Elizabeth Elliot Devotions

[nChrist]

Title: Starting a WOTTS Group
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
Author: Elisabeth Elliot


Men and women who are committed to obedience to Titus 2:1-5 are desperately needed in the world, in the church, and in the home. Writing on what I called spiritual motherhood I referred to them as WOTTs (Women of Titus Two). A reader asks if I have guidelines, structure, organization, information about such a group. Well, not much--for this reason: as soon as you organize, you have to have meetings! What we don't need is one more meeting to take us away from our homes and telephones. My suggestions are simply these:

   1. Pray. Ask God to show you the needs and ways in which you yourself can help. Pray (perhaps on the phone if it's difficult to get together) with one or two others who understand the need.
   2. Ask your pastor if he might preach on the Titus passage. It will take courage for him to do this.
   3. In Bible studies, Sunday School classes, over your kitchen table or wherever you have opportunity, raise the subject of spiritual motherhood. Tell others of the blessing your own spiritual mothers have been to you. (If you had none, find a model in a book, as I did in missionary author Amy Carmichael. Then seek to be one.)
   4. Post a list on the church bulletin board of the WOTTs, women who earnestly desire to be available. Mothers (in the usual sense and in the spiritual) are people who must be available--not all the time, not to meet every demand, but as needs arise which they can meet. They are prepared to do so, no matter how humble and unsung the job. The deepest needs are for godly examples, ears to hear, shoulders to cry on, hearts to pray. Then there are the humble tasks which lighten others' burdens: drive someone to the doctor, do somebody's ironing, take a friend and go clean somebody's refrigerator and oven (jobs young mothers find it hard to get around to); babysit--in your house or theirs. Rock a baby, read a story, cook the supper, do the mending. Take an old person shopping and to lunch. Clean the house, do the gardening, write letters at his or her dictation or acquire some government postcards--so cheap, so easy to write a note on if you address them first.

God will give you many other ideas if you ask Him.

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[nChrist]

Title: Women of Like Passions
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
Author: Elisabeth Elliot


The leader of a women's conference asked me if I would be able to talk privately with a young woman who was in deep sorrow. This woman didn't want to "bother" me, the leader said, didn't feel she ought to take my time when there were hundreds of others who needed it. In fact, she was scared of me. Of course I said I'd be very glad to talk with her, and please to tell her I was not fierce.

After the talk, the young woman went to report to the leader.

"Oh, it wasn't bad after all! I walked in--I was shaking. I looked into her eyes, and I knew that she, too, had suffered. Then she gave me this beautiful smile. When I saw that huge space between her front teeth, I said to myself, 'it's OK--she's not perfect!'"

My daughter Valerie once taught a women's Bible class in Laurel, Mississippi. It happened that she lost her place in her notes as she was speaking. She tried to find it while continuing to speak, realized she couldn't, apologized and paused to search the page. The pause grew agonizingly long. At last she gave up and adlibbed through the rest of the lesson. She couldn't find the application, couldn't find the conclusion. Leaving the platform afterwards, she was on the point of tears because of what seemed an abysmal failure. A lady came to her to say it was the best class so far. Later someone called to thank Val for things which had helped her.

"Mama," she told me on the phone, "I couldn't understand why this had happened. I had prepared faithfully, done the best I could. But then I remembered a prayer I'd prayed that week (Walt told me it was a ridiculous prayer!)--asking the Lord to make those women know that I'm just an ordinary woman like the rest of them and I need His help. I guess this was His answer, don't you think?"

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[nChrist]

Title: Nothing is Lost
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
Author: Elisabeth Elliot


A pastor's wife asked, "When one witnesses a work he has poured his life into 'go up in flames' (especially if he is not culpable), is it the work of Satan or the hand of God?"

Often it is the former, always it is under the control of the latter. In the biographies of the Bible we find men whose work for God seemed to be a flop at the time--Moses' repeated efforts to persuade Pharaoh, Jeremiah's pleas for repentance, the good king Josiah's reforms, rewarded in the end by his being slain by a pagan king. Sin had plenty to do with the seeming failures, but God was then, as He is now, the "blessed controller of all things" (1 Timothy 6:15, PHILLIPS). He has granted to us human beings responsibility to make choices and to live with the consequences. This means that everybody suffers--sometimes for his or her own sins, sometimes for those of others.

