No Graven Image, and other books

I love to read, and last year I read some great books.  If you know me in real life, you probably heard me go on and on (and on and on) about whatever my current read was. Sorry about that.  I’m sure I drove my family nuts last year talking about the books I was reading, especially The Last Great Walk about the decline of pedestrianism and Mayflower about early settlers in America.

One of the more thought-provoking books I read, and one worth mentioning here, especially for global workers and anyone working cross-culturally, is Elisabeth Eliot’s No Graven Image, her only work of fiction. A friend told me about it, and that it was not well received.  A book by Eliot, whose writing I love, not well received? I had to read it and understand why.

No Graven Image, published in 1966, is set in the Ecuadorian Andes Mountains and tells the story of Margaret Spearhawk, an idealistic young woman embarking on her career as a missionary to a group of Quichua Indians.  As her story unfolds, she is forced to reconcile her preconceived ideas of what missionary life would be like with the mundane and sometimes tragic reality she faces in Ecuador. 

As I read the book I thought about the title, a reference to one of the Ten Commandments, and wondered what the “graven image” would be? Something that the Quichua worshiped? Turns out (spoiler alert), it was Margaret’s own presumptions about mission work and how she viewed the people she came to serve. 

Margaret has some interaction with an older missionary woman who challenges her thinking on what it means to serve God overseas.  What if you don’t see the results you were hoping to see?  Can you still call your work ‘good’? What about how you view the people you are serving?  Do you see them as people, or as your project?

At one point this older woman says to Margaret: “Gradually I came to see that the results which can be called good are few.  And they cannot be the criterion for whether or not what we do is worthwhile.  It is hopeless to try to weigh up the good, the bad, the futile, and the merely harmless, and hope there will be enough of the good…to justify all the rest…Jesus told us to do what is true. I think the truth needs no justification, no defense.”

I haven’t been able to find much background on the writing of this novel, but I imagine it was inspired by Elliot’s own experiences in Ecuador.  I wonder if she remembers herself as being idealistic like Margaret, and the older woman is perhaps herself as an older, more seasoned missionary.

Eventually Margaret comes to the point when she says: “The Indians had become people to me – they were no longer my ‘field.’ While I had once declared them to be my equals, I now regarded myself as theirs. Instead of saying, ‘Oh, you are as good as I – let me help you,’ I now said, ‘I am as poor as you. God help us all.”

I remember being brand spanking new in language school, in Bandung.  The first Lord of the Rings movie had just come to the local theater, so David and I went. There was quite the crowd there, and not much of a line, more of a mass of bodies crowding the ticket counter.  At this point in our overseas life, I was not terribly familiar with how Indonesians queue.  I was very much in “go with the flow” mode, trying not to do anything too terribly stupid or culturally inappropriate.  We stood near the back of the mob/line, and near us was another expat couple I recognized from language school.  The woman was all in a huff, and kept gesticulating at the crowd.  At one point I could hear her say, “We’re never going to get in because of these people!” This woman – who had left her home country to come serve in Indonesia - was miffed at the very people she had come to love, and for the simple reason that they weren’t lining up according to how she would in her home culture. Her outward display of frustration made me feel embarrassed to share a nationality with her. 

I’ve had my own “these people!” ugly moments through the years – and I’ve found this can happen anywhere, among any people – even in your own passport country.  When we see people as a group and speak of them in generalities, we can fail to see them as individuals, created and loved by God.

I love a happy ending in a book, or at least, a satisfactory ending. However, No Graven Image does not have one. I can understand why this book was not well-received in its time.  It messes with our preconceived ideas of what the missionary life should look like, and presents a less-than-newsletter-worthy version. But I prefer this version, because it meshes better with our reality – that some days I feel defeated, my faith is small, the challenges feel insurmountable, but we keep going. As Eliot says, "...anyone who tries to help people in any way soon becomes overwhelmed with the endlessness of the task. So he has two choices. He can give up at the start, or he can accept his limitations and go on doing what he can."

I think it should be required reading for any global worker.

Other noteworthy reads from last year: Eagle of the Ninth and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry – two of my all-time favorites that I re-read with Luke and Zoe; Wonder; Food: A Love Story – Jim Gaffigan is so funny; A Long Letting Go helped me with my grief after my mother-in-law passed away; Boys in the Boat – took me a while to get to this one, but I’m glad I did; The Reason for God; and bird by bird, a wonderful book on writing.

What about you? What did you read last year that inspired you, or made you laugh, or made you stay up too late reading?