I wonder about missionaries. It seems to me that the vast majority of the non-Christians in the world are well-aware of the existence of Christianity. We’re Hindus, Muslims, Jews, pagans, atheists or whatever and we know all about Jesus and all that. We just choose to believe something else. So did this guy think he’d win some special kind of missionary points for bringing Jesus to some of the very few people who hadn’t heard of him?
Some Christians also believe that part of the duties of being a Christian is to spread the Christian message. So they feel that failing to proselytize might be something that would get them condemned to Hell.
But that raises the question of whether a Christian is justified in exposing a group of ignorant people to Christianity and thereby placing them in risk of going to Hell if his motive for doing so is to improve his own chances of getting into Heaven.
Perhaps this guy was aware of the danger and was seeking to be a martyr for his faith. If so, that raises the same question I asked above; is it in keeping with the tenets of Christianity if you’re seeking martyrdom and trying to get into Heaven on a technicality? This guy must have been aware that his chances of being killed were high and his chances of actually converting anyone on the island were virtually non-existent. I think a valid martyrdom should serve a purpose and not just be an indirect suicide.
In 1997-1998, on the Camisea River on the Lower Urubamba in southeast Peru. We were doing biodiversity surveys for an oil company in an area under exploration for natural gas, and they wanted to be as careful as possible to avoid possible problems. We didn’t know if there were any uncontacted groups in the area, but it was thought to be a possibility.
My field assistants were from various local tribes. One of them, a man in his 40s, told me he was in his 20s when the missionaries first came to his village. So he grew up before his tribe was in direct contact with the outside world.
I saw all these responses and thought, did someone come in here to defend the missionary and there’s a fight?
Then I saw it was mostly lame puns.
Can’t help but feel a bit deflated.
If you’re a Christian who believes there is a hell and are aware of such tribal people and don’t cognitively empathize with them and their ancestors, that makes you bigoted in my book.
As much as it doesn’t excuse the reckless stupidity of taking that trek, I’m open to the possibility such a person as this was less bigoted than most Christians who believe in a high stakes afterlife. In either case, faith over reason is a detriment.
Ah, that’s not a cheat. Presumably steel cans are favored over aluminum.
I wonder if they got in on the Rubber duck thing. Useless as arrow heads, but fishing floats?
It was like an arrow through your heart, wasn’t it?
As others have noted, many Christians believe that people who have never heard of Christianity won’t be condemned to Hell due to their non-belief. God won’t condemn a person for not believing in a religion they never knew existed.
I really want to fly over that island and throw out a glass Coke bottle. Does that make me evil?
Or just crazy?
That makes sense. They probably have plastic containers, etc. that they acquired the same way.
Back in the old days (and some people may still do this), the Inuit acquired their firewood this way. Until they found out that there were parts of the world where the climate is not the same as theirs, they had no idea where it came from, only that it was something valuable that they could use.
Interesting diversity in Christian media’s take on this event.
The anthropologist Triloknath Pandit, one of the few people in recent memory known to have visited North Sentinel Island without being killed, noted they were cautious but happy enough to accept the coconuts, pieces of iron, etc. he brought as gifts* to break the ice (not to mention they relieved him of his glasses, all his clothes, etc.), but did not hesitate to pull a knife and otherwise make things clear when it seemed he might be planning to stay on the island longer than was welcome.
This is consistent with the story told by the missionary’s enablers, namely, that he was not immediately murdered, but after he insisted on swimming back to the island (after they shot at him and broke up his canoe!), they finished the job and buried his body in the forest.
*This whole “friendship gifts” policy was nixed after it led to an outbreak of violence with the Jarwa.
I get the impression that he thought he was on a mission from God, and would be protected. In the note he left with the fishermen who brought him to the island, “he had written that Jesus had bestowed him with the strength to go to the most forbidden places on Earth.” Perhaps he thought Jesus would make them understand what he read (presumably in English) from his Bible.
So, you’re saying Jesus set him up?
There are other Christians who want to convert other believers to their brand of Christianity. In fact, I had two Mormon missionaries knock on my door earlier this evening.
(Yeah, I know a lot of people, myself included, believe that Mormons are not Christians, but I digress.)
Shot through the heart
and you’re to blame
Jesus, you give love a bad name
My great-grandmother was a very staunch Christian, a Presbyterian to be exact. She took the “Great Commission”* quite seriously and was known for proselytizing whenever and wherever she could. I am not aware that she ever left the US, and she spent nearly all her time in the Southeast to boot, but she may have saved a few souls here and there.
[*“The Great Commission” is Jesus’s command to his disciples to convert everybody, often expressed in the form found in Matthew: “Go and make disciples of all the nations.” Been referred to above but I’m not sure it’s been named.]
Great-grandmother was also of the opinion that everybody, everybody on earth had the chance to learn about Christianity…that was just how Jesus rolled. Each person, no matter who, had at least one encounter with Christian thinking, and if he or she latched on to it, well and good, if not–Thus, there were in her book no people who had never heard of Christianity, thus no one was ever let off the hook.
This was, to put it bluntly, an insane way to look at the world. My grandmother, her daughter-in-law, tried challenging her on the subject once. “Well, now,” she said, “what about a person in a far-off part of a country where missionaries have never set foot?”
So great-grandmother told her a story she had heard (in church, natch) about a man in China, a simple fellow who lived far from the beaten path, and how he had never heard of Jesus or the Christian God, till the day he happened to buy some fish at the local market, and the fishmonger wrapped the fish in some newspaper that was lying around, and when the man got home he noticed that it was an evangelistic paper in the Chinese language, and, well, he read it and became a Christian, because Jesus gave him a chance…
“Do you mean to tell me,” my grandmother demanded, “that that poor man would have gone to hell on account of a newspaper, if he hadn’t had the time to read it?”
I think the answer was “God moves in mysterious ways,” or something similar, and Grandma rolled her eyes and never brought up the subject with her mother in law again.
I’m afraid I actually do not…I can think of two ways to interpret that phrase, neither of which matches my understanding of the situation.
Well since you insist, I’ll share some of twitter’s wisdom: Why are they given a free pass to commit murder? Who knows what they are doing on that island. There could be child sacrifice for all we know. There should be a limit to what is allowed because of “culture”. https://twitter.com/torkihobe/status/1065284667765649409
International Christian Concern @persecutionnews
American missionary in India reportedly murdered by hostile tribe. Read more:
The Sentinelese along with some of the uncontacted tribes of the Amazon & central African rainforests are anyday more honorable than these modern day libtards. These tribes will go to any extent to preserve their way of life, unlike libtards who’ll ruin it for themselves & others https://twitter.com/_ugra_/status/1065199550963437568 That was probably ironic, alas.
With Google Earth, you can still see the wreckage of the Primrose ship in the North Sentinel Island the tribe attacked. The Sentinelese tribe practically kills anyone who arrives at their shores https://twitter.com/Kayenime/status/1065490227886665728 The Primrose went down in 1981. Sentinelese - Wikipedia