I am sure many of you have heard the story of the slaying of the five missionary men in Ecuador in the 1950s by the fearsome Waorani tribe (the “Aucas,” as they were known to the surrounding tribes). Within one year of the missionaries’ deaths, Elisabeth Elliot, the wife of one of those five men, told their story in a book titled Through Gates of Splendor. She had decided to stay in Ecuador with her young daughter, still burdened for this violent tribe, and even had the opportunity after a few short years to live with the very people who had killed her husband. However, the time she spent with the Waorani people was marked with great challenges. She found herself struggling with the language, how to communicate the gospel, what expectations for life were biblical versus simply the American way of things, and mostly with her coworker in the tribe, Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the other missionary men killed that fateful day. Elliot and Saint both had strong personalities and saw things very differently. While it seems that Elliot wanted to find a way to work together, Saint had too many concerns about Elliot’s faith and decisions that she saw no way forward. After living with the tribe off and on for three years, Elliot decided it was time to leave the jungle. She struggled with this decision – living with this tribe was what she had prayed for. What was God doing? Could this really be part of His plan?
In a letter to her mom during this
time, she wrote, “I find that faith is more vigorously exercised when I can
find no satisfying explanation for the way God does things. I have to hope,
without any evidence seen, that things will come right in the end – not merely
that we shall receive compensation, but that we and all creation will be redeemed.
This means infinitely more than the good will eventually outweigh the evil”
(quoted in Ellen Vaughn’s Becoming Elisabeth Elliot, chapter 34).
When Elliot returned to the States,
she struggled greatly with the easy pat answers that Christians would give to
complex spiritual problems, as if they could know why God was doing what He was
doing. Her novel No Graven Image about a single missionary lady in
Ecuador shocked many Christians for it didn’t have a happy ending that tied up
all the loose ends, but ended instead with a tragic death whereupon the
missionary had to choose to trust God even without having her questions
answered.
In 1981, Elliot wrote a second epilogue
for the 25th anniversary edition of her book Through Gates of
Splendor. She wrote about the urge for Christians to “oversimplify issues,
to weigh in at once with interpretations that cannot possibly cover all the
data or stand up to close inspection.” She mentions that some say since five
missionaries died, that must mean that x number of Aucas will be saved. In
answer to this thought, she writes, “Perhaps so. Perhaps not. Cause and effect
are in God’s hands. Is it not the part of faith simply to let them rest there?
God is God. I dethrone Him in my heart if I demand that He act in ways that
satisfy my idea of justice” (269). She points out that God didn’t answer Job’s
questions either as they related to his suffering. With these final words,
Elliot closes her epilogue: “It is not the level of our spirituality that we
can depend on. It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God’s and the
call is God’s and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, the whole
scene, the whole mess, the whole package... We are not always sure where the
horizon is. We would not know ‘which end is up’ were it not for the shimmering
pathway of light falling on the white sea. The One who laid earth’s foundations
and settled its dimensions knows where the lines are drawn. He gives all the
light we need for trust and obedience” (273).
In my Sunday night bible study, we
have been studying the book of 1 Peter. So much of this book deals with the
topic of suffering. Peter wants the churches to know that suffering is a part
of the Christian life, that it is not for nothing, and that in the midst of
their trials, these believers must “entrust their souls to a faithful Creator
while doing good” (1 Peter 4:19). And that one day, the suffering will be over,
and that God, “who has called [them] to His eternal glory in Christ, will
himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish [them]” (5:10).
So, dear sisters in Christ, when
trials come our way, and we want to see the whys to make sense of it in our own
minds, let us choose to leave those questions with God. And, as Elisabeth
Elliot wrote so well, let us hope and believe, even when we can’t see any good
that could come out of the suffering, that God will one day redeem it all for
His glory. This is the message of Romans 8:28. He causes all things to work
together for good. Let us trust Him.
--Amy O’Rear
