At the End of the Spear

At the beginning of the year I decided to start reading some autobiographies, and so, when I saw Through Gates of Splendor still sitting on the shelf just before we left on vacation, I grabbed it to finally do something about my resolution.

It affected me deeply. It is the story of five young men who, in trying to make friendly contact with a savage Indian tribe in Ecuador, were speared to death. Elisabeth Elliot is one of the surviving wives telling the story that led up to the surprise attack and what happened after that.

Although I had seen the movie a number of years ago, the book just gave the whole venture so much more substance. It describes what led these men to the point of taking on such a daring visit; men who had more to live for than themselves. Men who determined that you are not ready to live until you are ready to die. They truly believed that even the most remote people in the jungle needed to know that God loves them and has a plan for forgiveness. To a savage tribe who, by all appearances did not consider the life of anyone outside of their tribe as precious, this was a foreign concept.

There were several reasons this book resonated in a personal way with me; one of them being the memory of my parents listening to the HJKB radio station in Quito, Ecuador when I was a little girl, living in South America. This radio station gets mention in the book and it made me wonder if my parents heard the story as it broke out in 1956, the year that they got married. The second familiar feeling was the mention of MAF, the same mission our kids went out with to Indonesia. It was an MAF pilot who flew in the four men, landing on a sandbar along a river in the Amazon. The third tug at my heartstring was how much the pilot, in his nature, resembled our son-in-law. It could have been him.

One could say that, knowing how this tribe had reacted to previous strangers, how could anyone be as foolish as to attempt contact. As the story unfolded, I saw that these men had made what appeared to be adequate gestures of friendship via gifts dropped off by letting down a bucket. After several attempts, the Indian tribal people even gave gifts in return. What happened? What went wrong? We may never know this side of heaven.

After the tragedy, gift flights were continued by MAF pilots to show that the white man had no intention of retribution. Many other tribes, who heard of the sacrifice, felt a challenge to take on the responsibility of reaching this lost tribe. Elisabeth Elliot quotes converted native Indians of a neighbouring tribe praying, “O God, You know that it was only because they did not know you … Send more messengers and give them, instead of fierce hearts, soft hearts. Stick their hearts, Lord, as with a lance . . . that they will listen and believe.”

Elisabeth tells of how we try to sanction God’s allowing something like this by looking at the end result . . . such as how many people’s lives are changed by one person’s death. As if God owes us an explanation, or that we may excuse our mistakes, she writes, “This is the context in which the story must be understood – as one incident in human history . . . God is the God of human history and he is at work continuously, mysteriously, accomplishing His eternal purposes in us, through us, for us, and in spite of us . . . 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.”  These thoughts continue to give cause for deep reflection.