Evangelicals Now
Christian news worldwide
magnifying glass Search archives
home Home check the archives Archives Subscribe Subscriptions Advertising Information & booking of classifieds Adverts Find a local evangelical Church Find a church for the search engines and extremely curious! About us Contact us Site Map
Printable
Version

Don't sleep, there are snakes

Shelf life: Looking at secular books

DON’T SLEEP, THERE ARE SNAKES
By Daniel Everett
Profile Books. 284 pages. £15.00
ISBN 978-1-84668-030-4

Daniel Everett travelled to the banks of an Amazon tributary as an SIL (Wycliffe Bible Translators) missionary in 1977. 30 years later he is still studying their language, but not as a Bible translator, instead he is an academic researcher. Everett’s time with the Piraha tribe has led to a revolution in linguistics and a personal revolution in his own life — he lost his faith and with it his family.

This book is in three parts. The first documents the episodes of his life living at close quarters with the Pirahas. He describes his wife’s and daughter’s life-threatening malaria in their first stay in Brazil, and how he had to transport them, slipping in and out of consciousness, with his other two young children for three days to reach even basic medical support. There are other dramatic stories, too; the family took in an abandoned baby orphan, nursed and cared for her, but as the tiny girl was regaining strength she was murdered by the other villagers, who viewed her as fated. Alongside this shock we find descriptions of the beautiful riverside, hunting trips and the predators around. I found reading these accounts rather peculiar, because much of the content is similar to missionary autobiographies but the tone is so different. Everett writes without an explanation of his feelings or motivation; he seems to be distancing himself from the work he was sent to do.

Linguistic discoveries

The second part of the book covers the linguistic discoveries Everett made. He does express these clearly and, with my background in language study, I found the section really interesting, but perhaps this is an acquired taste. The peculiarity of the Piraha language, which has no number or colour terms and no relative clauses, leads him to conclusions which are opposed to the dominant theories in contemporary linguistics. If you skip this middle section you will come to a third part which details the personal changes Everett’s time with the Pirahas brought about.

Don’t want Jesus

After about a year living in the jungle, one of Everett’s friends came to him and said, ‘We don’t want to hear any more about Jesus. We like you but we don’t want Jesus’. This was a huge shock for the missionary and, added to other growing doubts, led him to ‘deconvert’. He became a relativistic atheist. Now this stumped me. Why should disinterest in the gospel lead us to doubt its truth? My friends and my siblings imply, and at times have said out loud, ‘I don’t want Jesus’. I live among people like the Pirahas; people who have no felt need of the gospel, who don’t see themselves as sinners and who seem very happy. And Jesus is still real. The irony in this book is very clear. Everett has rejected any notion of God and absolute truth, but professionally he fights for truth, arguing for the validity of his own linguistic theories and, personally, he lost his family for the sake of the truth of atheism.

Made me sad

Steve Everett’s book stimulated me — I’ve been thinking about him and these tribal people all week. But it made me sad too. If you are interested in mission, this is a good book to read; it will lead you to think hard about the difficulties of communicating the gospel and I hope it will lead you to pray for missionaries and the Piraha people.

Sarah Allen