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
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