophy I've held for a long time, long before I ever thought about naming a business: teaching and learning are circular, and you get better by keeping better company. That's true in friendships. It's true in work relationships. It's true in church and in spiritual guidance. You cannot get better on your own. You may think you can. I thought I could, for a long time. But there is a limit to what you can build by yourself, and I've learned that lesson more than once.

That's part of why, in everything now, I point to God and my Savior Jesus Christ to lead me. Not because I've got it all figured out, but because I've hit the ceiling of what I can do relying only on myself, more than once, and I'd rather build on something steadier than my own judgment.

The Teacher Learns Too

Here's the part I think people miss about "iron sharpens iron." It's not one-directional. A teacher teaches, and a student learns, but it doesn't stop there. A good teacher finds something in each student they hadn't thought about before, some question, some struggle, some way of seeing the material that's new. The teacher gets better because of that student, and carries that forward into how they teach the next one. Meanwhile the student's skill grows, and they want to learn more, and they come back hungrier. The teacher, now sharper from every student before this one, has more to offer, better insight, better questions, better corrections.

It's a constant back and forth. Both people grow. Neither one stays still.

That's exactly what happened with Dave Durisio, and later with Kerry Dugan. They sharpened me, not by handing me a manual, but by being iron I had to work against, correcting me, pushing me, making me train things I didn't want to train. And what I've found, teaching my brother and now working with students of my own, is that it hasn't stopped. Every student sharpens me a little more. I show up to the next class a little better than I was for the last one, because of the one before it.

Why the Name Fits

2717 Defensive Concepts isn't built on the idea that I have something finished to hand down. It's built on the belief that none of us get sharp by staying still, and none of us get sharp alone. You need iron on iron. You need people willing to apply pressure, and you need the humility to let them.

Faith. Discipline. Defense. That order matters. Discipline without faith runs out of fuel eventually. Defense without discipline is just fear with a firearm attached to it. But put faith first, let it shape the discipline, and let the discipline shape what you're capable of when it matters, and you've got something that holds up.

If you've read this far, here's what I'd ask you to sit with: who's your iron right now? Who is sharpening you, and who are you sharpening in return? If the honest answer is nobody, that's worth changing. Not just on the range. Everywhere.