Elisabeth Elliot is best known for being a widowed-missionary, speaker, adjunct professor, and author of over twenty books. She is least known for her one and only novel, No Graven Image.
It’s a book about twenty-five-year-old Margaret, a linguist who gives up family, money, and marriage to be a missionary in South America. She works for years with a primitive tribe that has no written language. Her hope is to write down the dialect and then translate the Bible into their tongue.
Margaret finds one man who knows that tribal language plus Spanish. He is the only man in the world who can help her with her missionary project. But near the end of the book, she accidentally kills him with bad penicillin. The tribe turns against her and they throw all her work into the river. Years of research, notes, and translations literally go down the drain.
Her entire life is a huge disappointment. And that is the end of the story.
The Christian Response
Elisabeth Elliot published the book in 1966, and she immediately received angry letters from Christians all over the world. The president of her seminary even told her he had pulled strings to ensure that her book was excluded from any Christian prominent book-of-the-year list.
The hate mail, book reviews, and even her seminary boss all said the same thing:
There is no way God would ever let a dedicated servant experience such suffering, disappointment, or ministry failure.
Eliot’s response was to point out that these critics obviously didn’t know the life of Job—since that is precisely what happens to Job—but the readers also obviously didn’t know Elisabeth’s own life, since her book was less of a fictional-novel and more of a creative-autobiography.
Eliot herself lost her first husband when he was brutally killed by the South American tribe they were trying to evangelize; she lost her second husband in her mid-forties; and she died after a “ten year battle with the disease which robbed her of her greatest gift,” her mind.
When I read her book, especially when Margaret’s translator-friend is killed and her lifework is ruined, I was struck with the same thoughts as the hate mail Eliot received: How could she write such a seemingly pointless book on suffering? What was she saying about God?
Well, What Was She Saying About God?
When Eliot names her book, No Graven Image, she deliberately associates our Christian service with the possibility of the idolatry prohibited in the second commandment: Thou shalt make no graven image. And the nature of idols is always to enslave us. On the second to last page of the novel, Eliot has her protagonist reflect:
Now in the clear light of day I see that God, if He was merely my accomplice, He had betrayed me. If, on the other hand, He was God, He had freed me.
In other words, if God is big enough for us to be angry with when he doesn’t do as we ask, then he is also big enough to have reasons that we can’t understand. If he is just our helper, then our anger is justified. If he is really God—that is the True Lord of All—then I can finally take my hands off the reigns of my life (and the life of others).
Because even my desire to do good can be an enslaving idol from which I need freedom.
I don’t know how Elisabeth Eliot discovered this truth, but she discovered it as a young woman when her husband was killed by the very people he was trying to help. At that time she wrote:
God is God. If He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere but in His will, and that will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.
Sam
Happy Further’s Day
Such grace and wisdom! May we each take it to heart and seek grace to trust in the “notions” of God.
Hi Stan,
I think that is the true spiritual journey, to lean to delight in the “notions of God” (instead of our own).
When Ps. 37 talks about “delighting in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart,” I think it is preached the wrong way. I have literally heard pastors say, “If you want to be a lawyer, learn to delight in the Lord, and then he will give you that desire.”
But that is a completely false gospel. Because in that scenario, the person’s real delight is in becoming a lawyer, and God is just a means to an end (or God is just my “accomplice” or servant).
Thanks
Very challenging to think about Sam. I have been challenged on several fronts recently as I gain new understanding the Father is asking me, “so what are you going to do with this new understanding?”
Hi Randy,
GREAT to hear from you.
If we simply learn to glorify God, I think it is enough.
Thanks
Wow. I get it, but it’s still super hard to accept. Thank you for challenging me, Sam!
Hi Lori,
I wonder sometimes if God needs to hold back success from us (in work, ministry, even parenting) for our own protection. It drives us to him.
Which is what he wanted from the start.
The timing of this post is obviously no accident…uploaded on 9-11.
A thought unbidden comes, like Ransom experiences in Perelandra…
“Hullo! What was this? He sat straight upright again, his heart beating wildly against his side. His thoughts had stumbled on an idea from which they started back as a man starts back when he has touched a hot poker.”
And the thought is this…what you describe is akin to the movie that touched off a world war caliber battle royal…The Last Jedi. And it’s not for the reasons dear to the hearts of progressives, like heavy-handed diversity, or
rescuing animals while the ranks of the Rebel Alliance are being decimated.
I mean this…that everything we’ve been taught to revere and value in decades of watching the Star Wars franchise has been fed to the fire…the nobility and sagacity of the Jedi Order…the very repository of sacred lore goes up in literal flame.
As Yoda says, “Time it is. For you to look at a pile of old books, hmmm?…Oh. Read them, have you?…Page-turners they were not. Yes, yes, yes. Wisdom they held, but that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess.”
Of course what the hardcore social innovators exalt is the supplanting of outmoded and shopworn values. What the Sovereign intends, though, is far different…the salvation of souls, a Bride’s purity, and communion with the Bridegroom.
The paradox is that it’s galling to get there from here.
Yikes!
I really didn’t know it was posted on 9/11 until you (and several others) pointed it out to me.
Thanks!
Wow! This was timely. After making some truly amazing progress, my adult child who is alcoholic has again relapsed dangerously. Two years ago I lost my husband of 41 years and continue to work through letting go of him. Come what may, I have to let go of my kids too. Our lives are held in the bosom of Christ. He’s got us. The only sanity, the only peace is to keep our eyes on Him who is Faithful and True, who is LOVE, who is our Rock.