There are paradoxes here which we cannot plumb. But we can always look at the experiences of our own lives in the light of the life of our Lord Jesus. How shall we learn to "abide" (stay put) in Christ, enter into the fellowship of His sufferings, let Him transform our own? There is only one way. It is by living each event, including having things "go up in flames," as Christ lived: in the peace of the Father's will. Did His earthly work appear to be a thundering success? He met with argument, unbelief, scorn in Pharisees and others. Crowds followed Him--not because they wanted His Truth, but because they liked handouts such as bread and fish and physical healing. His own disciples were "fools and slow of heart to believe." (Why didn't Jesus make them believe? For the reason given above.) These men who had lived intimately with Him, heard His teaching for three years, watched His life and miracles, still had little idea what He was talking about on the evening before His death. Judas betrayed Him, Peter denied Him. The rest of them went to sleep when He asked them to stay awake. In the end they all forsook Him and fled. Peter repented with tears and later saw clearly what had taken place. In his sermon to the Jews of Jerusalem (Acts 2:23, PHILLIPS) he said, "This man, who was put into your power by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed up and murdered.... But God would not allow the bitter pains of death to touch him. He raised him to life again--and there was nothing by which death could hold such a man."

There is nothing by which death can hold any of His faithful servants, either. Settle it, once and for all--YOU CAN NEVER LOSE WHAT YOU HAVE OFFERED TO CHRIST. It's the man who tries to save himself (or his reputation or his work or his dreams of success or fulfillment) who loses. Jesus gave us His word that if we'd lose our lives for His sake, we'd find them.

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[nChrist]

Title: The Unseen Company
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
Author: Elisabeth Elliot


Many of us belong to churches where a creed is often repeated by the congregation. Several of the ancient creeds include these words, "I believe in the communion of saints." For some the word saints means only certain specially holy people who have been officially designated as such. For others it means those who are now in heaven. The Bible is very matter-of-fact in showing that those who belong to Christ, i.e., Christians, are saints. Look at Acts 9:32 and 41 for a start. Then note the salutations in Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:2, and other places.

Do you ever think much about that communion? Do you actually believe in it? I'm learning. The communion of saints takes no notice of location. Here or on the other side of the world or in heaven, all who love the Lord are included, bound together as a body whose Head is Christ. The gallery of heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 comprises not only those who achieved thrilling victories through faith, but also the destitute and persecuted, those who were tortured, flogged, imprisoned, and even sawn in two--people whom the world would never deem worthy, yet the Bible says the world was not worthy of them! And here's something worth pausing over: all were "commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us, so that only together with us would they be made perfect" (vv. 39-40).

When I pray I am often preoccupied and distracted, aware that my efforts are feeble and seemingly quite useless, but the thought that those distinguished heroes are to be perfected along with me (and with the writer of Hebrews, and with you and all the rest of the followers of the Lamb) changes the picture altogether and puts new heart into me. Grand and mysterious things are in operation. We are not alone. My prayers are perhaps a single note in a symphony, but a necessary note, for I believe in the communion of saints. We need each other. The prayers of one affect all. The obedience of one matters infinitely and forever.

We are told that we are "surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1, KJV)--those who found in Christ "their Rock, their Fortress, and their Might, their Captain in the well-fought fight" (to borrow the words of an old hymn), and "in the darkness drear their one true Light--Alleluia" (W.W. How: "For All the Saints").

When newly married and living in a little palm-thatched house in the jungle, Jim Elliot and I remembered that even in so remote a place we were still gathered in that great communion, and we used often to sing John Ellerton's hymn, "The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended." (Lars and I sometimes sing it now.) My favorite stanzas:

We thank Thee that Thy Church, unsleeping,
While earth rolls onward into light,
Through all the world her watch is keeping,
And rests not now by day or night.

As o'er each continent and island
The dawn brings on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor die the strains of praise away.

Maybe there is a reader who is very weak and very lonely as he reads this today, tempted to feel that prayer is futile and goes nowhere. Think of the great Unseen Company that watches and prays as we "run with perseverance the race marked out for us"(Hebrews 12:1, NIV)! Think of that and be of good cheer--it's much too soon to quit!

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[nChrist]

Title: The World Must Be Shown
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
Author: Elisabeth Elliot


When Jesus was speaking with His disciples before His crucifixion, He gave them His parting gift: peace such as the world can never give. But He went on immediately to say, "Set your troubled hearts at rest and banish your fears.... I shall not talk much longer with you, for the Prince of this world approaches. He has no rights over me, but the world must be shown that I love the Father and do exactly as he commands" (John 14:27, 30-31, NEB).

