John Allen Chau was an American missionary. He was determined to bring Christianity to a tribe (known as the Sentinelese) which has been living in isolation for as long as 60,000 years.
Sadly, he was reportedly killed by the Sentinelese when he landed on their shores in November.
However, while John lost his life in the effort to convert them, Dr Madhumala Chattopadhyay was successful in making the first contact twice in 1991.
She shared details of the two trips with The Straits Times last month.
The secret of the first contact seems to be coconuts. It reports that “coconuts do not grow on the North Sentinel...This is why the fruit has been a precious gift in government contact missions that have tried to befriend them since the 1970s.”
Here is a full extract of what happened to the rest of the mission led by Dr Chattopadhyay on Jan 4, 1991.
““As their ship nearer the coast, the team saw smoke rising from behind the foliage. They got onto the lifeboats and started to approach the island. They threw some of the coconut sacks into the water as a sign of goodwill.
Soon, some Sentinelese showed up to pick up the sacks that had washed ashore. The team made gestures inviting them to come and take the coconuts.
”We moved the boat really slow, so slow that its movement could not be easily detected,” said Dr Chattopadhyay.
”The Sentinelese moved towards us gradually. It was tense as we were within their arrow range and they could have fired arrows at us at any moment.“
The team decided to drop coconut one by one to prolong this first interaction, which lasted more than six hours.
”The Sentinelese were observing us for a long time and it took a while for them to overcome their fear and start picking up the coconuts from the water,” she said
Some tribesmen then swam up to the boat and the team members jumped into the knee-cap water.
“They started touching the boat as if they were playing with it...they were even taking them from our hands,” said Dr Chattopadhyay.””
Dr Chattopadhyay could not said for sure what led to the successful mission. It may be the coconuts, that is, the six hours of building trust by dropping the coconuts one by one into the water, or as some believed was the presence of Dr Chattopadhyay, a woman.
Dr Chattopadhyay said: “They may have interpreted my presence as a sign that the team meant no harm.”
After that, she went back on another two occasions.
The second time was successful. It was about 6 weeks later, on Feb 21, 1991. This time, “the Sentinelese showed up without bows or arrows. Two tribesmen even got into the boat and helped themselves to sacks of coconuts”
The third time was not so due to the inclement weather.
After that, the mission was called off as Dr Chattopadhyay felt that “there was little else that could be gained from these encounters.”
Since then, there were no reported encounters except John Allen Chau and two fishermen. The latter were killed by the ttribesmen in 2006.
While Dr Chattopadhyay shared her experiences on the successful first and second contacts, she also shared her thoughts about the unfortunate demise of John Chau.
She said: “Not only did Chau not have permission to be there, he also should not have tried to convert them to another religion. They are animist and have a close relationship with nature and venerate it, which possibly helped them survive the tsunamis in 2004.”
She added: “We should not try to change their self-sustaining way of life. They should be contacted only when there is a need, such as to ensure they are doing fine in case of a natural calamity. The Sentinelese are the kings of their land. We should let them remain that way.”
Lesson? Just one.
I have little doubt about the heart of John Allen Chau. I feel that he wanted to make a difference. I feel that it was great missionaries like David Livingston, William Carey, Hudson Taylor and Jim Elliot who must have inspired him.
While not all of them were killed by tribesmen, they have indeed transformed the society they have left behind by living gospel-centered lives.
Yet, there is something inside of me that doesn’t feel quite right about the demise of such a young life, only 26.
Before he left, he wrote this letter to his parents: -
“You guys might think I am crazy in all this but I think it’s worth it to declare Jesus to these people … This is not a pointless thing-The eternal lives of this [Sentinelese] tribe is at hand and I can’t wait to see them around the throne of God worshipping in their own language as Revelation 7:9-10 states.”
If you read his background, John came from a church called All Nations Family. The church was founded in 2000.
Its founder Pastor Floyd McClung believes in preparing the ground for the Second Coming and the Final Judgement of God. And in order to do that, the church has dispatched 150 disciples in 35 countries.
They “are training a further 3500 missionaries each year to ‘ignite the church planting movement. John Chau was one of these disciples.” (Jamie Seidel - news.com.au).
It is a church in a hurry. It has no time to lose as it believes that a utopia on earth is not possible. And the only way to hasten a new heaven and earth is to do the Great Commission with great urgency and spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. Only then will Revelations unravel the earth and bring about the establishment of a new eternal kingdom of everlasting peace.
I am no expert in the end time but I believe that the church has a responsibility to her members in the present time. As such, I have no comment on how a church conducts her services, spread the gospel or set mission manifestos. But, everything the church does - in action, speech and belief - do have consequences to her members.
It is said that madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups, and if we are not careful, the members - as individuals - can always get helplessly caught up in the fiery enthusiasm of the church and this fiery enthusiasm can end up tragically when the church takes misguided theology to the extreme.
Many would have deemed the actions of John Chau as foolish and senseless for engaging a tribe he knew little about and entering into a terrain without proper research. I don’t know whether he had read about Dr Chattopadhyay and her successful efforts to connect with the Sentinelese in 1991.
But whatever it is, it is a tragic waste of a young life who could have done much more in the faith if he had been properly guided.
From what I gather from his letter to his parents and the urgent prophetic mission of his church, I felt that All Nation’s Family should at least acknowledge that they too have a part to play in the loss of John Chau.
John Chau’s action cannot be seen in isolation. He saw it not as a “pointless thing“ to evangelise to the Sentinelese as their eternal lives are in his hand because his church had driven into him through various in-house trainings and indoctrination the same urgent belief and expected him to do something about it lest he be found unworthy of the faith.
Let me end by saying that this is a good lesson to always think for yourself when you are in the crowd. Sometimes, the leader of the crowd is not always right, however organised the crowd is.
The fact that he has followers does not mean that he is unerring in his ways or that he knows what he is doing all the time. (I am saying this because I have met members who swear allegiance to their pastors as if he is never wrong. Hence the necessity to repeat this forewarning).
At times, the growth of organised religion is as much a social phenomenon as it is divinely empowered. But having said that, I believe some organised religion falls on the social phenomenon scale, that is, their growth can be explained away in a humanistic point of view.
This accounts for how some of them can be a runaway success when they appeal to the social animalistic instinct in us to form an exclusive identity from the world, to look for some eschatological signs that promise a better world from their current less-than-ideal existence, or to put their collective hope on a god who endorses material prosperity as the cornerstone of their faith in Him.
And sadly, what gives these organised religion their credence is how they subtly and deftly, but no less disingenuously, put a veneer of divine endorsement onto what is and has always been a social phenomenon. They therefore turn what is essentially man-driven to God-approved.
Alas, some of them may get away with it by personally prospering on the naivety and misguided enthusiasm of their members. No major harm done there except the self-deception to cling on to a belief premised more on what one wants to hear than what needs to be said.
But, some of them end up costing a young life.
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