The Darwin Awards, it’s like the Nobel Prize for stupidity, exist to honor those who improve the human gene pool by removing themselves from it, ie. die — usually in ways so spectacularly stupid that future generations can only slow-clap.
In 2018 one of posthumous gold star went to American Christian missionary John Allen Chau, who driven by a fervent desire to convert an isolated tribe in the North Sentinel Islands to his delusion, Christianity, essentially walked into a real-life cautionary tale.
His obnoxious religious pompousness is clearly shown in his last letter to his family: “…..This is not a pointless thing-The eternal lives of this [Sentinelese] tribe is at hand and I can’t wait to see them around the throne of God worshipping in their own language.”. As you can clearly tell the guy was an utter nutter.
North Sentinel Island isn’t a hidden level in a video game; it’s a real place off the coast of India, whose residents have spent 60,000 years telling the outside world to kindly get lost, just leave us alone. Chau, armed with nothing but a waterproof Bible and a confidence that would make a Red Bull stuntman blush, paddled over anyway.
His plan? Convert the Sentinelese to Christianity — because nothing says “Eternal Salvation” like smallpox 2.0. One sneeze from Chau could have wiped out the entire tribe, repeating the genocidal greatest hits Europeans already dropped across the South Pacific, as they have no natural immunity to diseases from the outside world.
Christian zealotry has racked up an incredible body count from the Crusades to the conquistadors, surely, they are the experts when it comes to killing innocent people in the name of their dubious delusion. More people have been killed in human history in the name of one imaginary friend in the sky or another than for any other reason.
Chau set a new speed record in removing himself from this world: arrow to ego in under 24 hours. He wanted to meet his maker (isn’t that what all Christians strive for after all?) and the locals simply expedited shipping. They unceremoniously shot him dead with an arrow, tied a rope around his neck, dragged his body along the shore and finally buried him in the sand. Clearly, they had no idea what Jesus would have done in their place and didn’t have the patience to listen to Chau’s idiotic ramblings about it in a language they obviously didn’t understand.
Congratulations, John—you finally got the face-to-face
interview with your BFF (Best Friend Forever) in the
clouds, your prayers were answered. The rest of us will remember you as a walking, talking cautionary tale wrapped in a life jacket and religious arrogance.
One can only hope the rest of the believers would follow his lead; surely this world would be a much better place. Hell, I know some people whose plane ticket to that island I would gladly pay just to help them meet their “maker”, as soon as possible.
Alex