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Legitimate questions remain about the prudence of Chau’s actions. Much was made about the risk of spreading infections to the Sentinelese //for which they have no immunity, though my friend and colleague Ed Stetzer has helpfully corrected the gut-level, and ultimately wrong, accusation that Chau was an unprepared, vigilante lone-ranger.
Still this whole cultural episode speaks volumes. For example, Janet Street-Porter, a columnist at the UK’s Independent newspaper, called Chau’s efforts “an act of cultural imperialism and insane arrogance.” His story, she says, is “another example of two of the worse kinds of environmental pollution: aggressive pushing of faith to another culture and the introduction of ‘gifts’ which undermine their way of life.”
She continues, “John Chau claimed () he wanted to introduce Christ to the Sentinelese – but why would their own culture not include a deity, a belief in the afterlife or some sense of fulfilling spirituality? Why would his evangelical creed be superior or necessary?” She calls this belief “hard to stomach.”
You can quickly sniff out the embedded secular assumptions in her question, but harder to stomach is how people like Street-Porter don’t advocate a similar hands-off approach to other cultures /when it comes to causes they care about.
We’ve yet to hear a secularist outcry /over the American government’s efforts, especially under the last administration, to use international aid as a cover for colonizing developing nations in abortion rights and LGBT ideologies.
No, Secretary of State Clinton was lauded for making gay rights a priority, and it didn’t matter what long-established beliefs () a culture held.
You’ll never hear them applaud people like African Christian pro-life activist Uju Ekeocha //who oppose Western “colonialist” efforts /to inflict abortion on traditional African cultures. One wonders if Chau would still be a modern-day villain had he been trying to talk the Sentinelese out of homophobia.
No,
our culture’s problem with Chau wasn’t that he was a missionary seeking
to convert the Sentinelese
— it was that he represented the wrong
belief system. (이세상이 믿는 믿음과 다른 믿음을 대변한것)