HI Candace,
My heart goes out to you, you know it does.
Sam
Sam, this is a great post, More poignant perhaps even than many of your others. It is amazing to me how Christians want to put God in “The Good Box” where he will shower us with nothing but blessings and prevent all harm from going to us. I used to listen to Elizabeth’s radio broadcasts in Portland, Oregon. I have met her son, but I don’t pretend to have an in-depth personal knowledge. I would say that while she was not disheartened by the reaction she got from the Christian Community over her book, she was dissapointed.
As you say, Elizabeth’s detractors must not have read the Book of Job. Or perhaps they feel that, “God was like that at one time, but He certainly is not like that today.”
It is always idolatry to make God into an image of our own creation – however “good” that image may appear. Good words, Sam, thanks!
Hi Jack,
I especially like your closing paragraph. Our modern-day idolatry probably is most illustrated by our constant making God in our own image.
Thanks
Thanks for the reminder. It is so easy to get confused when we don’t get what we want when we pray for something like the healing of a loved one. God Bless You.
I completely understand.
You wrote a very profound sentence: “In other words, if God is big enough for us to be angry with when he doesn’t do as we ask, then he is also big enough to have reasons that we can’t understand.”
And the next is just as important: “If he is just our helper, then our anger is justified. If he is really God—that is the True Lord of All—then I can finally take my hands off the reigns of my life (and the life of others).”
This really got me too! I read it and re-read it and then cried. I have a messy family situation and this is where I struggle. I want to steer everyone in the “right” direction so things don’t erupt even more. I’ve keep this article up for 5 or 6 day so I can keep re-reading it.
Hi Michelle,
Thanks for sharing. I’ve got some similar situations, where I think I know the exact right thing that needs to happen, but it doesn’t.
Someone once described anxiety this way: “Anxiety is thinking we know exactly what needs to happen, and fearing that God will get it wrong.”
Yikes, that line convicts me!
As I struggle through diminishing choices for treatments and diminishing pain-control options, the timeliness of this message requires me to meditate on it a little. So far I don’t think I’m handling this suffering well. But I do believe God has good plans, and that he is slowly ( my fault it’s going slowly- my learning curve is shallow) weeding out the idols in my heart. Thanks, Sam.
I believe that we need to talk about our situation, whatever it is with the Lord. It is all to easy to stew in our juices, or to take the advice of any Tom, Dick or Jeremiah. There needs to be balance struck by Christians especially, not opting for either of the last two approaches. I have been with people as they literally discarded debilitating pain with one simple prayer. And commiserated with others wrestling with it for years. One cannot think that Paul had it easy in any way when he wrote: “I die daily.” One of his most influential sermons on how all must enter into the blissful end God has for us through many sufferings. He preached this word to a crowd that had seen him get up from being stoned within an inch of his life. So we must talk with the Lord and hear from him. While I don’t feel that Paul’s thorn in his flesh was a physical ailment, what the Lord said to him is good advice for all of us experiencing still once again the weakness we are want to have supernaturally removed. What did the Lord say? My guess is almost every question can repeat his message word for word with me: “My grace is sufficient for you: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
— Chaplain Frank
Hi Chaplain Frank. I once heard a sermon on Paul’s “Thorn in the flesh” while I was at a church in Australia. It is a Hebrew idiom referring to the pain inflicted by others who do not understand or wish to harm us. These people who did not understand paul’s message were exactly the people to whom God wanted him to preach. Therefore, it’s a “no-brainer” that God would refuse to take away that “thorn in the flesh” from Paul. See Numbers 33:55, Joshua 23:13 and Judges 2:3. This Hebrew Idiom, actually referred to troublesome people, not to a physical illness.
Hi Chaplain Frank,
THANKS!
Hi Jenny,
Your courage inspires me. Someone once said, “the challenge is to believe God knows what he is after.”
I find it challenging as well.
Sam, you nailed it with this one. The most oppressive idols are the ones that most closely bear a counterfeit resemblance to the living God as we perceive Him.
Hey Doc,
I knew you’d like this one! You and I share this understanding and passion.
This is one I will take to God (as well as Facebook) to prayerfully examine my life, work, passions, mimistry desires. Thank you. My husband and I get a lot from your posts, you and they are a blessing all the way over here in the UK.
Hi Andrea,
Thanks for your encouragement. You are a blessing to me all the way over here in Michigan!
A recent title in the Babylon Bee reads, “Exciting New Faith-Based Film Follows Christian Football Team That Overcomes Adversity But Still Loses Every Game of the Season.” Of course we wouldn’t expect Christian movie-makers to produce such a film. God would never let that happen to a team, would He? (That’s why the headline only appears on a Christian satire website.) Just like “there is no way God would ever let a dedicated servant experience such suffering, disappointment, or ministry failure.” The truth is that it happens. We just don’t want to hear about it.
Sadly, this doesn’t only affect the fictional world. I read your post right after hearing the news that Jarrid Wilson, a megachurch associate pastor and mental health advocate, had committed suicide. While I think Christian attitudes have improved in the years since Elisabeth Elliot’s book was published, there are probably still some believers who heard the news about Jarrid and thought there was no way God would let that happen to a dedicated servant. If that’s true, then the only logical conclusion would be that Jarrid wasn’t as dedicated as he appeared to be.
I pray that his widow and children will never buy into that lie, and that they will be surrounded by those who understand that really bad things, including mental illness, can happen to even the most dedicated believer.
Hi Ann,
Thanks for sharing. I always appreciate your thoughts.
And I share in your prayers for the widow and children.
Sam