The BBC has reported Wednesday on an American man killed on North Sentinel Island. “Tribespeople shot him with arrows and left his body on the beach.” He may have been a Christian missionary, according to the BBC: “Local media have reported that Chau may have wanted to meet the tribe to preach Christianity to them.”

The people of North Sentinel Island are one of the last isolated ethnic groups on earth. The Indian government forbids any visitors to the island, and natives routinely greet strangers with violence.

Cruel Hatred

Be that as it may, the way Facebook erupted over the incident is nothing short of stunning. The BBC’s post on it had 5,600 comments under it just seven hours after publication. The anti-Christian tone runs cruel. Here’s a sample:

• Haha good riddance. Leave them alone.
• God acts in mysterious ways… <GRIN><GRIN><GRIN><GRIN>
• They sent him to Jesus… we must be happy about it.
• I can but hope he was an American Evangelical.
• They nipped that s**t right in the bud!
• I wish all indigenous cultures did this. They may have survived.
• Honestly not even sad about this. Gosh however has this tribe survived so long without jesus in their hearts <GLOAT>
• We should have done that here!

(The words inside “< >” are text translations of emojis.)

I ran a sample of comments, choosing 100 selected randomly out of the first 750 or so (it’s beastly hard to get to large numbers of Facebook comments). The blatant, laughing cruelty you see above showed up in about 1 out of 8 comments in that sample. It’s probably a good representation of the whole. 

Smug Satisfaction

Two-thirds of all comments expressed smug satisfaction over the man’s death. Examples:

• Why can’t we respect another human and their choice of life. What do you get? Keep your believes to yourself and God.
• Why didn’t his god protect him?
• Imagine that, another self righteous “christian” goes where he is not wanted or needed and in fact has been told to leave it alone, and something bad happens. And these people will be feared now when they are the ones who are scared·
• How come his god didn’t protect him? Hm
• Should have minded his own business.
• They have done what he says: they sent him to heaven

About a quarter of the comments echoed the “mind your own business” theme you see in some of the above.

This wasn’t on some atheist website, mind you, where that kind of attitude is likely to be over-represented. This was on the BBC’s Facebook page.

It’s another picture of the world we live in, especially online. They accuse Christians of hatred, then this kind of thing happens.