Write About Now

Last week during my vacation I read Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot, the widow of Jim Elliot who—along with four other young men—was killed while traveling into the jungles of Ecuador to share the Gospel with the Waorani tribe.

I was struck by the martyrdom of the five men, of course, but I was even more impressed by the maturity they possessed before they died. The book traces the calling of God on all five men—and their wives—to global missions and shows the spiritual and personal development of each one. Most of them began preparing for the mission field during their college days. Jim Elliot, convinced God was leading him to service in a Spanish-speaking country, began teaching himself the language during his sophomore year of high school. Ed McCully quit law school to become a missionary; he wrote, “I have one desire now—to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it.” Nate Saint and his young wife Marj worked as a team to safely fly supplies and equipment to missionaries throughout the jungle. The others all exhibited similar focus and conviction.

The heroes and heroines of Gates worked, as young adults, toward purposeful next steps. The men pursued and won godly wives, some before arriving in Ecuador and some after. They completed education with a focus on future goals. For heaven’s sake, they wrote things like this in their journals: “We have arrived at the destination decided on in 1950. My joy is full. Oh, how blind it would have been to reject the leading of these days. How it has changed the course of life for me and added such a host of joys!”

In contrast, Time magazine devoted a January 2005 issue to the increasing number of 20 and 30-somethings (“twixters”) still living with their parents, working a series of low-commitment part-time jobs, or in some other way postponing adulthood. The average age for marriage keeps creeping up, the article pointed out, if twixters marry at all. Many live with staggering amounts of credit card debt. Some hop from job to job and apartment to apartment—if they live on their own in the first place (witness the success of the recent movie Failure to Launch, with the tagline “To leave the nest, some men just need a little push.” )

All kinds of social and economic factors play into the current generation’s long adolescence, and I know there are many of us who stepped up in our early 20s and accepted adult responsibilities. I worked part-time from age 16 on, began my first “real” job two days after college graduation, and moved out of my parent’s house six months later, so I’d even like to think I’m one of them.

But jobs, spouses, homes and IRAs are just part of it. The Time article doesn’t speak to spiritual maturity, and that’s what enabled Jim Elliot to find such joy in reaching a hostile tribe for Jesus—and what helped his widow return to the same jungle with her baby daughter to continue the work after his death.

So even if I hadn’t spent the first two years of college as an undecided major, and even if I didn’t periodically consider flushing my fish because it’s too much work to take care of him—I’m no Elisabeth Elliot, and neither are most of my friends.

What’s the chicken and what’s the egg? Does my generation exhibit less spiritual maturity because less maturity is required of us in other areas of life? Or do we postpone adulthood because its spiritual underpinnings (leave and cleave, etc. ) are no longer widely promoted?

I wish I knew the answer. At the end of the book, Elliot writes, “It is not the level of spirituality that we can depend on. It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God’s and the call is God’s and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, the whole scene, the whole mess, the whole package—our bravery and our cowardice, our love and our selfishness, our strengths and our weaknesses.” I can only trust that this God can use even my slowly maturing generation to accomplish his purposes.