Yesterday I applied Seth Godin’s encouragement to “start now” to ministry. Today, let’s look at a common problem: we’re always comparing ourselves unfavorably to perceived “super-stars” and wondering why God would use us when he has people like them. Even a casual reading of the Bible should convince us of the fallacy of that point of view. Abraham, for example.

I’m thinking about this because someone has just written a long biography on Elisabeth Elliot.

Elisabeth Elliot: a Life by Lucy S. R. Austen

At 624 pages, I won’t read it, but there’s a nice review in Christianity Today by Thomas Kidd.

I was 9 years old when Jim Elliott and four other missionaries were killed in Ecuador in 1956. I read Jim’s widow, Elisabeth’s, books The Dayuma Story and Through Gates of Splendor. Elisabeth’s Dayuma book is apparently out of print, but here’s a recent retelling: Dayuma: Life under Waorani Spears by Ethel Emily Wallis. If you’re unfamiliar with any of this history, I strongly recommend the movie The End of the Spear and/or the documentary Beyond the Gates of Splendor. Both are very well done.

Elisabeth went back to that tribe after her husband was killed and brought them the gospel. It’s all heady stuff: extraordinary dedication, heroism, and self-sacrifice. As I say, I grew up with it. And yet, this new biography presents a balanced view of Elisabeth Elliott. The review’s title?

Elisabeth Elliot Was a Flawed Figure God Used in Extraordinary Ways

Flawed? You bet. Just like the rest of us. For example, Elisabeth left that tribe in part because she and fellow missionary and widow Rachel Saint just couldn’t get along. The main point of today’s blog is captured in Kidd’s review:

At times, the Elliots seem like museum pieces from postwar evangelical culture. Yet God used these callow youths to do extraordinary things in Ecuador. Their exceptional courage and zeal turned them into perhaps the most inspiring missionary exemplars of the 20th century.

Our discomfort with warts-and-all Christian biographies, I suspect, has to do with our over-exalted view of the people God uses in ministry. In Austen’s rendering, the Elliots were just everyday Christian folks, marred by fickleness, cultural arrogance, and outright sin. But she suggests that if God is behind all good that comes out of missions and ministry, then we should not be shocked to discover obvious shortcomings in our heroes of the faith. Maybe they are more like you and me than we imagine. If God can use them, perhaps he can use us too. – Thomas Kidd, emphasis mine

He closes this way:

In the end, Austen portrays Elliot as a complex and flawed person, but one used powerfully by God, especially in the cause of missions. “For Elisabeth Elliot,” Austen concludes, “the foundation of life was trust in the love of God.” This was no pious truism. It was a gritty conviction born out of repeated Job-like experiences of suffering. We may hope that her story will continue inspiring radical discipleship and missionary service, all while fostering confidence that, in Austen’s words, “all things in heaven and earth will finally be made whole.”

The Apostle Paul was flawed too, and he wrote:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing. (2 Timothy 4.7, 8, NKJV)