Source: Justin Long, November 29, 2018<\/p>\n
The news of John Chau\u2019s death while attempting to bring the gospel to a very remote, hostile, restricted-access region hit the mainstream news some days ago. Since then, there\u2019s been quite a lot of chatter about it, with lots of people trying to make sense of it.<\/p>\n
I am trying to hold myself back. My natural inclination is to write and tweet and talk, but I am reminding myself of this: we don\u2019t know the whole story. And we may never know it.<\/p>\n
We, as people, want to \u201cjudge\u201d: either in the best or worst sense of the word. Our brains want to categorize, we want to put things in boxes, because that\u2019s how we make sense of it, how we understand it.<\/p>\n
We could classify Chau as a martyr\u2014a person who died, almost gloriously, for the sake of the cause. Similarities to Elliot are obvious.<\/p>\n
We could classify Chau as a failure\u2014a person who rushed headstrong into the situation without adequate training or preparation or effective strategy.<\/p>\n
It would be easy to do either. But we don\u2019t know, and we don\u2019t have enough data to know.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s take a different example. What if someone trained and planned to be a Bible translator in, say, Africa. They prepared for years. They were expecting to spend decades on the field, working on learning language, translating Scriptures, etc. They arrive on the field, excited\u2013and were killed two days later in a freak accident.<\/p>\n
Knowing these additional details\u2014the length of preparation, the length of time they planned to stay there, the scope of the work they envisioned, the nature of their death\u2014how does this change our opinion of what happened? Were they martyrs? Were they failures? Or is this just a tragedy\u2014a life cut short?<\/p>\n
What if they were killed in a robbery gone wrong? Are they martyrs? What if you knew that in the midst of the robbery they were witnessing as best they could to the robbers? Would they then be martyrs, because they died in a situation of witness?<\/p>\n
What if they were assassinated by radicals bent on killing Christian translators in the area? What if they knew the danger and yet went there any way, and were killed? Were they foolish?<\/p>\n
There are many details we don\u2019t know, and likely never will this side of heaven.<\/p>\n
\u00bb Read full story<\/a> as well as Missionary Martyrdom Isn\u2019t Unusual<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00bb Justin also suggests: John Chau, Missions, and Fools<\/a> (Ed Stetzer, Christianity Today) and Slain Missionary Prepared More Than We Thought, But Are Missionaries Still Fools?<\/a> (Ed Stetzer, this time for the Washington Post), All Nations Clears Up Some False Assumptions about Chau\u2019s Missionary Work<\/a> (Denny Burk) and an interview with Dr. Scott James on infectuous diseases and isolated peoples<\/a> (J.D. Payne, Strike the Match).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Justin Long, November 29, 2018 The news of John Chau\u2019s death while attempting to bring the gospel to a very remote, hostile, restricted-access region hit the mainstream news some days ago. Since then, there\u2019s been quite a lot of chatter about it, with lots of people trying to make sense of it. I am … Continue reading INDIA: Chau\u2014Failure, Martyr, or What?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8227"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12412,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8227\/revisions\/12412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}