A young mother called to ask for "something that will help me to trust in the Lord." She explained that she had several small children, she herself was thirty years old, and she had cancer. Chemotherapy had done its hideous work of making her totally bald. The prognosis was not good. Could I say to her, "Set your troubled heart at rest. God is going to heal you"? Certainly not. Jesus did not tell His disciples that He would not be killed. How do I know whether God would heal this young woman? I could, however, remind her that He would not for a moment let go of her, that His love enfolded her and her precious children every minute of every day and every night, and that underneath are the Everlasting Arms.

But is that enough? The terrible things in the world seem to make a mockery of the love of God, and the question always arises: Why!

There are important clues in the words of Jesus. The disciples' worst fears were about to be realized, yet He commanded (yes, commanded) them to be at peace. All would be well, all manner of things would be well--in the end. In a short time, however, the Prince of this world, Satan himself, was to be permitted to have his way. Not that Satan had any rights over Jesus. Far from it. Nor has he "rights" over any of God's children, including that dear mother. But Satan is permitted to approach. He challenges God, we know from the Book of Job, as to the validity of His children's faith.

God allows him to make a test case from time to time. It had to be proved to Satan, in Job's case, that there is such a thing as obedient faith which does not depend on receiving only benefits. Jesus had to show the world that He loved the Father and would, no matter what happened, do exactly what He said. The servant is not greater than his Lord. When we cry "Why, Lord?" we should ask instead, "Why not, Lord? Shall I not follow my Master in suffering as in everything else?"

Does our faith depend on having every prayer answered as we think it should be answered, or does it rest rather on the character of a sovereign Lord? We can't really tell, can we, until we're in real trouble.

I never heard more from the young woman. I neglected to ask her address. But I prayed for her, asking God to enable her to show the world what genuine faith is--the kind of faith that overcomes the world because it trusts and obeys, no matter what the circumstances. The world does not want to be told. The world must be shown. Isn't that part of the answer to the great question of why Christians suffer?

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[nChrist]

Title: Two Views
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
Author: Elisabeth Elliot


One morning I received an article from a Christian magazine, written by a consulting physician at a well-known Christian clinic, entitled "Learning to Love Yourself." Ironically, in the same mail came a news magazine with its cover story, "The Curse of Self-Esteem."

I said, "Well." (That's a byword from my sister-in-law's family. When they think it best not to say what they're really thinking, but need to say something, they've found this useful: I said, "Well.")

The doctor's suggestions for improving your self-esteem included these: Praise yourself. Speak up for yourself. Believe in yourself. Be proud of yourself. Express total, unconditional acceptance for where you are at this moment.

The news magazine said, "If you're like most Americans, chances are you are at risk for low self-esteem. Sure, you felt bad at your kids' school's Career Day when you were the only parent who didn't own his own company. But unless your family psychometrician had ministered a Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory or the Kaplan Self-Derogation Scale you probably never imagined that a negative self-image might be holding you back in life. You just thought you were no good.

"But now you know that there are no bad people, only people who think badly of themselves."

"Aha," said I.

Then followed a few pithy quotes. Mark Twain: "Deep down in his heart no man much respects himself." Leo Tolstoy: "I am always with myself and it is I who am my tormentor." Goethe: "I do not know myself and God forbid that I should." And H.L. Mencken: "Self-respect--the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious."

To all of which I said, "Hear, hear."

As I paused and pondered I thought of the boy king Uzziah who, taking the throne at sixteen, made such a good start at obeying God and was "greatly helped until he became powerful.... His pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the Lord his God," (2 Chronicles 26:15-16, NIV) and died a leper, excluded from the temple of the Lord. It was at the time of that ignominious death that the prophet Isaiah received his commission from God, for which he was prepared first by a vision of the Lord Himself, high and exalted. The very doorposts shook at the sound of the voices of the seraphim, "Holy, holy, holy," and the prophet, in that awful revelation of the holiness of God, was given an instant and terrible self-revelation which wrenched from him the cry, "Woe is me!... I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips... and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty" (Isaiah 6:5, NIV).

That self of which the conscious image (of an honest man) is not merely "low" or "poor" but twisted, maimed, tortured, ruined--can it find wholeness and healing merely by sweet affirmation? It took fire from God's altar to cleanse Isaiah's lips. It took the total immolation of the Lamb to take away the sin of the world. Is the cross now obsolete?

