Last Days Has No Motivation For Martyrdom – Christianity Today

Earlier this year, the movie Final Days premiered at Sundance Film Festival, dramatizing the life of John Allen Chau. Per a journal he left within the benefit of, Chau, an American missionary and graduate of Oral Roberts College (ORU), felt known as to evangelize the unreached other folks of North Sentinel Island, piece of an Indian archipelago within the Bay of Bengal. He develop into once killed there in 2018 at the age of 26.

Hobby in mission work marks a departure for director Justin Lin, whose lengthy list of movie credits contains directing Rapidly and Exasperated entries and episodes of Factual Detective. He undertook this undertaking with the acknowledged intention of being as sympathetic as which you can imagine to its precise-world field, and his compassion for John Chau is obvious. One movie critic characterised Final Days as a “respectful dramatization” that “shin[es] a gentle on what motivations may presumably possibly label any individual are trying to contact a remote tribe.”

From its opening frames, Final Days evinces Lin’s cinematic abilities. Its knowledgeable route, explosive sound construct, and electric performances—particularly from lead Sky Yang, who plays John—will jar viewers conversant in amateurish faith-primarily based cinema.

However then Final Days isn’t precisely faith primarily based. Rather, it’s an investigation by filmmakers initiating air the church into the coronary heart of a young man who interestingly died on a non secular suicide mission.

It’s also no longer the first movie to scheme stop on this yarn. In 2023, Nationwide Geographic set up apart out the documentary The Mission, on hand on YouTube, which quotes from John Chau’s journal at dimension. It also contains interviews with John’s pals, the missionaries who trained him, and skeptics.

These interviews demonstrate a serious distinction between the 2 portrayals. In Final Days, John receives his Christian training and attends something take care of a missionary bootcamp from a parachurch group, nevertheless then he’s largely on his bear. The Mission clarifies that John enjoyed ongoing mentorship from a toughen crew that with out a doubt no longer appeared in his social media posts. As one ORU alumnus says within the documentary, “In any endeavor, device more other folks are alive to than anybody is aware of.”

At the Sundance premiere of Final Days, Justin Lin contrasted his movie with The Mission’s documentary vogue. Preferring a primarily based-on-a-factual-yarn methodology, he urged his viewers he develop into once much less occupied with getting the info of John Chau’s life precisely fair and more occupied with increasing “human connection.” That supposed drawing inspiration no longer from The Mission nevertheless from one other piece of work: a characteristic article in Starting up air magazine entitled “The Final Days of John Allen Chau,” from which the movie’s title is taken.

The journalist within the benefit of that article, Alex Perry, isn’t a Christian. However for a nonbeliever searching for to suss out John Chau’s motivations, he appears a terrific files. Within the early 2000s, Perry tried nevertheless failed to meet the other folks of the Andamans, the archipelago that contains North Sentinel Island. Admire Chau, he saw the islands as something “mountainous and complex and unhealthy and unheard of,” a likelihood for adventure.

“The set up apart John and I differed develop into once that whereas I had been a reporter pursuing a yarn, John desired to be the yarn,” Perry writes. However a uncover into Chau’s journals unearths something plenty of: He desired to proclaim a yarn, the gospel.

The journalist does acknowledge an evangelical perspective. One amongst his quoted sources, a missionary who’d met Chau, acknowledged, “Whether you non-public John’s reasoning comes down as to whether or no longer you half his faith.” If God and his judgment are precise and Christ died for the sphere, it’s rational to anxiousness all of it to scheme stop that message to each and every closing other folks neighborhood. However if right here is all perfect fantasy, it’s unhealthy—a mix of “obsession, arrogance, self-deception … an nearly inhuman absence of doubt,” as Perry places it.

The core express is that it’s laborious, presumably not likely, for a nonbeliever to examine what may presumably possibly inspire a particular person to anxiousness martyrdom for Christ. Perry most regularly quotes Chau’s motto, #SoliDeoGloria, though he lacks the framework to label sense of “the cryptic Latin hashtag.” And the movie inspired by his article doesn’t label sense of it either.

Without a mode of “to the glory of God alone,” Final Days stays unfinished and unsteady. Director Justin Lin’s preference to depend on Alex Perry’s interpretation is no longer perfect an inaccuracy nevertheless an ingenious error; it fails to fabricate a ample motivation for its distinguished persona’s martyrdom. The movie’s John Chau, though solid within the valid which you can imagine gentle, is a particular person of incomprehensible, unmotivated faith.

Early within the movie, John attends his final chapel earlier than graduating from ORU. The speaker challenges each and every student to gentle a candle, symbolizing a commitment to gentle your total world with the gospel of Christ. However John demurs. The movie with out a doubt no longer investigates why he firstly rejects the resolution.

