Jack Voelkel
Jim Elliot, as I Remember Him (part 1 of 2)
by David Howard
Jim Elliot is known by many today as one of the five missionaries martyred by jungle Indians in Ecuador 50 years ago. The event was dramatized in the recently released feature film “The End of the Spear.” Jim’s spiritual life was profound, as revealed in two books written by his widow, Elizabeth Elliot: Through Gates of Splendor and Shadow of the Almighty. But what was Jim like as a college student? His best friend and former room-mate shares memories of those formative years.
“GLORY, BROTHER! What’s your verse for today?”
The powerful voice of Jim Elliot would ring out in greeting when he saw a friend across the campus of Wheaton College. His idea was to challenge the friend to respond with what God had given to him in his personal devotions earlier that morning. Jim assumed that others should start each day with God, just as he himself did.
This was not a very popular tactic of Jim’s, and some students began to resent it. In fact, many students did not want to eat breakfast with Him in the college dining hall as they feared being challenged by him to share their morning devotions. He was known at that time as “holier than thou,” and unfortunately there was a modicum of truth in that charge.
Jim was so totally committed to the Lord and to walking with him in his personal life that he considered any deviation would be wrong for him. Thus, to go to a football game or a class party or have a date with a girl would all be a useless waste of time. That time should be spent in study of the Word of God or in prayer.
Jim and I lived together in the dormitory at Wheaton College that now bears his name – “Elliot Hall”. We were upperclassmen and served as RAs, since this dorm at that time was exclusively for freshmen. I was dating Phyllis, who later became my wife. When I would return to the dorm after a date, I often found him sitting there reading his Bible or praying. He would look at me out of the corner of his eye suspiciously and say, “Have you been out with Phyllis again?” When I would acknowledge that this was true, he would turn away with a shake of his head implying that once again I was wasting my time.
One of his firm convictions (at least he thought it was firm!!) was that celibacy was God’s highest calling in life. It was better to be unfettered with a wife and family and therefore to be free to serve the Lord with total abandonment. He made the rest of us feel like second class Christians if we were “wasting our time” with girls.
However, he had a major problem with this “conviction” when he fell in love with my sister, Elisabeth. He did not know how to handle this as he had made such a major point out of pushing celibacy as the highest calling from God. It took him five years of a rocky courtship to finally break loose of his own fetters and marry Elisabeth in Ecuador.
This period of time came to be later known as his “Glory Boy” stage.
The Renaissance
During our junior year in college, Jim went through what he himself termed a “Renaissance.” He began to realize the truth of 1 Timothy 6:17: “God…gives us richly all things to enjoy.” He woke up to the fact that there was a lot of life given freely to us by God that he was not enjoying. He saw that his restricted “holier than thou” attitude was cheating him, as well as his friends, out of a lot of fun.
So the pendulum swung to the other extreme, and Jim began to “pull out all the stops” and enjoy life to the fullest. He once wrote in his journal, “Wherever you are, be all there. Live life to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.” Jim practiced that in his own life. If it was time to study the Bible and pray, he did it “to the hilt” and knew the Bible better than any person his age I ever met. When it was time to study, he studied “to the hilt” and graduated as a Greek major summa cum laude. If it was time to have fun, "let’s have all the fun we can!"
The Outstanding Athlete
Jim was blessed with a strong body and fine build. Feeling called of God to pioneer missionary work, he decided that he must develop his body to its fullest potential to be prepared for the rigors of life in the jungle. He chose wrestling as the best sport to do this. He had not wrestled in high school, so he had no background in the sport. However, because he threw himself into it with all the vigor possible, he made the college varsity wrestling team his freshman year.
I shall never forget his first college match. In those days there was only one college/university division. So Wheaton College had to compete often with schools of the Big Ten or similar size. In my college days we wrestled against Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan State, Northwestern, Notre Dame, and others. In our first match of the freshman year we met the University of Illinois. Jim had the misfortune of meeting the national champion in his weight class. Since Jim had never wrestled before, he was somewhat baffled. The champion put every wrestling hold he could think of on Jim but could not turn him onto his back and pin him. We discovered that Jim was double jointed! No matter what hold the champion tried, it didn’t work on Jim, as his limbs would simply bend beyond all belief but would not turn him. From that day on we called him “The Rubber Man.”
His enthusiasm for wrestling grew immensely after his “Renaissance.” He began to enjoy the sport with great zest and consequently became a true champion. He won medals in tournaments, as he “lived to the hilt” in his chosen sport.
The Campus Clown
After the “Renaissance,” Jim threw himself with great gusto into class parties and similar gatherings and soon became the class clown. He would quote by memory hilarious poetry by Robert Service such as “The Cremation of Sam Magee” to the endless delight of his classmates, who always egged him on in such times.
One of his close friends was Ed McCully, our senior class president. Ed became interested in a young lady in Pontiac, Michigan, named Mary Lou, who later became his wife. They arranged for her to come to Chicago to spend some time together. They planned to rendezvous in a subway station in the evening. In those days (about 1950) it was not especially dangerous for a young lady to be alone at night in a subway station. So Mary Lou arrived alone and sat down on a bench. The station was deserted.
Ed and Jim had come into the station but purposely remained out of site. Mary Lou had never met Jim, so didn’t know him at all. Jim came out of the shadows and sat down on the bench with Mary Lou. He looked over at her and said in a seductive voice, “How ya doin’ tonight?” Mary Lou, of course, was petrified alone on the bench with this stranger at night. Jim edged over closer to her and added in the same seductive voice, “What are ya doing tonight?” Mary Lou was more frozen than ever. Before she called the police, Ed came out from behind a pillar and she realized that the whole thing was a joke. That was typical of Jim and Ed when they got together.
David Howard for many years was a missionary in Costa Rica and Colombia with the Latin America Mission. He was mission secretary of InterVarsity for a time and led several Urbana Student Mission Conventions. He later served as general secretary of the World Evangelical Fellowship with headquarters in Singapore. He wrote this article expressly for Great Cloud of Witnesses, for which we thank him.
Part 2: Jim Elliot, Enthusiastic Missionary
Print
Email