"Beware of false prophets," Jesus warned (Matthew 7:15). "If anyone wants to follow in my footsteps he must give up all right to himself, take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24, PHILLIPS). Can we manage to juggle the building of a stronger self-image while we fulfill those three conditions of discipleship?

"Whoever cares for his own safety is lost; but if a man will let himself be lost for my sake, he will find his true self" (Matthew 16:25, NEB). Who can forget about his own safety and allow him-self to be lost while at one and the same time striving to build a stronger self-image? Sounds like a serious conflict of interest, doesn't it?

I know of nothing more agitating to the soul, nothing that so unsettles and disquiets, as the contemplation of the self. If I succeed in improving my self-image by minimizing my faults, I may find the peace that the world can give, but I will end up in spiritual turmoil. The peace of the penitent spirit is "very low in its own eyes, and therefore not unsettled" (Janet Erskine Stuart).

Those who follow the Lamb leave self behind, and "put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:24, NIV).

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[nChrist]

Title: I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
Author: Elisabeth Elliot


P. T. Barnum knew what he was talking about when he said there's a sucker born every minute. He made money on it and so have thousands before and since. It isn't difficult to convince insecure people (who isn't insecure?) that they've been shabbily treated and deserved better. In fact they've been horribly treated and mistreated, misunderstood, misused, abused. Their families were dysfunctional (whose wasn't? whose parents did a perfect job?). No wonder they can't feel good about themselves. But here, folks, I can make you see that you're wonderful, really WONDERFUL. It's bad to feel bad about yourself, and it's the fault of all those awful people who wounded you. You can just walk away from them.

As always, we must hold up whatever the world is saying to the straightedge of Scripture in order to see if it's crooked. The "gospel" according to the self-gurus, by which many will testify to having been helped, is very simple and, I believe, very crooked. The pathway to fulfillment is straight and narrow, and it begins at the cross where (as in Pilgrim's Progress) Christian drops his burden: the burden of sin, deep-rooted, infectious, malignant, death-dealing sin, the terrible root of all those "bad feelings." "Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said, with a merry heart, 'He hath given me rest by His sorrow and life by His death.' Then he stood still a while to look and wonder; for it was very surprising to him, that the sight of the Cross should thus ease him of his burden."

Surprising it will always be to those who come to that Cross, and foolishness it will always be to those who don't. Rest comes by His sorrow, life by His death? Yes. "His purpose in dying for all was that men, while still in life, should cease to live for themselves and should live for him who for their sakes died and was raised to life. With us therefore worldly standards have ceased to count in our estimate of any man.... When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world (or a new act of creation); the old order has gone, and a new order has already begun" (2 Corinthians 5:15-17, NEB).

That new order is a far cry from the notion of self-acceptance which has taken hold of the minds of many Christians. Any message which makes the Cross redundant is anti-Christian. The original sin, pride, is behind my "poor self-image," for I felt that I deserved better than I got, which is exactly what Eve felt! So it was pride, not poor self-image, that had to go. If I'm so beautiful and lovable, what was Jesus doing up there, nailed to the cross and crowned with thorns? Why all that hideous suffering for the pure Son of God? Here's why: There was no other way to deliver us from the hell of our own proud self-loving selves, no other way out of the bondage of self-pity and self-congratulation. How shall we take our stand beneath the cross of Jesus and continue to love the selves that put Him there? How can we survey the wondrous cross and at the same time feed our pride? No. It won't work. Jesus put it simply: If you want to be My disciple, you must leave self behind, take up the cross, and follow Me.

George MacDonald writes, "Right gladly would He free them from their misery, but He knows only one way: He will teach them to be like Himself, meek and lowly, bearing with gladness the yoke of His Father's will. This is the one, the only right, the only possible way of freeing them from their sin, the cause of their unrest."

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[nChrist]

Title: The Taking of Human Life
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
Author: Elisabeth Elliot


In the relentless effort to keep the world from squeezing me into fits own mold (see Romans 12:1-2, PHILLIPS) my mind is always making comparisons and connections and trying to test the world's reasoning by the straightedge of Scripture. When I read of the execution in Texas of Charles Brooks, Jr., by lethal injection, I made one of those connections. I remembered another news story a few months before about an unborn twin who was quietly dispatched, by means of a needle in its heart, while still in its mother's womb.