Nor does it inform why he at closing accepts. We peruse John committing to a lifetime of missions most attention-grabbing after his father, a physician, runs into perfect anxiousness surrounding painkiller prescriptions. Final Days appears to indicate, ambiguously, that John is de facto running from his father peril, whereas The Mission unearths a young man if truth be told motivated to are trying for God’s glory.

It’s this question of motivation that precipitated primarily the most confusion for the missionaries I spoke with after they watched the movie in Park City, Utah.

One missionary expressed remorse at a overlooked change. “I develop into once that device, and now I’m this vogue,” he acknowledged of his bear conversion experience. “It’s not likely no longer to half.” He loves proclaiming the gospel. It’s that love that doesn’t translate in Final Days.

Yet every other missionary asked a sure query: “Who’s this for?” He didn’t deem that John Chau comes off as feckless or insane, per the accusations of precise-life social media haters; the movie acknowledges and dismisses these evaluations. However the movie also gained’t inspire believers. Its center ground will “quite mighty alienate most evangelicals,” he acknowledged. “They’re no longer going to deem.”

He may presumably possibly be fair. However the care with which the movie treads that center ground is aloof noteworthy. When Hollywood wishes to characterize a believer, it on the general fills him with hesitancy; audiences resonate more with Doubting Thomas than with Simon the Zealot. You are going to ranking a most up-to-date instance in award-successful Conclave (2024), as Ralph Fiennes’s unsure Cardinal Thomas Lawrence affords non-Catholics some extent of entry into Rome’s best echelons.

In opposition to this, Justin Lin’s rendering of John Chau is refreshingly faithful. Unwavering, John sets his face toward North Sentinel Island take care of Christ toward Jerusalem. Uncertainty also can fair screen his motivation, nevertheless the intention no longer lower than stays determined.

Yet every other missionary hopes evangelicals will deem the movie in spite of its shortcomings. “It felt very acquainted,” she urged me, “by the utilization of a young missionary’s experience.” With 35 years in ministry and 20 of those as a missionary to Africa, her first reaction develop into once to stress how smartly Final Days honored John Chau: “It develop into once a nonjudgmental methodology.”

She also preferred how the movie exposed the pitfalls that confront young ideologues on the mission field. “Ensuing from colonialism, which is so ingrained in us and is the other facet of the coin of white supremacy, we perfect deem all of us know better,” she acknowledged.

In Final Days, this cocksure Christianity is exemplified in Chandler (Toby Wallace), a like a flash-speaking, anxiousness-taking young man who reveals John Chau the ropes of Christian thrill-in quest of. Hours after meeting John, Chandler invites him for a walk in his prop airplane, emblazoned with the slogan “Jesus is my copilot.” Chandler awes John with the surroundings under earlier than engrossing the inexperienced young man to take hold of the modify yoke and pilot for a little.

In Final Days, what John wishes is an Obi-Wan. What Chandler affords him is a Han Solo—a a little of older, more worldly, nevertheless much less realizing companion.

The inability of meaningful discipleship is an immense mistake for Final Days’ John Chau, presumably his deadly flaw. “You ranking a 20-something who thinks he or she is aware of better, and there’s no stopping it,” acknowledged one missionary. Yet every other agreed that mulish independence is an valid possibility to mission work, even supposing the command excesses of Chandler were “cartoonish.”

The missionaries I spoke with hope that the movie’s depiction of their work will lead to conversations. However I remorse that in addition they are able to fair reach at the price of John Chau’s portrayal in Final Days. The movie items him as largely self reliant—God’s bear loose cannon—though The Mission testifies to his integration in a Christian community. This oversight, and the movie’s failure to capture his coronary heart for Jesus, is a failure to bring his soul. On conceal, John Chau’s enthusiasm appears to reach advantage from nowhere. Without a misplaced-and-figured out persona arc, he’s perfect misplaced.

John will perpetually be a particular person younger than me, as will his hero, Jim Elliot, who develop into once also killed on the mission field. Yet they’re going to also continuously be, for me, titans of the faith. Each and every possessed the courage to examine apart down his life for a gospel that had changed it. Their testimonies resonate take care of divulge within the grand cloud of witnesses, a divulge highly effective ample to rattle fellow believers.

“He just isn’t any fool who affords what he can’t preserve to rep that which he can’t lose,” Jim Elliot once acknowledged. By this customary, the John Chau of Final Days, who sacrifices every thing to rep nothing, is a determined if smartly-intentioned fool. How plenty of develop into once the precise-world John Chau, a young man who glorified God alone thru his life and in his loss of life, laying down his life for pals to whom he ministered so briefly.

Trevor Babcock is an assistant professor of English at Williams Baptist College, where he teaches movie and other issues. His chapter on David Lynch’s Christian and Hindu influences will seem within the drawing stop e-book Theology, Religion, and Twin Peaks as piece of the Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture sequence.