Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, by Lucy S.R. Austen

 

Once in awhile a biography comes along that is well worth the slog through 500+ pages (600+ with bibliography and notes included).  This is just such a book.

Elisabeth Elliot has long been an icon to much of the Christian world - the book says she's the best known Christian woman of the 20th and early 21st centuries - and she has been a huge inspiration and example to me for the past 40+ years.  I have fond memories of reading Shadow of the Almighty aloud with my dear college roommate and friend as we shared a dorm room during summer work on campus--an experience that started my lifelong reading of Elliot's work.  I have an entire bookshelf filled with most of her 25 published titles.  So this biography was of great interest to me.

Austen takes an unprejudiced approach to her subject.  This is not hagiographic at all; Elliot's weaknesses are portrayed even as her value to Christian thought is explored positively.  Austen's research is impeccable.  She is dispassionate about her information, which in my opinion makes this volume much more valuable than Ellen Vaughn's Becoming Elisabeth Elliot Vol. 1. Vaughn resorted to weaker writing tactics of using gratuitousnessin some examples, and her insertion of herself in places in my opinion removed some of her objectivity.

Here are some of the things I learned from Austen's Elisabeth Elliot: A Life:

• Elliot had feet of clay.  She had areas of weakness in her personality and areas where an objective reader could look at her decisions and raise eyebrows.  We so tend to look at our Christian heroes as being saints rather than sinners - but she, like you and I and everyone else, was a sinner.  Looking at the worth of Christians in spite of their sin (rather than people who have fallen off the "Christian pedestal") has been a revolutionary process for me in recent years, and seeing Elliot's weak areas just reinforces that to me.

• Elliot faced self-doubt and frustration with schedules and getting everything done.  In that regard she was no different than most Christian women.

• Elliot faced difficulties, in marriage and elsewhere, that made her question herself and her choices.  I found this to be an extreme comfort, to find that she was not above other Christian women in second-guessing herself and in learning to live with the results of her decisions.  She most certainly did not have a perfect life, which most of us would acknowledge in the death of her first husband, but probably thought her later life was more free of difficulty.

• I didn't always follow where her train of theological thought was going, and could tell I would not always agree with her conclusions.  But when she came to a firm Biblical conclusion (such as in the roles of men and women) she was not afraid of the fallout.

Austen's biography of Elisabeth Elliot will eventually be regarded as a classic work.  Her work is moving and inspirational.  It has affected me greatly, and will affect other readers as well.