Medical science has advanced to the stage where it is possible to remove human beings from this world's scene cleanly and kindly (we tell ourselves) and without too much trauma to the executioners and the consenting public. Of the trauma to the victim we prefer not to let ourselves think too much.

One of the people I refer to, of course, was a full-grown man, convicted of murder. The other was far from full-grown. It was not even born. Nobody wanted it to be born because it happened to be not quite normal. A person, without question, but not quite a normal person. So, since the mother very much wanted the normal twin to be born, she was very glad to be able to get rid of the abnormal one in such a handy way.

In a Time (Dec. 20, 1982) essay about the Brooks execution, Roger Rosenblatt writes of the public's eagerness for a "gentle killing," yet its hunger also to know the details of the prisoner's last dinner and last words, his position on the stretcher, and how the tubes were hooked up which would carry the poison into his bloodstream. Strange that there should be this fascination at a time when there is strong protest, at least in the media, against the death penalty for criminals. There is no protest in major magazines against the death penalty for unborn children and no corresponding eagerness for pictures or descriptions of just how it is done. Few people are willing to scrutinize the details of what happens to the tiny bodies who are daily, at the request of their mothers, and with the consent of the Supreme Court, being disposed of by sophisticated chemical, pharmaceutical, and mechanical techniques.

The correction facility in Texas and the abortion facilities in hospitals are equally thorough in their efforts to make sure that the method works. Imagine the embarrassment if Charles Brooks had managed to slip out of the straps that bound him to the gurney, or if the silent fluid had somehow been obstructed in the tubes! Nobody wants that to happen. It is a major disaster, too, when an abortion produces a living child instead of a dead one. Some awful scenes have taken place in hospital nurseries when a baby has been taken there who had been intended for the garbage can. What is wanted in the cases of both the murderer and the undesirable fetus is death, pure death, the "spectacle of life removed."

Do not misunderstand me. I believe that capital punishment is both necessary and just. I believe that abortion is murder. Both are appalling to anyone human, it seems to me. Surely, no matter what our convictions and public declarations may be, we shrink inside at the hideousness of it all. But one is commanded by God--evil must be dealt with by public justice--and the other is forbidden. We cannot, without His express direction, take human life into our hands. Let us not imagine that we can somehow palliate the stark and shocking fact of death by making it private. Only a few people, including four reporters and Brook's girlfriend, were allowed to witness his death. An abortion is now called a private matter, to be decided solely by a woman and her physician. Let us not, by making it quick, easy, and clean, evade the truth that somebody is being killed.

Rosenblatt in his essay looks for the day when we may "drive out the barbarians." Is it barbaric, then, to mete out judgment in this form to a murderer, but somehow civilized to send a lethal poison into the heart of an as yet sinless child?

Paul wrote to the young minister Timothy to warn him of the sort of evil he must guard against. "Men will love nothing but money and self... men who put pleasure in the place of God, men who preserve the outward form of religion but are a standing denial of its reality. Keep clear of men like these.... These men defy the truth, they have lost the power to reason, and they cannot pass the tests of faith" (2 Timothy 3:2, 5-6, 8-9, NEB). God help us not only to stand for the truth, but to obey it scrupulously that we may not lose the power to think as Christians.

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[nChrist]

Title: Give Them Parking Space, But Let Them Starve to Death
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
Author: Elisabeth Elliot


Another moral threshold was crossed when a tiny baby boy, at the specific request of his parents and with the sanction of the Supreme Court of Indiana, was starved to death in a hospital. "Infant Doe" (he was not allowed the usual recognition of being human by being named), born with Down's syndrome and a malfunctioning esophagus (the latter could have been corrected with surgery), died, as the Washington Post (April 18) stated, "not because he couldn't sustain life without a million dollars worth of medical machinery, but because no one fed him." For six days the nurses in that Bloomington hospital went about their usual routines of bathing and changing and feeding all the newborns except one. They bathed and changed Baby Doe but they never gave him a bottle. Over his crib was a notice, DO NOT FEED. Several couples came forward, begging to be allowed to adopt him. They were turned down.

What went on in that little box during those six terrible days and nights? We turn our imagination away. It's unthinkable. But if I were to think about it, and put down on paper what my mind saw, I would be accused of playing on people's feelings, and of making infanticide (yes, infanticide--call it what it is) an "emotional issue." Let me suppose at least that the baby cried--quite loudly (at first). One report says that he was placed in a room alone, lest his crying disturb others (others, perhaps, who were capable of helping him).

