WHERE'S HIS BODY? US missionary John Chau who was shot dead with arrows by tribe on remote island may still be ALIVE, friends and family believe
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7835035/john-chau-missionary-killed-tribe-may-still-be-alive/
"know ye the truth and the truth will set you free." ~Christ
It it self evident to me why those who knew John, refuse to accept the high probability that he was killed by the tribe. It would be too painful to consider the horror that this young man must have experienced as each arrow pierced his body and the possible sudden realization that his fantasy of “saving” these “lost” souls from an eternity of “hell fire” was all for nothing. After all, facing such a reality would undermine the very superficial and restricted understanding of how God/Christ is sold to so called “Christians” today here in the West.
For those who can still SEE, let this news story serve as a stark reminder to the tragedy of believing in religious dogma without question, no matter how it is branded, be it Christianity, Islam, or Scientism.
Why should we not believe the eyewitness testimony of the fishermen who took him to the island? Is “acceptance of Jesus Christ as your personal savior” really necessary for one human being to genuinely love and care for the welfare of another? To have enough “heart”, compassion and sense of personal responsibility that you would travel back to the Island the next day to see his body on the beach despite having witnessed the horrific attack and his subsequent death first hand?
The irony is that the eyewitness testimony of the fishermen of this young man “continuing to walk toward the Indians as he was being struck by arrows” had a powerful effect on me in terms of resonating with a mythological interpretation of the Christ Crucifixion now lost to most in the modern world.
You see, a universal human truth found among most spiritual traditions, which transcends both time and culture, is that "life is suffering." Life is unfair and if we fail to accept this fact at some point in our life, we become resentful, nihilistic, and for many, fatalistic (the path of Cain). So how does Christ "save" us from this inescapable human dilemma? He shows us the way. He faces his suffering and human mortality voluntarily. He accepts his suffering as a prerequisite for "being" and in doing so he rises beyond his own mortality.
This is not an easy path for any of us, including Christ himself, who around the ninth hour, it is written that he shouted in a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" When we face our personal suffering alone in quiet discernment and come to accept it, we can then be "reborn" in this life with renewed strength of mind and gratitude for those things we once took for granted. As the Inuit shaman, Igjugarajuk once said, "All true wisdom is found … in great solitude, and it can be found only through suffering."
So, while I personally do not share the same religious beliefs that this young man and his friends and family do, I can still find meaning in what he did. I can at the very least give him the dignity and respect of facing his own death voluntarily, the same way that Christ did. Where we go one, we go all.