The structure of this very bad encounter is worth examining. A young American Christian, John Allen Chau, paid an Indian fisherman $325 to illegally and secretly transport him to an island inhabited by real heathens. The Islanders were not like the civilized heathens in London, Paris, and Seattle, one of the most godless cities in the US. These heathens lived in a state of nature, in the land before Christian time.
Why drive a few hours north from your hometown in southwestern Washington to convert a bunch of stubborn, thankless, rain-cold Seattleites, when you could fly all the way to the other side of the world and convert the real thing? They even hunt with arrows and eat wild plants. We can call this kind of adventure "extreme proselytizing." (It's related to "extreme tourism.") This adventure was, according to accounts, a dream come true for Chau. The American badly wanted a missionary experience that involved contact with the heart of darkness.
Arrows killed him on November 16, in the year of our lord 2018. That much is known. What is unknown (and maybe unknowable) is the location of the Christian death. One gathers from the tone of the reports made by Indian authorities, that the very idea of finding and returning the body is nothing more than a pain in the ass. It would be better to leave that body where it is and the natives as they are. Recovery of the American would certainly be a major disruption for the lost souls of North Sentinel, as the island is known to the civilized world.
But what does all of this nonsense tell us about American Christianity today? There are grades of soul saving. Some are more intoxicating than others. Soul-saving in Seattle, for example, provides only a low grade of satisfaction. Soul-saving in Africa has higher grades for sure, but is still nothing like the intoxications of the days of old, the days when heathens were in the millions and as distant from the light as the vacuums of interstellar space are from stars. These kinds of heathens are harder and harder to find on the Dark Continent. You have to go all the way to the Bay of Bengal to get the best soul-saving fix. The American brought a football with him.
