“A wise man fears the LORD and shuns evil, but a fool is hotheaded and reckless” (Proverbs 14:16).
In 1956, five young men who were visionaries and dedicated to a cause, launched Operation Auca. No, it was not a military thrust, a CIA “James Bond” type of mission. Neither were they there to find oil, or gold, or precious stones. These five were determined “to know Christ and to make Him known ….” Now, they could have known Christ and just stayed at home, but they chose not to. Making Him known, though, brought together Roger Youderian, Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, and pilot Nate Saint.
Being aware of the fact that in the decade before, five New Tribes missionaries had been martyred in Bolivia, they “pored over the details of the … tragedy … noting with grave interest their mistakes and vowing not to fall into any of the same traps themselves” (Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, Zondervan, 1983, p. 313).
Many have never heard the story. Having made contact with the fiery Aucas, they felt that the time had come to make personal contact with them. With Nate Saint at the controls, the little plane landed on a sandy beach on an Ecuadorian river. After several successful contacts with the Aucas, radio contact was broken off. Eventually, the sad story of martyrdom began to unfold. Time and Life magazines sent reporters and photographers as the world awaited the story. When it was told, an unbelieving world lashed out at what they thought was the needless loss of life. “What a waste!” many said.
In 1963, Guidelines went on the air, and Operation Auca was the theme of a commentary that I wrote. I quoted one of the five, Jim Elliott, who said, “He is no fool to give to God what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.” A listener wrote a sharp letter of rebuke saying that the five who were killed were the real fools. Harshly he wrote, “They got what they deserved—a spear in the belly!”
Fruitlessly, I responded to the man’s sharp words of criticism, trying to help him realize these five laid down their lives for a cause—one that he neither knew nor understood. Several years passed, and then I received another letter from the same person. “Do you remember that I wrote to you before?” he began his letter, outlining the gist of what I’ve just related. Of course, I remembered. He then said, “Now I know it was I who was the fool.” He told how that alcohol had cost him his wife, his family, his business, and his wealth. Sitting homeless and destitute on a street corner, a young woman walked up and said, “God loves you, mister, and so do I!” He wept. No one had said those words for a long time. There, sitting in the gutter of a street as a destitute bum, he came to understand why some are willing to die for the cause of Christ.
One of my heroes, Oswald Chambers, a gifted artist who died in his prime in Egypt and is buried in the English cemetery outside of Cairo, wrote, “I am not many kinds of fools in one; I am only one kind of fool, the kind [of fool] that believes and obeys God.”
Elisabeth Elliot, the wife of one of the five, took her two-year old daughter, Valerie, and went back to the Aucas, living among them, showing them the love which had also motivated her husband.
Question: Whose fool are you, anyway? The kind that thinks he or she will live forever and take his wealth home in a casket? Or the kind who lays up treasure on heaven’s shore? Think about it, friend. You’re one, or the other.
Resource reading: Galatians 2.
