Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: “Does this taste funny to you?”
Well, there’s nothing funny about the new spate of novels and movies on cannibalism being released in the West. I won’t advertise their titles, but one Showtime series that graphically portrays it, according to the New York Times, has a “message board dedicated to the series [which] has more than 51,000 members.”
As a child, I avidly read the National Geographic as it recounted tales of cannibals in the jungles of Borneo and Papua New Guinea. I would see photos of tattooed bodies, nose piercings, and earlobe stretchers—now commonly seen on our own streets. Is cannibalism just around the corner?
In the mid-1800s, intrepid missionaries braved almost certain death to take the gospel to the cannibals in southeast Asia. John Williams and James Harris from the London Missionary Society landed in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) in 1839. Both were killed and eaten by cannibals only minutes after going ashore.
Later, John Paton wrote, “Thus were the New Hebrides baptized with the blood of martyrs; and Christ thereby told the…world that He claimed these islands as His own.”
Paton sailed from Scotland for the New Hebrides with his wife Mary on April 16, 1858. In March of the next year, both his wife and newborn son died of tropical fever. For many nights, he had to sleep on their graves to keep the islanders from digging up the corpses to eat them!
As Paton wrote, “Their whole worship was one of slavish fear; and, so far as ever I could learn, they had no idea of a God of mercy or grace.”
Eventually John saw the entire island turn to Christ. The foolish notion of godless sociologists that we should “leave the happy natives alone” is madness in the extreme. When some anthropologists appeared in the region to do research in the 1950s, and mocked the inhabitants’ Christianity as outmoded fables, the people replied, “You should be thankful we follow Jesus, or we would be eating you right now!”
But there is a kind of cannibalism among us that is so common we hardly notice. It isn’t the eating of flesh but the ravishing of souls.
“All the law is fulfilled in one word,” wrote Paul, “‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!” (Gal 5:13-15)
That’s cannibalism of the worst kind. There’s a bloodbath in our homes, character assassinations in halls of power, chewing up and spitting out what’s left of people on social media. You see it everywhere. Parents cut their offspring into little pieces. Wives and husbands lash out at one another. Little children are taught, not to pray, but to curse, at their mother’s knee.
“See how great a forest a little fire kindles!” wrote James. “And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity…set on fire by hell.…No man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.” (Jas 3:5-9)
Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Mt 12:34) If we would fill our hearts and homes with His gracious words instead of the world’s deadly poison, our tongues would soon be a blessing to everyone around.
Jabe Nicholson of Starkville believes that revival will come when we return to obedience to God. Reach him at jabe@uplook.org or www.uplook.tv
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