The recent death of a Christian missionary on a remote Indian island has garnered much attention from news outlets and sparked a bit of a firestorm on social media. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, you can learn a bit more about it here. I’m not particularly interested in defending John Chau’s presence on a restricted island among the Sentinelese people, nor do I intend on considering the complex ethical situations that arise when religious beliefs and civic laws conflict with one another. I’m also not interested in critiquing his missiological convictions, though I think this work needs to be done in Christian circles. There are so many moving parts to this situation, I don’t even know what I think about all of it.
I simply want to point out my biggest observation from the conversations about John Chau, not necessarily the actions of John Chau.
I think Chau’s death took a giant spotlight and pointed it to the big elephant in the room of our pluralistic society: Christians really believe the gospel is a matter of life and death.
In some ways, I was sympathetic with the criticisms I read. Yes, Western diseases have killed countless thousands of indigenous people. Yes, Christendom’s missionaries have, at times, shown contempt for indigenous cultures and committed unspeakable atrocities in the name of Jesus. Yes, civic laws and regulations matter, and need to be usurped with great caution. Yes, the guise of Christianity has cloaked the imperialistic desires of Western leaders.
But none of these facts – as devastatingly true as they may be – change the heart of the Christian message. Christians believe Jesus, a Jewish Middle-Easterner, really lived. As we will celebrate in a few weeks, we believe this man was conceived by God and born of a virgin, fully God and fully man. We believe this Jesus really died a substitutionary death. We believe he actually rose from the dead. We believe hundreds of people (including his previously devastated disciples) saw his resurrected body. We believe he ascended into heaven. We believe he will return to judge the nations and fully establish his perfect kingdom.
And we believe this changes everything. We believe the forgiveness of sins and the redemption of the world are found in Christ alone. Because we believe life and death is at stake, we believe getting the news of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection to all people is worth risking life and limb.
We don’t believe Christianity is a Western religion only believed through a Western orientation to the world. We believe God has made every people under the Sun to hear this news, love this news, and worship him in their own unique, God-given way as a joyous response to this news. We know there will be Sentinelese people around the throne of God. And they won’t be singing Chris Tomlin songs.