Joseph Sobran, in his column in the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, suggested that "opposition to infanticide will soon be deplored as the dogma of a few religious sects who want to impose their views on everyone else." The language sounds sickeningly familiar.

There has been a conspicuous silence from those who usually raise shrill protest when other human rights are violated--the rights of smokers, homosexuals, and criminals are often as loudly insisted upon as those of children, women, and the handicapped.

The handicapped? What on earth is happening when a society is so careful to provide premium parking spaces to make things easier for them, but sees no smallest inconsistency when one of them who happens to be too young to scream, "For God's sake, feed me!" is quietly murdered? It is in the name of humanity, humaneness, compassion, and freedom that these things occur, but never is it acknowledged that the real reasons are comfort and convenience, that is, simple selfishness. "Abortion not only prefers comfort, convenience, or advantage of the pregnant woman to the very life of her unborn child, a fundamentally good thing, but seeks to deny that the life ever existed. In this sense it is a radical denial not only of the worth of a specific life but of the essential goodness of life itself and the Providential ordering of its procreation" (R.V. Young, "Taking Choice Seriously," The Human Life Review, Vol. VIII, no. 3.)

But weren't we talking about infanticide and haven't we now switched to abortion? The premises on which abortion is justified are fundamentally the same on which infanticide is seen as civilized and acceptable. What Hitler used to call eugenics is now called "quality of life," never mind whether the life in question happens to be the mother's or the child's. Death, according to three doctors who put the issue out into the open in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1973, is now considered an option in the "treatment" of infants; in other words, a mortuary may now replace the nursery. One cannot help thinking of the antiseptic "shower rooms" of the Third Reich, where the unwanted were "treated" to death. Nor can one forget the words of Jesus, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:40, KJV).

Can any Christian argue that the smallest and most defenseless are, by virtue merely of being too small and too defenseless, not His brethren?

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[nChrist]

Title: What is Happening?
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
Author: Elisabeth Elliot


What on earth is happening in our culture? The answer is plain, I'm afraid, in Romans 1 and 2. Men render truth dumb and inoperative by their wickedness. They refuse to acknowledge God or to thank Him for what He is or does. They become fatuous in their argumentations. Behind a facade of wisdom they become fools. They give up God. They forfeit the truth of God and accept a lie. They overflow with insolent pride; their minds teem with diabolical invention. They recognize no obligations to honor, lose all natural affection, and have no use for mercy. They do not hesitate to give their thorough approval to others who do the same (see Romans 1:18-2:5, PHILLIPS).

Can we condemn them without subjecting ourselves to the same standard of judgment by which we condemn? Of course we can't. Judgment must be righteous judgment (John 7:24), based on the Word of God.

"There is no doubt at all that he will 'render to every man according to his works,' and that means eternal life to those who, in patiently doing good, aim at the unseen.... "It also means anger and wrath for those who rebel against God's plan of life. "But there is glory and honor and peace for every worker on the side of good" (see Rom. 2:6-10, PHILLIPS).

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[nChrist]

Title: Can Birth Be Wrong?
Book: Keep A Quiet Heart
Author: Elisabeth Elliot


The wildest science fiction cannot exceed in outrage some of the legal precedents that have been set in the past few decades. I read in a magazine about "wrongful birth" suits, in which parents sue a physician because their child was born as a result of practitioner negligence: for example, a failed vasectomy, failed abortion (a "failed" abortion, don't forget, means one in which the child destined for the scrap heap happens to be born alive and kicking, so to speak), or failure by the physician to provide parents with adequate contraceptive methods.

There are also "wrongful life" suits in which the child sues the physician because he would have been better off not to be born at all. His very life is "wrongful." The child, in other words, had a right not to be born. How, exactly, would the court measure damages in the case of a healthy child? There would have been awards if there were defects.

The only good news in this appalling article was that in a wrongful birth case in Illinois in 1979 the court held that the birth of a healthy child is an esteemed right and not a compensable wrong. In England, at least up until the spring of 1983, the decision had been that entry into life should not be the basis for legal action.

"O Lord my heart is not proud, nor are my eyes haughty," wrote the psalmist (131:1, NEB), "I do not busy myself with great matters or things too marvelous for me." I am afraid we tamper far too much with the mysteries of life and death, instead of leaving them to Him who holds the keys.

