When a young American man died on the shores of North Sentinel Island in November 2018, the world balked. The online mob condemned him, particularly criticizing what they perceived to be his disdain for dignified anthropology and sovereign cultural continuity. Accusations of attempted biological genocide engulfed global bandwidth, carried by a barrage of tweets and blogs condemning John Allen Chau’s “serious crimes motivated by religious extremism,”[1] suggesting he was conflating “love and…colonization,”[2] and threatened “unimaginable harm to another culture.”[3]
If you check the footnotes on those quotes, you’ll notice these three distinct camps—secular commenters, professing disciples of Jesus, and the Twitter-verified Church of Satan—were all articulating the same idea: John Allen Chau was out of line. Every accusation was founded on this premise: the Gospel is a threat to racial distinction and cultural continuity.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Nothing preserves racial distinction and cultural continuity like the Gospel does and will—and nothing promotes, celebrates, and seeks diversity like the eternal purposes of God.
It is historically true that institutional Christendom has conflated with colonial imperialism, and we have to reckon with that. It is our historical shame that institutional Christendom was both a prop and platform for one of the world’s longest-lasting legal markets of human slavery and oppression. And we have to examine our own insides, beg God to “reveal any wicked way in [us],”[4] and repent of it. Just like we have to reckon with both brazen and latent antisemitism infused in Church doctrine and culture since the day Gentiles first began to outnumber Jewish disciples in the early Christian communities. Where there is smoke, there is fire, and Paul penned Romans 11:25 to put it out—but we haven’t always listened. There are reasons why Hitler could stand up before Lutheran Germany and parrot the words of the revered Protestant patriarch, Martin Luther, and get as far as he did into his “Final Solution.”[5]
That Russell Moore had to stand on a platform two years ago and tell a crowd of evangelicals so plainly that they could “not serve Jesus Christ and Jim Crow”[6] is perhaps all that needs to be said for the state of racial relations within American evangelicalism. It doesn’t encourage me that we’ll serve the witness we must while America literally burns for what has already been devouring her for centuries (there are glimmers of hope, but only glimmers). But I believe our knee-jerk condemnation of Chau’s pioneering risk is inextricably knit into a widespread disposition to enable systemic racism, by silence or complicity. It’s the same sickness behind why, when FAI advocated for refugees in 2015 as the Syrian crisis flooded the Mediterranean, spilled into Europe, and confronted us with a dead toddler on a Turkish shore,[7] our Facebook page got hammered with criticism and condemnation by accounts with bald eagles and U.S. flags in their profile pictures and Bible verses in their bios.
Our ignorance concerning the eternal purposes of God has bred no uncertain arrogance concerning our perceived rights and privileges, and if we don’t get to the bottom of it now, these bad roots will, one way or another, produce yet more bad fruit. Strange fruit.
Paul so kindly cures our ignorance: “Of this Gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of His power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that He has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Him.”[8]
To display the manifold—colorful—wisdom of God, like light beaming off every angle of a diamond in the sun would illuminate prisms across the spectrum, that one day the Son promised “the nations”[9] would receive all He is due. Every knee will bow; every tongue will confess His crown.[10] His name will endure forever; all nations will call Him blessed.[11] He is our blessing. He is the desire of every nation, every bloodline. He is, to be sure, the “Desire of all nations.”[12]
“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to a land I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”[13]
Thus the welfare of every tribe, tongue, and people was tethered to the first utterances of the Everlasting Covenant and its provisions. Thus nationalism was condemned from the start to have no place within the Good News of the Kingdom. Thus tribalism was dismissed as one man was Heaven’s instrument to birth one nation that would serve all nations. We are all in this thing together, grafted into the commonwealth of Abraham’s grandson. The “fullness” of the nations served will “come in” and ignite the rebirth of Abram’s nation, regeneration of this grieving and groaning creation, and resurrection of the dead saved by the blood of the covenant cut on the hills of Hebron so long ago.[14]
We condemn racial violence and bigotry for the same reasons we condemn xenophobia: they offend the Image these humans bear, and underestimate the One who made them with purpose;[15] they scorn the dignity given them by the One who sustains the breath in their lungs;[16] and they impede on the salvation of “all nations,”[17] attempting to rob the Son of Man of His inheritance promised to Him by the One who inhabits eternity.[18]
We celebrate racial diversity because every man, woman, and child is made in the Image of the One on the throne.[19] We esteem cultural continuity because every tribe, tongue, and nation will be present in the age to come.[20] We won’t all get transformed into walking vanilla wafers—and thank God for that.
Therefore, we bear the name and message of Jesus to every single person who bears the Image of Jesus because we are jealous for the full inheritance of Jesus.
In the war-torn, besieged villages of Syria.
In the far-flung corners of the 10/40 Window.
In the fire-scourged streets of Minneapolis.
Until He comes, we defend the poor, deliver the children of the needy, hold back those stumbling to the slaughter, and speak up for the ones who can’t speak up for or defend themselves—because He will in fullness when He comes, and we want to be on the right side of His dividing lines.[21]
And when He comes, when death is swallowed up and war has lost her weapons to a world restored,[22] He will be surrounded by a lot—a lot—of people whose demographics of birth didn’t forge a sense of entitlement in them (the first shall be last). He’ll be surrounded by untold scores who let Him crucify the pride of their pain (the last shall be first). And He’ll have the world’s longest dinner table, crowded out by a bunch of multicolored Jews and Gentiles “brought near”[23] by the spilled blood and broken body of the Servant of All.
“I can’t wait to see them around the throne of God worshipping in their own language as Revelation 7:9-10 states.”[24]
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Nitin Pai, 26 November 2018. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/acorn/status/1067055870515847168?s=20
[2] Kaitlin Curtice, 27 November 2018. Retrieved from https://religionnews.com/2018/11/27/missions-is-it-love-or-colonization/
[3] Church of Satan, 23 Nov 2018. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/ChurchofSatan/status/1065740363460038656?s=20
[4] Psalm 139:23-24
[5] We explain this in greater detail in Covenant and Controversy Part I: The Great Rage, available for free at faistudios.org/covenant-controversy and the FAI App.
[6] The Gospel Coalition, 3 April 2018. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eqtsTnXIZ4
[7] Helena Smith, 2 September 2015. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/shocking-image-of-drowned-syrian-boy-shows-tragic-plight-of-refugees
[8] Ephesians 3:7-12
[9] Psalm 2:8; 46:10;
[10] Philippians 2:5-11
[11] Psalm 72:17
[12] Haggai 2:7
[13] Genesis 12:1-2
[14] Genesis 12:1-3; 13:18; 15:1-21; Matthew 19:28-30; Romans 8:22; 11:25; 1 Corinthians 15:50-58; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
[15] Ephesians 2:10
[16] Genesis 2:7; Colossians 1:17
[17] Matthew 28:19
[18] Psalm 2:8; Isaiah 57:15
[19] Genesis 1:26-27; Revelation 4:2
[20] Revelation 7:9-10
[21] Psalm 72:4; Proverbs 24:11-12; 31:8-9
[22] Isaiah 2:4
[23] Ephesians 2:13; Colossians 1:20
[24] India Today Web Desk, 23 November 2018. New Delhi. India Today. “Full text of John Allen Chau’s letter to family.” Retrieved from https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/john-allen-chau-sentinelese-killing-full-letter-1394833-2018-11-23
