No Graven Image

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. EXODUS 20:4

In 1966 Elisabeth Elliot published a novel. It was the only one she ever wrote, and it troubled many of the readers who had loved Through Gates of Splendor. No Graven Image tells the story of Margaret Sparhawk, a young single missionary who goes to the mountains of Ecuador to work on Bible translation among the highland Quichua. She prays for a helper who can teach her the language, and one seems to be given: a Quichua man named Pedro. Her work goes forward; she gains a little standing in the community; the story seems to be heading where missionary stories usually head. Then Pedro falls ill, she gives him an injection of penicillin, and he dies of a violent reaction to it. The book does not end with a vindication. It ends with a missionary stripped of her success story and left with God.

The novel is fiction, but it was not invented out of nothing. It drew on what she had lived through, and it put into story form a conviction that runs through the whole of her teaching. God is not a means to our ends. He is not a guarantor of missionary results, or of happy endings, or of the kind of meaning we would choose. He is God, and He may not be fashioned into an image of what we want Him to be.

The image in the mind

The second commandment forbids the making of graven images. Most readers of the Bible today do not carve idols. But it is possible to carve one in the mind — to make a picture of God that suits us, and then to worship the picture. The missionary is not exempt. He may come to believe that God exists to bless his work, that faithful service must be rewarded with visible fruit, and that a God who allows the work to fail has broken His side of the bargain. The novel’s title points to that hidden idolatry. Margaret’s God, at the beginning of the book, is too small and too useful. By the end, that god has been broken.

To whom then will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him? ISAIAH 40:18

These Strange Ashes

Nine years later she told the story of her own first year in Ecuador, and the reader can see where the novel came from. These Strange Ashes (1975) describes her work among the Colorado people, and the losses already told in chapter two: the murder of Don Macario, the language helper on whom much of the work depended, and the theft of the suitcase that held months of her language material. There seemed to be no reason for any of it.

The book does not explain these losses. Its title is taken from a poem of Amy Carmichael’s, which speaks of the ashes — the nothingness and baffling loss — left when an offering has been burned, and it sits beside the scriptural promise that God gives beauty for ashes. But the beauty is not hurried. She described herself, in substance, as learning that God does not owe His servants explanations, and that faith must rest in Him rather than in the outcome of their work.

To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified. ISAIAH 61:3

Telling 1956 honestly

The same honesty shaped the way she told the story of her husband’s death. Through Gates of Splendor (1957) was written within months of the killings on the Curaray, and it became one of the best-known missionary books of the century. It was natural for readers to see the story as a simple one: five men died, God used their deaths, and the Waorani were won. And in part that was true. Some of the very men who had killed the missionaries later came to faith, and she herself lived among them.

But she resisted the triumphal telling. She knew that the people the men sought were not simply villains or simply waiting to be saved, and that what followed among the Waorani was more tangled than the legend allowed. When Through Gates of Splendor was reissued for its fortieth anniversary in 1996, she added an epilogue saying so. She would not let the deaths of five men be turned into a neat proof that God always makes things turn out well. God was at work, she believed, but not on the terms His people might have set.

Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour. ISAIAH 45:15

What she was not saying

Some readers took No Graven Image as an attack on missions, and it was coolly received in parts of the missionary community. That was a misreading. She remained committed to the missionary task all her life, spoke to missionaries, honoured missionaries, and wrote the lives of missionaries. Her point was not that the Great Commission was mistaken, but that it must be obeyed for God’s sake and not for ours. The missionary goes because Christ has sent him. Whether he sees fruit is in God’s hands. He may plant, and another may water, and God gives the increase — or He may not give it in the missionary’s lifetime at all.

So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. 1 CORINTHIANS 3:7

She also was not saying that we cannot know God. We know Him truly, because He has made Himself known in His Word and in His Son. What we cannot do is control Him, predict Him, or put Him to work for us. The three young men in Babylon showed the right spirit: our God is able to deliver us, and He will — but if not, we still will not bow.

If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. DANIEL 3:17–18

Weighing it

Readers will differ about the novel. Some find its ending bleak, or worry that it leaves too little room for the many times God does vindicate His servants and bless their work. Those readers have a point: Scripture is full of answered prayer and fruitful labour, and a missionary who expected nothing would not be more faithful, only more discouraged. But the novel was written against a particular danger, and that danger is real. Faith that depends on results will not survive the day when the results fail. Faith that rests in God Himself will.

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him. JOB 13:15

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Ask yourself honestly what you expect God to do for you in return for your service. Write it down, and hold it before Him.

2. Think of a loss in your own work that seemed to have no purpose. Have you forgiven God for it? Bring it to Him again.

3. Read Daniel 3:16–18. Say the words “but if not” over the thing you most hope for.

4. If you have read Through Gates of Splendor, consider what is lost when a true story is made simpler than it was.

5. Pray for one missionary you know by name, not for success, but that their faith may rest in God Himself.

A PRAYER

Lord God, You are not the God I would have made. You are greater, and holier, and You will not be used.

Break every image of You that I have carved in my mind, and show me Yourself as You are.

Where my work has come to ashes, give me beauty in Your time. Where it never comes in this life, keep me trusting You still.

Make me faithful to plant and water, and leave the increase to You. Though You slay me, yet will I trust in You. Amen.