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[nChrist]

Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: Keep A Quiet Heart
Scripture: Mark 9:36
The Path of Lonliness


An Unaborted Gift

An African Christian wrote a friend in the U.S.: "We have six children. We had agreed to stop having other children. We even started family planning after the last was born, but (and a big 'but') we found out that C. was pregnant. I don't know what really happened. My wife and I started crying because we did not know what to do. We have been asking God and telling Him that six children were enough for us. However we were later comforted by God Himself because He said that He will never leave us and will protect us with the young ones. I therefore ask you to pray for us. C. is expecting the child in about three months. Remember we were not ready for this baby. Pray that we will be able to joyfully receive the baby as a gift from the almighty God. It is my prayer that my wife will be able to bear all that burden and that the baby will be a blessing to us. You know we have two boys with sickle cells. Please pray with us that God will not give us another such child. Brethren, I have been suffering with these sick boys and we don't like another one of that type. It will just finish us. We have many sleepless nights every year because of these sons when they are in pains.... With all that I am happy to tell you that there is nothing which will separate me from the Love of God.... Pray, pray for us. God bless you all."

I don't know this man, but I have prayed for him, and for all others who, with what the world would call "good reasons for abortion," receive the child from Him who made it, and who said, "Whoever receives one of these children in My name, receives Me" (Mark 9:36, NEB).

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[nChrist]

Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: Keep A Quiet Heart
Scripture: Romans 1:28-31
The Path of Lonliness


Disposable Children

A ruling of the Internal Revenue Service now allows parents a tax exemption if a child intended for abortion lives for any length of time. The breathtakingly fancy mental footwork necessary to justify such action goes something like this: what was meant to be discarded is not a child. It is called a "p.o.c." (product of conception, which of course is what children and all the rest of us are). The bad news is that this disposable tissue turned out to be a child and (alas) was born. The good news is that you can get a tax exemption for a dependent child. The best news is that its dependence is only temporary. Call it a child, then, till you get your money. You need not go to the trouble of keeping it. You can call it tissue again and toss it out. Thus the abortionist's mistake becomes the taxpayer's windfall, and the doctor who orders the child abandoned (i.e., killed by neglect and sometimes by active means) is not charged with murder but paid for what is now called a postnatal abortion.

Will you stand up against the outrage called "prochoice"? Do you understand its implications?

"Because they have not seen fit to acknowledge God, he has given them up to their own depraved reason. This leads them to break all the rules of conduct. They are filled with every kind of injustice, mischief, rapacity, and malice.... They are without natural affection and without pity" (Romans 1:28, 29, 31, NEB).

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[nChrist]

Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: Keep A Quiet Heart
Scripture: Matthew 25:40
The Path of Lonliness


A New Medical Breakthrough

As I mentioned earlier, some time ago I read of a new medical triumph involving unborn twins. Amniocentesis had shown that one of them had Down's syndrome. The mother decided she did not want that child, so with the simple expedient of piercing the heart of the baby with a long needle, it was killed in the womb. She carried the twins to term and delivered one child alive--the one she wanted to keep--and one child dead--the one she didn't want to keep. This was hailed as a remarkable breakthrough. I would ask you to pause for a moment here and consider this question: what was it, exactly, that was killed? What was it that was not killed? The answer to both questions, of course, is--a child. They were both children. They were twins. I used plain, ordinary words to tell the story--the words the news report used. Nothing ambiguous. Nothing incendiary.

I read the following week in the same magazine about another medical breakthrough. This time doctors had used an instrument inserted into a womb not to kill a child but to save one. This child had a serious heart anomaly which they were able to correct with intrauterine surgery. Can any honest and reasonable person fail to make the comparison here? In the second case, the instrument in the surgeon's hand enabled the tiny heart to keep on working. In the first case, the needle in the surgeon's hand made the heart quit working. What, exactly, should we call that?

The intrauterine surgery was called lifesaving because they fixed a baby's defective heart. What language are we allowed to use when we speak of destroying a heart that's working perfectly! There is a simple and obvious word, but we are not allowed to use it. Well, what about life-destroying? Is that permissible for this neat and efficient technique? Well, not really. Because the word life is explosive. Life is not relevant here. It's the mother's life that we are supposed to consider, nobody else's. The other isn't a life--not one worth living anyway, not one worth the mother's suffering for. So we must not use the ordinary words. They're too emotional. They're loaded. The fact is they stopped the heart. That's all. Just made it quit beating.

