Here’s a confession: when the world learned of John Chau’s death late last year when he tried to make contact with the isolated and violent residents of North Sentinel Island, I had one immediate reaction: “That young man was a fool.”
I admit that with shame. Like Chau did, I believe that the good news of Jesus should be spread across the world; that everyone should hear this good news; that serving Jesus may well mean becoming a martyr; and that missionaries discern God’s clear direction to take the good news to a specific group of people somewhere in the world.
Unlike Chau, I do not believe this means disregarding laws meant to protect outsiders from probably fatal encounters with the Sentinelese, and to protect the Sentinelese from unwelcome visits by outsiders. There are still thousands of people groups throughout the world that have never heard anything of Jesus Christ. Obeying Christ’s Great Commission hardly obliges a missionary to attempt a mission among people quite likely to kill first and ask no questions later.
Nevertheless, I was haunted by the hostility of my initial reaction to Chau’s death.
I cannot forget Christ’s warning about calling someone a fool, or about the noble church tradition of the holy fool. Maybe God did call Chau to this quixotic errand. I tremble at that thought, and then can only find comfort in the thought that only God and Chau know the answer.
Now comes Doug Bock Clark of GQ, whose work I have praised before, when he wrote about the underground railroad leading out of North Korea. He has also written in stunning detail for GQ about Otto Warmbier’s ordeal as a prisoner in North Korea, and of the brazen murder of Kim Jong-nam at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. If a report is set in Asia and it involves complex details, Clark is the man for the job.
As soon as I saw the web headline to Clark’s 10,000-word essay — “The American Missionary and the Uncontacted Tribe” — I knew that Chau would benefit from Clark’s style of extensive research and elegant writing.
I’ll quote only one passage, which makes a logical connection to Jim Elliot, perhaps the best-known North American missionary and martyr of the latter 20th century:
As Jim Elliot, a missionary whom Chau idolized, said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Like many evangelicals, Chau grew up celebrating Elliot, whose widely publicized story helped launch, in the late 1950s, the missionary boom that is still ongoing today. It is uncanny how closely Chau followed Elliot’s footsteps. They grew up miles from each other, hiked the same mountains, and formed convictions as teenagers that they were called to uncontacted tribes. Shortly after graduating from college, Elliot was lanced to death by an Ecuadoran tribe infamous for killing outsiders. However, after a few years, Elliot’s widow and other missionaries converted some of the tribesmen who slew Elliot — leading many evangelicals to declare the original mission a success. Should he die at the hands of the Sentinelese, Chau may have reasoned, he would simply be following Elliot’s example — and that of the original missionary, Jesus Christ.
“I think I might die,” Chau confessed in it. But he comforted his friend: “I’ll see you again, bro—and remember, the first one to heaven wins.”
But it’s also doesn’t seem that Chau viewed confronting the Sentinelese again as seeking martyrdom. “I can say explicitly that John wasn’t on a suicide mission,” said Jimmy Shaw, who taught the History of Missions Class taken by Chau at university, remained close to him, and was privy to his plans. “He was a person of faith. If he died, then he died. But he was a believer, and he believed he was going to get the chance to share the gospel with those who’d never otherwise have a chance to hear it. And that was the risk worth taking.”
I cringe at a thought like “the first one to heaven wins,” as though discipleship is best measured by dying young.
However, Chau had a cause for which he was willing to die, and not just in theory. Clark has shed a compassionate light on this idealistic young man.