A Christian mission aborted on the tip of a poisoned arrow

Dec 02, 2018 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols

For the past two weeks the internet has been all abuzz with the story of a failed one-man effort by a young American ‘missionary’ named John Chau, to spread the Christian gospel to a reclusive tribe on a remote island in the Bay of Bengal. It has apparently touched a raw and responsive nerve globally and has brought into sharper focus a broader issue that embraces the perception of certain native populations as primitive lost souls in need of salvation, and the very idea of religious conversion.
The responses are mixed, but mostly critical of the young man who evidently felt moved to undertake what he must have known was a mission fraught with peril. My initial response was sympathy for the guy and mild shock at the nature of his ‘failure’. He was allegedly killed earlier this month when members of the tribe launched a bow-and-poisoned-arrow attack on him as he came ashore, evidently before he could even enlighten them as to the purpose of his visit.
Obviously the story has also been ventilated on Facebook, and Guyanese have not been hesitant in commenting or taking a stand on the matter. Most have flayed the young man for what they see as his selfishness and arrogance in assuming that most non-Christian indigenous people need salvation, and for ignoring warnings against such a venture. One woman however defended him with the observation that a particular Guyanese Amerindian tribe benefitted from foreign missionaries who introduced clothing to her formerly naked ancestors. Interesting!
The island in this drama is North Sentinel Island, part of the Andaman archipelago in the Bay of Bengal off the Indian subcontinent. The Sentinelese are said to be a ‘Stone Age’ tribe whose way of life has remained unchanged since the first settlers arrived there from Africa more than 60,000 years ago.
According to well-placed sources they have defied all attempts to interact or integrate with the world beyond their tiny enclave. Realizing this intent, the Indian government has made it illegal to contact the Sentinelese or to venture up to five kilometres from the island’s coast. One of the reasons was that foreign diseases to which the natives would have no immunity could be easily spread, with devastating results.
The missionary was their antithesis. Twenty-seven year-old John Allen Chau, likeable and outgoing, had married his missionary zeal to an adventurous spirit which saw him travelling to several foreign locales, including the exotic and the challenging. In several photographs, his boyish smile and animated expression tell of someone who apparently loved life and what he would have felt was a calling to share his religious faith with others. With such a personality and background, it may have been easy for him to minimize danger.
History could have enlightened him. Over the centuries there had been many attempts at contact with the Sentinelese, most of which were thwarted by their aggression and the distinct impression that they wanted to be left alone. Waving arms, threatening gestures and arrows whizzing through the air were enough to deter would-be friends and well-meaning interlopers, including the famous (or notorious) 13th century explorer Marco Polo who described them as ‘a most violent and cruel generation…’ So what was with this young zealot who rushed in where angels may have feared to tread?
Having reportedly bribed seven local fishermen to take him as close to his destination as they could, Chau continued on his own in a canoe until the fateful encounter. The fishermen who took him as close as they dared, reported that he was attacked immediately, but survived and retreated after an arrow pierced the bible he was holding. Over the next two days he kept returning until he was fatally felled. The fishermen said the next day they saw the islanders dragging his body on the beach.
As a nominal Christian, it has long bothered me that some of us feel the need to proselytize to people who are clearly content to live according to their customs or to practice their own religion, which incidentally could be thousands of years older than Christianity. Religious fundamentalism is not everyone’s bag, and although many Christians are convinced that their way is the one and only path to salvation, they should at the very least be respectful towards others who either do not agree or feel just as convinced that their religion is also the only path to God.
I know Christians who are genuinely good people, fired up with the passion and the energy to travel to the ends of the earth if need be, to spread the gospel. They will never understand otherwise, because they feel they are doing the will of omniscient, omnipotent, infallible God. If one has a deep conviction of such a calling, one will face condemnation, persecution; even death without wavering, at least outwardly. And one of the biggest problems arising out of this is that when another religion teaches its adherents likewise, and they clash ‘fundamentally’, all hell could break loose. Think of the violence perpetrated through the crusades.
Now from the evidence at hand, Chau could be described maybe as a gentlemanly crusader, and the fact that he was killed in such troubling circumstances, has invited a plethora of insight and hindsight comments, as some persons suddenly become experts on reclusive tribes, resolute missionaries, and naïve enthusiasts. There has been some feedback from the Washington missionary group, All Nations, of which he was a member, stating that he was ‘very well-prepared and knew the risks he was taking’. It has denied responsibility for his death.
So who should be held accountable for Chau’s death, if anyone? The Washington group, the bribed fishermen who ferried him to the location, or Chau himself? What about God? Presumably Chau was doing His work with deep conviction in his heart and spirit. Certainly, He could have protected him, especially since Chau seemed to have taken the words of Jesus commission to his disciples literally, to ‘Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit’.
I’m not being facetious here. Neither, it seems, are those who say he simply lost his mind. Maybe that is just what happens when you try to figure out the complex interplay between religious faith and concomitant action. Christianity from its earliest times is awash with the blood of its martyrs. And John Chau is already being described as a martyr. But people need to tread carefully there.
Chau’s last words from a letter he had written hint at a conflicted mind. First, as he clandestinely journeyed to his destination: “The Milky Way was above, and God Himself was shielding us from the Coast Guard and Navy patrols.” Then as things grew increasingly worrying: “I’m scared” and finally: “Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed. I love you all.” In the end the call was his, and the authorities who are investigating the incident may be forced to ‘leave well alone’.
Let humour have the final say, to help cushion the arbitrariness, absurdity, and fatalism of human life. One Facebooker commenting on the tragedy of John Chau’s aborted encounter with the Sentinelese wrote, ‘He wanted to introduce them to God; they returned the favour.’ God undoubtedly smiles at human wit, and maybe He alone understands human behaviour.John Chau (Reuters)

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