On January 9, 1956, five American women in the jungles of eastern Ecuador joined hands and burst into song. “We rest on thee, our shield and our defender, Thine is the battle, thine shall be the praise. When passing through the pearly gates of splendor, Victors, we rest with thee through endless days.” The occasion for this hymn of worship? They had just received the news that their husbands had been killed the day before in their attempt to bring the gospel to the unreached Waorani tribe. Their choice to respond to tragedy with worship is evidence of the courageous whole-hearted faith of these women. Today, in honor of our house namesake, I would like to examine the life of one of these women, Elisabeth Elliot, the widow of Jim Elliot. Elisabeth was a woman of God who spent her life in whole-hearted devotion to him. She proclaimed and lived the truth of biblical womanhood, not allowing femininity to become synonymous with weakness, but never diminishing the differences between men and women. And rather than hide from or create an image for the spotlight she found herself thrown into after her husband’s death, she humbly used her unasked for fame to point others to the truth. Inspired by her life of faith, here in the Elliot house we have committed to pursuing three character traits displayed in the life of our house name-sake: whole-heartedness, grit, and modesty.
Most of what Elisabeth recorded about her own life took place in the years after and immediately before her first husband’s death. Her life story is certainly incredible, but one of the things that I appreciate the most about Elisabeth Elliot in my current stage of life is the realization of how normal she was. Her book Passion and Purity focuses primarily on her college years and the years immediately after. What a relief to know that one of my personal heroes was a regular college student! One who felt anxiety over what would come next, who found herself struggling to navigate the complicated world of relationships, who took road trips with her friends, and who wrestled with the difficult balancing act of school and extracurriculars with her daily walk with the Lord. In other words, someone who was not so different from any given Bethlehem student. Elisabeth was an ordinary woman serving an extraordinary God. “How far am I prepared to trust myself into my Father’s hands? That’s the real question,” she once wrote. “We must learn to submit our “what ifs” and “yeah, buts.” To the humble and honest soul who does not proudly and arrogantly assume that God’s arrangement of things will not “work” in her case, the light of grace will always be given.” Elisabeth’s life of obedience did not begin in Ecuador. It began long before that. It was demonstrated throughout her college years as she submitted her “what ifs” and “yeah buts” to the Lord as she prayerfully considered her relationship with Jim, and in her quiet commitment to her studies as she memorized vocabulary and paradigms in order to master Biblical languages so she could pursue translation work.
Her whole-hearted lifestyle continued throughout her adult life as she joined Jim in Ecuador, only to face widowhood shortly after getting married.
After the death of her husband, Elisabeth Elliot, along with Nate Saint’s sister, Rachel, decided to continue ministering to the Waoroni people. Elisabeth knew when she married Jim and joined him in Ecuador that she was partnering with him in his work. She and Jim spent years praying about that partnership, and she took it very seriously. So seriously that she was willing to return, with her young daughter, to serve the people who had killed her husband.
Whatever she did, whether it was learning the Waoroni language, cooking and cleaning in a dirt-floored hut, or teaching and writing in the United States, she did it whole-heartedly because she believed in living out the calling God had given her. Her view of God’s call on her life was not simply a matter of vocation. It also shaped her view of femininity. “We are called to be women,” she wrote to her daughter many years later. “The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman. For I have accepted God’s idea of me, and my whole life is an offering back to him of all that I am and all that he wants me to be.”
Elisabeth’s view of femininity was not one of fragile, squeamish women, but of women of grit who embraced all that God created them to be. In another letter to her daughter, she recounts the “feminine” tasks that the two of them learned among the Waoroni people: “You as a little foreign girl took your place among them, learning to catch fish with your hands as the women did, cooking, mashing, chewing, and spitting your manioc in order to make chichi… You learned to swing a machete and build fires and walk trails with one foot in front of the other…” This was not the lifestyle of a fragile woman. It was the lifestyle of a woman of grit, who was not afraid to get her hands dirty, to accept challenging tasks, and to serve with dedication.
After five years in Ecuador, Elisabeth and her daughter Valerie returned to the United States. There she pursued a career in writing and teaching. By the time she returned to the United States, she was famous, having appeared in national papers when her husband died, and making it into the cover story in Life magazine on two separate occasions.
What do you do with fame that you never asked for? Elisabeth Elliot made her entrance to the world stage in a way that she never would have planned—in the midst of a deep, personal tragedy. She did not ask for a day in the spotlight, it was handed to her when her husband was killed. And she used that spotlight for the glory of God. As the eyes of the world fixated on her, she fixed her eyes on the throne of God. Though she had a natural tendency to be a quiet, private individual, she accepted the platform she had been given and spent her life writing, teaching, and hosting a national radio program. Though a quiet person, she was not afraid to speak boldly against the tide of radical feminism. Rejecting the lie that men and women are no different from one another, Elisabeth defended a Biblical view of manhood and womanhood, emphasizing the unique calling of womanhood. In one of her responses to feminist attacks, she reminded her readers of the Garden of Eden. “Eve saw the opportunity to be something other than what she was meant to be,” she wrote, “—the Serpent convinced her that she could easily be ‘Like God’ and she took the opportunity. . . . What sort of world might have been if Eve had refused the Serpent’s offer and had said to him instead, ‘Let me not be like God. Let me be what I was made to be—let me be a woman.’?”
There is much to admire in Elisabeth Elliot’s life, but it is also important to recognize her short-comings. While she and Nate Saint’s sister Rachel served together in Ecuador, they both presented to the world a picture of unity and success. The reality was not as pretty. Nate Saint’s son, Steve, who knew the two women as Aunt Rachel and Aunt Betty, realized at a young age that things were not as peaceful as they would have had people believe. After Rachel’s death, Steve discovered in his aunt’s journals an account of their clashing personalities and competing visions for ministry to the Waoroni tribe driving a deep enough rift between them that they were barely on speaking terms. Steve asked Elisabeth to share her side of the story, the agreement being that both accounts could be made public in order that both could be given a fair hearing. This was late in Elisabeth’s life, and evidently reliving these memories was not a priority for her. The work was never completed, and Steve Saint never released Rachel’s journals. He later wrote that he was unsure if the two of them ever resolved their differences and made peace with one another before Rachel’s death. We do not know either side of the story in detail. What we do know is that Elisabeth and Rachel disagreed so sharply that they could no longer serve together, and we know that Elisabeth Elliot decided that it would be better and easier to leave the continent than to make peace with her friend and continue serving alongside her.
We can be strengthened and encouraged by our hero’s successes, but there is just as much to be learned from their faults. In fallen humans, our virtues are accompanied by vices, and the difficult truth is that our vices come much more naturally. Elisabeth Elliot’s example, as well as her failings, serve as a reminder to us that it is important that we never let our whole-heartedness become an excuse for block-headedness, of our grit to become an excuse for unkindness, or our modesty to become a means of concealing our own sin.
Elisabeth Elliot is and always will be one of my heroes. She demonstrated the fact that to be a woman is not to be a different kind of Christian, but to be a Christian is to be a different kind of woman. Throughout her life, she showed the world that femininity is not a liability, and that the fearless strength of a woman of God is an incredible thing to behold. She stood against the tide of a politically correct agenda, pointing us back to the truth of biblical manhood and womanhood. She lived a life of fearless submission to God, even when trusting herself into the hand of God meant enduring tremendous loss. And she used the fame that she did not ask for as a means of glorifying God and pointing others to His loving faithfulness. Her strengths, as well as her weaknesses, in her ordinary but extraordinary life, are a reminder of God’s grace and faithfulness in using broken but redeemed sinners for his kingdom.
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