Chau and Greenland's Icy Mountains

"Damn, sometimes I get so pissed for what I fell for my first fifty years or so."

It's a disturbing line to start the morning. The preacher who put it up on Facebook went to college just down the road--where I did; he is someone who once held significant favor and prominence in the denomination I still belong to; and he's a thoughtful man who left that church a decade ago, "pissed," as he says.

But I get what he feels. A few years ago. before I was going to speak in a local church, I asked the worship committee to arrange to sing a song no longer in the hymnal, "From Greenland's Icy Mountains," an old rah-rah mission anthem. That old favorite was a blessing we'd blast out whenever a  real live missionary would visit our church, and a favorite we'd stand to sing at the annual Mission Fest. When I was a boy, that hymn's beautiful slide show created a species of righteous wanderlust in me that my parents loved. To be a missionary, that was a real calling for their boy. 

The young man playing the organ for that service I was planning took one look at the old fave and told the committee he wouldn't play it. It was colonialist and bigoted, he said. He understood completely. I'd chosen "Greenland" for examination, not inspiration. I wanted people to understand how much we'd changed, some of us at least. The organist obviously didn't require the lecture. 

A few weeks ago, John Allen Chau, a 26-year-old missionary was put to death by a tribe of people on a tiny and secluded Indian island--primitive, naked people who barely have a name and speak a language no one knows. Bringing the gospel of Jesus to those who'd never heard, he was murdered by their bows and arrows.

Like that organist, lots of us look at Chau's missionary enthusiasm and can't help but shiver, not simply because of the man's horrible, bloody death, but because we find it far more difficult these days to be thrilled by "Greenland's Icy Mountains" than we did fifty years ago--and for a variety of reasons. 

Christianity Today tried to help believers understand why even deeply pious Christians weren't canonizing John Allen Chau the way we bestowed sainthood on Jim Eliot or the other three missionaries murdered/martyred by the Auca Indians fifty years ago. Chau's death gave most of us pause, they claimed, but only a few bestowed martyr-hood. 

CT says the only certainty here is complexity, paradox.

In the aftermath of the missionaries’ deaths in 1956, and again, more than 60 years later, after the death of Chau, many have called missionary work a fool’s errand at best, and, at worst, a violent attempt to impose Christian beliefs on other cultures. The Great Commission means that most Christians will have to agree to disagree with those who see sharing the story of Jesus as inherently negative.

Some are brought to a firm knowledge of the saving work of Jesus Christ by way of our mission work, just as they have been for centuries. There's no grace in turning your back on the Great Commission.

On the other hand, CT says believers have to be aware of another side.

But it also means that Christians must seriously consider what the best means are not just for sharing the story, but for sharing it with respect. It is not easy to know what this looks like in practice, particularly in someone else’s cultural context. This makes thoughtful questions about our missionary attitudes essential. 

There's our dilemma, the sometimes empty space we live in, in all truth. Once again, the energy we carry to our either/or propositions almost always requires moderation because most dilemmas we face are not either/or but both/and. 

This morning, early, it hurt to read old friend's pissed confession, to know how angry he is having been hoodwinked fifty years ago by his childhood faith. I understand that, because once upon a time I too sang "From Greenland's Icy Mountains" with stars in my eyes. 

But my three-score and ten years experience is that just about always there is another side. What we'd like to think is either/or is really both/and. 

An old preacher once told me he'd come to believe that truth is always elliptical. It always has two centers, never just one. I'd like to think that little geometric sermon has served me well.