HARVEST. Spring 2020 | Page 23

please heal this man's legs. Dear God, please heal this man's legs. Dear God, please heal this man's legs. Dear God, please let me believe this is working. There were no miracles in any village. I wondered if I was the one stopping God from making miracles happen, if my sins were letting the devil have the upper hand. In one village, our team ran into a local Peace Corps volunteer, a young white woman who attended the Thai church, but could not understand Thai. I was told to translate for her, perhaps out of pity, as she had never been able to understand a sermon despite dutifully coming by every Sunday. So during the service, our Korean preacher spoke in Korean, the Korean missionary translated into Thai, and I, in the back, whispered English translations into her ear. She nodded eagerly, and expressed much gratitude that she could finally understand a sermon. I, for once, was happy that I had actually done something. +++ After Chau's death, his father wrote to Doug Bock Clark, who reported extensively on Chau's life in GQ, saying, "the theology of the Great Commission is the byproduct of Western colonization and imperialization, and not Biblical teaching at all.” He stated that people groups who did not follow Western religious terms could still be following the teachings of the Bible. His son certainly did not think this way. Chau believed firmly that people who had not heard the gospel would go to a punitive hell, and acted on this conviction. Clark concluded, "In all my months of reporting, I never found any evidence that Chau even once questioned his calling. His certainty was so absolute that he was willing to bet not only his life on it but the lives of the Sentinelese." help but respect the depth of Chau’s conviction, despite how problematic it may be? How could I help but project my own racial and religious insecurities onto Chau, and impose the fear of subpar assimilation into white, Evangelical America, of not being “Christian” and “Asian” enough, as an impetus that drove his convictions even further? And how could I have any answers of what the “right” media coverage for Chau should be, other than simply saying that the way newspapers portrayed him as a symbol, rather than a human, like they so often do? I can't help but sense a feeling of estrangement when thinking of Chau's life: “He seemed sort of lonely, despite everything,” Kaleb Graves, a friend of Chau's, told Clark, referring to the fact that Chau had to hide his singular, illegal dream from the vast majority of people in his life. This loneliness is why seeing John Chau's face all over newspaper headlines struck me so much. For me, it was less a sympathy towards his plight: I believe in heaven, and believe that Chau will go to heaven. Nor was I shocked by the attacks on naive Christian missionaries as part of a colonialist enterprise, which I had heard many times prior. What really struck me, and what I still think about today, is the fact that Chau, a tiny young man who grew up as a minority in America, acted on his belief that he could go absolutely anywhere, settle down, and begin to preach. Conviction, whether constructive or debilitating, was something Chau undeniably could not let go of. Kion You is a senior concentrating in English. For me, Thailand was my first and last overseas mission trip, and unlike Chau, I did not decide to head back and try my hand again. Yet as an Asian American Christian, and one who will work abroad after graduating college, how could I 23