John Chau's Body
Kion You
My name is John. I love you, and Jesus loves you. Jesus Christ gave
me authority to come to you. On November 16th, 2018, John
Chau, a 26-year old missionary, shouted these words from
his kayak towards the men standing on the shore of North
Sentinel Island. As Chau got off his kayak and waded closer
to the island, the men shot at him with bows and arrows, one
of which pierced through his waterproof Bible. Chau then
rushed back into his boat and paddled back towards his local
fixers, Christians from neighboring islands.
which the Harvard educated, devoutly Christian Jeremy Lin
came out of nowhere and took the New York Knicks to a
blazing seven game win streak. Yet unlike Linsanity, a unified
“win” amongst Asian Americans, the death of Chau was the
complete opposite.
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Chau was born on December 18th, 1991, as the third child
of a Chinese psychiatrist father and a white lawyer mother,
I love you, and Jesus loves you. It is illegal to visit North Sentinel and grew up in Vancouver, Washington, surrounded by lush
Island, due to the Sentinelese’s historic hostility towards wooded forests. Chau then attended Oral Roberts University,
outside encroachment. Yet Chau tried again the next day, an Evangelical university in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which sends
knowing full well that the island’s inhabitants would not warm a seventh of its student body abroad on missions. After his
up to him: he wrote these words to his friend
freshman year, Chau felt his calling from
John Chau exemplifies God, commenting on a missionary blog,
Alex the previous night: "I think I might die.
I’ll see you again, bro—and remember, the the conditions of what “Hi! I genuinely believe that God has
first one to heaven wins." The next morning, it so often feels like to called me to go to the Sentinelese." He
fishermen dropped Chau off at the island.
be Asian American, to then began working earnestly for this goal.
belong to nowhere and to
On the following day, the fishermen drew back be beholden to nothing. There is no doubt that John Chau believed
to the island only to see a body, presumably
in the absolute truth of Jesus's "Great
Chau's, being dragged around the beach with a rope tied Commission" in Matthew 28:19, that he had to "go and make
around the neck. Chau's death then caused international disciples of all nations." He subsequently joined a community
controversy and ridicule, within both Christian and non- of people who do extreme, often undercover missionary work
Christian spheres, and he became a man known only in the in the "10/40 Window," a region between 10 and 40 degrees
way that he died. Think pieces, investigative reports, and north of the equator that holds most of the world's Muslims,
blog posts flooded the internet that month, and the tenor of
Hindus, and Buddhists. Between 2015 and 2016, Chau made
all rang similar: descriptors like naive, brainwashed, and foolish four trips to the surrounding Andaman Islands, making
became ubiquitous in describing Chau.
contacts in the local Christian community. In 2017, Chau
attended a missionary training course with the All Nations
I became flustered and uncomfortable at this coverage, program. The finale of this program consisted of Chau taking
because, first of all, it is an utter rarity to see an Asian hours to hike in an area south of Kansas City, and then facing
American male face plastered all over the news. If anything, a mock-up tribal village in which "locals" threatened to kill
I was taken back to 2012’s “Linsanity,” a two week period in him in an unintelligible language. The international executive
20 Spring 2020