Posted on 01/16/2006 10:50:21 PM PST by Mr. Silverback
Fifty years ago, Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, and the three other American missionaries dared to make contact with the most violent society ever documented by anthropologists. This week End of the Spear, the story of their martyrdoms, hits the theaters, and the film makers hope contact will be made with another violent and spiritually blind society—our own. It is a story that should be told in this age of ethnic cleansings, gulags, holocausts, genocide, and riots.
When the film’s director, Jim Hanon, traveled to Ecuador to get permission from the Waodani (formerly Auca) Indians to make the movie, the tribe initially refused. But when Steve Saint, Ned Saint’s son, told them stories about situations like the Columbine shootings, the Waodani were electrified. “If this story will help your culture not live so violently,” they said, “then we [want you to] tell our story.”
For those unfamiliar with the five men who risked and gave their lives to make contact with this remote and violent tribe in Ecuador, End of the Spear brings their story to life. But while the story of their deaths is important, what emerges more powerfully from this film is the life of those who carried on. Rachel Saint, Nate’s sister; Steve Saint, his son; and the widows all risked their lives to travel into the Amazon basin and finish their loved ones’ work.
In the movie, Steve Saint meets his father’s killer, a Waodani named Mincayani and fights an internal battle. Revenge is at the heart of the generations of conflict in places like the primitive jungles of Ecuador—or the Middle East, or Croatia, or Africa, for that matter. Will he spear the one who speared his father? Or will he be able to conquer the impulse for revenge? Miroslav Volf, a Croatian theologian who was teaching seminary students while Serbians were establishing rape camps in and around his hometown, wrestled with this question in his 1996 book Exclusion and Embrace.
Volf comes to the same powerful conclusion that is portrayed in the film End of the Spear. The only way to break the cycle of revenge is through the triumph of the cross of Christ. Volf writes this: “Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one,” he writes, “can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without . . . transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness.”
As Steve Saint and his father’s killer embrace at the film’s close, Steve recalls, “For years, many people would tell me that they could identify with our loss, but they never could imagine how we’d experienced gain.” This is the gain of the cross, and here, of course, is the real message of the movie: The Bible provides the only worldview that provides for reconciliation. No other religion does—not the Hindus, who know no salvation, not Muslims, no philosophy.
I hope you will get out and see this film and bring your neighbors with you. Let them see in a vivid drama the one belief system, the one hope for mankind, is found at the cross.
BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!
If anyone wants on or off my Chuck Colson/BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
If this is the same Chuck Colson of the Nixon Admin, it's a Film worth watching.
Chuck Colson went from Dirty Trickster, to Evangelical, and his life story is inspirational by itself
I cannot wait to see this film. Nate Saint is actually the father of my teacher from 4th grade. Phil Saint is his name (Steve's younger brother). Phil was an infant when the slaughters in the jungle took place. He taught me 24 years ago, and he will teach my oldest son next year as well (still teaching at the same Christian school). You won't find more fine men than these folks!
It's the same Chuck Colson.
Thanks for the ping. I am looking forward to this movie. I read Through Gates of Splendor years ago, and it has had a powerful impact on me.
This is great for a whole new generation to know about these men and their families and the hero's that missionaries are.
you should check out the Movie "Through the Gates of Splendor" It is the documentary and it is amazing.
Great post... i will watch it for sure...
While I agree with that, I wonder why Christians feel like they have to mess with violent tribal people like that. I mean, that's what it sounds like from what I'm reading.
I don't know anything about this story and maybe I'm wrong.
But if the missionaries had come in only with the intention of making contact with these people like explorers or something, and trying to study and communicate and be friends with them that's one thing. But to try to force these people into some strange religious culture they may see as completely uncomprehensible I think is wrong. I mean, just from the natives' point of view, think about that missionary message they send - if you don't repent your sins and believe in God you're going to hell and suffer. I mean, maybe their approach didn't work.
I found a web site that says this movie basically lies about the whole story of the missionaries.
Huaorani: End of the Spear and other Missionary Fictions
http://www.politicalcortex.com/story/2006/1/15/62925/8246
I understand your point. They would always be resistant. Try to think of it in the opposite way; what if somebody comes to me and tell me that Christianity is a false religion and i'm going to hell... the true religion is that of those who worship the aliens and sacrifice their babies... for sure i will get my shotgun and blow his head off...
Christians are called as it is written in the Bible to spread the gospel because there is no way for those Indians or others to go out of their village and look for something that is "strange" for them which is the gospel.
Before Christians are really aggressive and "radical" with their mission works... i remember those missionaries who were eaten by the cannibals in Papua New Guinea... Thank God that recently missionaries are using so many ways not to offend the locals but at the same time spread the gospel...
Those Indians are lucky that the missionaries are Americans and are Christians... if it were a group of Mohamedans, they're dead by now...
I remember a Filipino pastor who talked to me about the natives somewhere in Southern Philippines who are mad with the missionaries...
He told me that "white" people came to that village and talked to them about a "strange thing" after a while they took pictures of them with the missionaries in the center and left the village soon. They never saw them again.. I hope those pictures were not used as evidence to acquire more funds.
What was the wife's name of Jim??? she had a radio program for a while. He was one of those who were killed.
I spent many a day climbing the mountains with my dad to reach villages so isolated many residents had never seen a car or truck. We ate with them (and brought additional food and seed), slept on the split-bamboo floors with them, and rejoiced as many accepted Jesus as their Savior.
My father was shot at a few times and even stabbed once all in the "line of duty" bringing the message of Christ to those people. I also lost a teacher and good friend to some Islamofacist's bomb at the Davao City airport - his wife is back in the Philippines continuing their ministry.
I'm sure there are some who claim to be doing God's work even in the southern PI who may not be doing a good job at it. My father would be the first to admit he isn't perfect . . . but you'd be hard-pressed to find a more godly man or one who had sacrificed more for others.
Though I have never seriously considered becoming a foreign missionary myself, I am grateful for those who do. Support those who are on the "front lines" of the battles we are all engaged in - our troops and our missionaries.
That Filipino pastor i met is from Davao... he talked to me about the Mandaya tribe in Davao formerly known as the "head hunders" of the South..
Of course im a big missionary supporter.
LOL We could find a web site that says anything and everything at all.
This is going to be a good movie.
Why?
How does someone telling you this justify your killing him?
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