I was glad that the writer of the article on the baby whose heart was corrected acknowledged the possibility that fetal surgery might raise an ethical question which the medical world thought it had laid to rest. Might it be necessary, in view of these advances, to ask all over again whether a fetus is a person?

This is the issue today. It is, in the final analysis, the only question that needs to be considered when we speak of the unborn. Is the thing disposable? Is it an object with no life of its own, a bit of tissue which belongs to a woman who has the right to do with it what she chooses? If she needs it and wants it, she keeps it. If she doesn't need it and doesn't want it, she throws it out. So what's all the shouting about?

Truthfulness is the willingness to accept facts. Truthtellers are always regarded as either ridiculous, or so dangerous as to deserve death. "No truth," wrote Hannah Arendt, "that crosses someone's profit, ambition, or lust, is permissible. Unwelcome facts possess an infuriating stubbornness that nothing can move except plain lies."

Here are the unwelcome facts. We were talking about children: the twin who was saved, the child with the defective heart who was also saved, and the twin whose heart was pierced with a needle. They were children. Choices were made regarding those children: deliberate, conscious choices. One, to allow a child to live. Another, to intervene surgically so that a child might live who would otherwise die. (Would the surgeon who performed that operation have dreamed of telling the mother that her baby was not a person? He saved its life, and the mother was grateful.) But in the other case, what was the choice? It was to kill a child. These are the unwelcome facts, but they are infuriatingly stubborn. They will not go away. It was a child. It was killed. Nothing will move those facts except lies.

I ask you earnestly to look at the little creature with eyes and hands and beating heart, held in that safest of places, the mother's womb. No woman who holds such a thing within her doubts that she holds a child. No doctor who extracts it by whatever swift and putatively safe means can deny that what he extracts is a human being, and that what he does is to kill it.

I ask you for God's sake to look at the truth. And I ask you, finally, to think about what Jesus said: "I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40, JB). Jesus will not forget.

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[nChrist]

Author: Elisabeth Elliot
Source: Keep A Quiet Heart
Scripture: Ephesians 6:11-13
The Path of Lonliness


Contexts

A writer in the New Yorker some time ago analyzed television as "the context of no-context." Think about that one. The only context in which the words are coming at us from the tube is our living room or kitchen, which has nothing whatever to do with the speaker. The speaker's backdrop is usually a TV studio, which we know is a mock-up. So we are excused from evaluating what is said in terms of context. There is none.

In what context does a Christian live, move, act, think, decide? It must be the context of God's Kingdom. We either live in that Kingdom, or we live in the world; we either take our cues from the Bible or from the media; we set our goals according to what is going to matter forever or according to the quotation of the day.

Think, in the context of the kingdom of God, about this actual incident in a public school classroom: The teacher asked each child what his mother did. There was only one child whose mother did not work outside the home.

"Teacher: Oh, so what does your mother do?"

"Child: She--um, well, you know, she does, um, stuff around the house."

"Teacher: You mean she cooks and cleans? She irons clothes, makes beds?"

"Child: Yes."

"Teacher: So you could say, then, that you have a traditional mother, is that right?"

"Child: Yes."

"Teacher: (with a long, searching look) And do you like that?"

Consider the context from which that teacher's questions come. It is not one which recognizes any divine design for the home, any glory in service, any joyful willingness to do humble work without thought of gain or appreciation. Consider the pressure put on a little child to question the only context his life has had, the context which has until now meant security, normalcy, and happiness for him. He will be wondering if his mother is some sort of an oddity, his home not an ordinary one.

It is not for nothing that the classic passage on the warfare of the Christian immediately follows Paul's specific instructions about intimate human relationships: wives, submit; husbands, love; fathers, do not goad your children to resentment. These are the areas of most vicious and relentless attack. The Christian home is a stronghold, and the enemy will never let up his attempts to undermine it or breach its sanctity.

"Put on all the armor which God provides, so that you may be able to stand firm against the devices of the devil. For our fight is not against human foes (corrupt government officials, public school boards, for example, or even an impossible-to-live-with spouse or teenager) but against cosmic powers, against the authorities and potentates of this dark world, against the superhuman forces of evil in the heavens. Therefore take God's armor..." (Ephesians 6:11-13, NEB).

Prayer is a powerful weapon. It is an indispensable weapon. It takes practice to wield it. It takes courage and time and spiritual energy.

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