Anyone who’s grown up religious can relate to John Allen Chau. Inquisitive and completely sure of his purpose, John set out on his big life’s work: spreading the word of God to non believers. For many devoted worshippers, The Mission hopefully will serve two purposes. 1) It shows a possible worst case scenario for missionary work, and 2) it should at least be one of those tests of faith to see how much you trust the beliefs you’ve grown up with/been taught. For what it’s worth, I failed my faith test miserably. I didn’t have John’s spiritual fortitude.
The Mission ends in 2018, but starts long before that. John Allen Chau grew up in Vancouver, youngest son of a Christian community organizer and a Chinese Immigrant. He attended various Christian schools and became one of their most devout believers. Fascinated at a young age by explorers, John decided post college he was to become a missionary, and after finding very, um, determined partners in the All Nations evangelical organization, John decided to, illegally, try to preach the gospel to the Sentinelese, the last uninvaded/unsettled tribe living on North Sentinel Island off of the Andaman islands in the Bay of Bengal.
There are a couple lenses that documentarians Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss choose to view The Mission through. The first is through a character study of its protagonist. The directors really spend a lot of time separating John the man from his mission, with very empathetic effect. All of his friends that appear in the doc have nothing but lovely things to say about him. He was always nice, and willing to go the extra mile for his friends. But the people who showed him the most love were churchgoers, and places like All Nations. I know from personal experience, that someone so willing to believe in the good intentions of others can be easily manipulated by people. They probably saw his unfulfilled dream of exploring and channeled it into spreading the word of the Lord, which made John’s spiritual cup runneth over. But because The Mission spends so much time, giving us context on John, we know his motives are good natured, and he merely only wishes to preach the gospel and not hurt any of these people, even though they probably will want to do so to him.
The flip side of the documentarians lens is the blurry business of religious belief. In the end it all comes down to faith. Are you completely committed to your faith? The Mission posits that maybe a lack of purpose and unfulfillment after college made John desperate, and when you’re desperate, you’re much easier to manipulate. His closest friends say that after joining All Nations, John become wholly convinced that North Sentinel Island was the only place on Earth Satan still existed, because no one dared ever preach there for fear of death. So, the only way to save the planet was to go on The Mission. When that’s your purpose? There’s no room for logic because saving the planet trumps personal survival to someone as mostly selfless as John. Interspersed with John’s story are historians and ex missionaries, who point out John’s mission from the Native’s perspective: this psycho talking in a different language that makes people die when he comes (via disease, but they don’t know that). While watching you feel faith’s double edged sword. It gives John this inner strength and purpose to push himself further than he’s ever gone…but that includes beyond reason, logic, and reality itself: in his case, a fool’s errand.
I don’t recall that sermon on Sunday though. That’s because The Mission isn’t in the business of selling, it’s in the business of understanding. John’s tale should be a lesson all should learn from as their relationship with religion grows and gets tested. And even if you might fail, like it did for me, maybe it might be the best thing for you in the long term. Or I’m going to hell. Who knows?