HARVEST. Spring 2020 | Page 20

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. +++ 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