Are they really happy the way they are?

The Tugutil people live on the island of Halmahera, Indonesia. For many years, they worshipped ancestor spirits. Their ancestor spirits gave them a lot of information, and they knew much jungle lore. But not everything about their ancestor spirits was beneficial. The spirits had taught them how to make pig traps and set them to catch pigs in the jungles on their islands. When a pig would spring one of these traps, it would kill the pig. The problem was, their spirits told them to only check the traps once every 3 days. There on the equator, if an animals dies, it will begin rotting if the meat is not butchered within about 12 hours or less. So the Tugutil would check their traps and bring back these dead pigs to the village and eat them, even if the flesh was totally rancid. That had to do it this way – the spirits told them to. It is said that they ate so much rotten pig meat, that when they sweated they smelled like rotten pig flesh. They would even eat the rotten flesh when they knew it was going to make them sick. Then after they got sick they would go stand in the river for hours at a time until the diarrhea had passed through their system. Why did they continue to eat the rotten pig flesh day after day, year after year? For one reason only – they did not want to risk offending their ancestor spirits. And this is only one of many examples of how their ancestor and spirit worship religion keeps them in bondage.

Secular anthropologists would condemn missionaries for "destroying their culture" and "taking away their religion." But let me ask you – from what I have written about their religion above, besides general jungle lore, is there anything you can see that is worth preserving? Here is the double standard from the secular establishment – in our country we have the choice of who we want to worship, and nobody has a right to take that choice away from us. But the Tugutil had no choice for thousands of years. They grew up in that society, were taught and brought up in that form of religion which kept them in bondage, and knew of no other way. So how could it be wrong to go to people like this, and give them a choice? How could it be wrong to go and teach them the liberating truths of Christ, so that they stop eating rotten pig flesh? So that they will no longer have to watch their children die of dysentery because they did not want to risk offending the spirits?

Thankfully for the Tugutil, they now have the choice. Missionaries there have planted a church and translated portions of the Scriptures into their language. There are people who have realized that God the Creator of Heaven and Earth loved them so much that he sent Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, to pay for their sins and bring them into a life of freedom from the bondage they lived under. There are many Tugutil believers today, and they no longer eat rotten pig flesh. They still know much about the jungle, and they can now walk through it without the constant fear that their spirits will kill them. But this is not the case for so many others. In fact, there are still over 4000 people groups all over the world who still have no choice. They are still in bondage to whatever form of spirit worship they have been born under, and know nothing about Christ's sacrifice to set them free. They will be born, grow up, and die apart from Christ, unless someone goes to tell them.

"How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" Romans 10:14