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Skeptics Like Us: The People at The End of the Spear
by Stacy Wiebe Though clad in G-strings and living in huts, the "stone age" Waodani people featured in the major motion picture, The End of the Spear (in theaters January 2006) are not so unlike us.The Waodani are consummate skeptics. For them, words don’t cut it; only a person’s actions speak truthfully.
We, the people of “yada, yada…” are the same way. “Actions speak louder than words” “That’s just talk… a lot of hot air.”
The Waodani’s skepticism was so deep that they killed first and didn’t ask questions. In their world in the remote Amazon jungle, it was “spear or be speared.” Anthropologists consider them the most violent people who have ever lived. Half of all deaths in the tribe prior to 1958 resulted from murders by fellow tribe members and another 20 percent were from shootings from outsiders.
So 50 years ago, when five pale, hairy-armed strangers (American missionaries Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, and Roger Youderian) came to them on a “flying bird,” the Waodani, though thankful for their gifts, speared them to death, leaving their bodies where they fell in the Curaray River. For good measure, they thrashed the plane with their machetes.
But the killing of these five men haunted the Waodani. Why hadn’t they fought back?
Two years later one of their tribeswomen who had fled the tribe in the wake of a killing spree, Dayumae, returned and told her people that the brutality had to stop. She invited Rachel Saint, sister of the slain Nate Saint, and Elisabeth, wife of Jim Elliot, to join the tribe.
The warriors asked the missionary women, “Why didn’t your men fight with their guns?”
Dayumae translated and explained, “They came to tell you Waengongi (Creator God) had a Son. He was speared, but did not spear back, so the people killing Him would one day live well."
The Waodani reasoned that Dayumae’s words had to be true: they witnessed these actions when they speared the men. So they turned from killing. The homicide rate dropped by 90 percent. Anthropologists believe that the tribe was saved from extinction. From 600 in 1958, they number 2000 today.
Viewers of The End of the Spear are left with the lingering question, “What transformed the Waodani?” Was it “civilization?” Was it religion?
Reading historical and current accounts of the Waodani, it becomes clear it was something else all together.
It was Love.
* Love that carried five young men who possessed what we would have seen as incredible promise to pursue the post-WWII American dream, to offer their hands and their blood in friendship to a people the rest of the world called “savages.”Love that brought wives and sisters and children of the slain missionary men to the tribe, not to avenge, but to forgive and live among them to help and heal.
* Love that Steve Saint, surviving son of Nate Saint, says, “gave the man (Mincaye) who killed my father to be like a father to me and a grandfather to my children.” Nate and Mincaye consulted in the making of The End of the Spear.
* Love that propels Mincaye, now in his 70s, to learn basic dentistry and teach it to other tribal leaders as far away as India so they, too, can help their own people.
The individuals in the list have all said that the source of this Love came from something beyond themselves. It came from the one Dayumae spoke of as the Son of Waengongi, Creator God: Jesus the Christ.
History shows that Jesus was the only man whose words and actions have always together spoke the truth. He was the embodiment of Love: the man who touched untouchables, who treated hookers and crooks like the people they could become, who healed broken bodies, who took on the religious hypocrites. The man who was speared didn’t spear back.
What does this Love ask of us?
In the tongue of the Waodani, we must incaye – a word that embodies hearing, understanding, and doing, all in one.
You may have "heard it all before," but it’s not enough to nod in agreement that Jesus was an extraordinarily nice person, or even to concede that he was the Son of God.
God’s carvings (what the Waodani call the Bible) tell us we must look within and face the reality that our heart is wretched and broken and desperate.
But we are not without hope. Jesus, though he’d done no evil, allowed himself to be speared—murdered—so that he could take upon himself the dire consequences of our wretched thoughts and choices. Love believed you were worth it.
After we’ve heard and understood, God’s carvings call us to do something. We need to reach out and embrace this Love. We need to have a heart-to-heart conversation with God and say something like:
Lord Jesus, I want to know you personally. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life to you and ask you to come in as my Savior and Lord. Take control of my life. Thank you for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Make me the kind of person you want me to be.
Is Love calling you to incaye? Indicate your response:
If you have a question first, click here.
Stacy Wiebe is a senior editor with TruthMedia.
Sources:
Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot, by Elisabeth Elliot, New York: Harper and Row, 1979
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/001/30.38.html
http://www.endofthespear.com
http://www.epm.org/articles/end_of_the_spear.html