Book Review on Dougie's Blog

[twin2]

Vision Forum has a new book to sell. An excerpt from Dougie's description

Valerie Elliot Shepard was 10 months old when a primitive tribe of Ecuadorian Indians made a martyr of her 29-year-old father and his four Wheaton College classmates. But that didn’t stop Valerie and her mother from moving to live with those same savage Auca Indians to complete the Elliot family’s evangelical mission: to eclipse the tribe’s savagery with the unconditional love of Jesus Christ.

:shock:

visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/

[GeoBQn]

Rudyard Kipling called. He wants his century back.

[Independent Thinker]

Why do people put their families in extremely dangerous situations then acted all surprised when someone dies or gets hurt? If God can tell you to go, he can also tell you to stay home. To me it really is bad parenting. My husband and I aren't going to take up Alaskan Crab fishing as a hobby and risk our child ending up without a parent. Bad parenting shouldn't be honored or celebrated. If God wants you to roam the jungles do it after the kids leave home or before you plan on starting a family. (Venting)

[Sister Mozz]

Vision Forum has a new book to sell. An excerpt from Dougie's description

:shock:

visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/

This would be the daughter of Jim Elliot and Elisabeth Elliot. Doug couldn't do something like this himself. It would require leaving dress-up behind.

[thoughtful]

Rudyard Kipling called. He wants his century back.

:clap:

This is a book for children, no less. :shock:

“There is an awful discontentment among young people,†said Shepard, who recalls having only a book to read when she wasn’t outside playing in the jungle. “I do look at the youth culture and just feel only the Lord can bring about a heart contented with simple pleasures and gifts from the Lord.â€

Watch out, Doug -- sounds like the author is warning people against buying lots of crap from the VF catalog! :naughty:

More than just a beautifully-illustrated children’s book, Pilipinto’s Happiness is a powerful tool to familiarize young people, college students, and adults alike—too often starved for Christian heroes and heroines—with powerful models in the faith who demonstrated reckless abandon for the Kingdom of God.

Reckless abandon -- just what every parent wants in a role model. Especially when it gets someone killed.

“Because my parents prayed and hoped to bring Indians to the Lord, when my father was killed my mother had no plan or immediate thought she should leave Ecuador,†Shepard remarked. “Human fears would flood her mind, but verses from Scripture gave her peace and assurance we would be taken care of. Mother continued to work with the Indians and continued to pray for them. And the more that she prayed for them, the greater her love grew for these people in need of a Savior.â€

Too bad that love didn't include enough respect to realize that they didn't need to be converted.

[debrand]

On his blog, Doug reviews a book by Valerie Elliot Shepard. During her youth, she lived as a missionary to Ecuadorian Indians

Valerie Elliot Shepard was 10 months old when a primitive tribe of Ecuadorian Indians made a martyr of her 29-year-old father and his four Wheaton College classmates. But that didn’t stop Valerie and her mother from moving to live with those same savage Auca Indians to complete the Elliot family’s evangelical mission: to eclipse the tribe’s savagery with the unconditional love of Jesus Christ

It seems abusive to me to take a very young child to live with a group of people who killed her father. But I was curious how other's saw the issue. For the sake of honesty, I have to admit that I have a bias against many evangelical missionaries. However, I don't understand why a woman would endanger her child. Why not wait until your baby was older or leave your child with a relative? Or even, be a missionary with a group that didn't kill your husband?

I admit, I haven't read the book and my viewpoint is only gleamed from the review. It would be interesting to know the reasons behind her father's death. Did the group's misunderstanding of local culture contribute to their deaths?

visionforum.com/news/blogs/doug/

I thought that Vision Forum was against women being missionaries without their husband's physical presence.

So, what do you think? Is her the author's mother brave or a bad parent?

[mirele]

Neither. I think she helped open up an indigenous people to exploitation by oil companies and others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Auca

Not thrilled with Elisabeth Elliot or Rachel Saint. But I also recognized they had very few choices after their husbands were killed.

[debrand]

Neither. I think she helped open up an indigenous people to exploitation by oil companies and others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Auca

Not thrilled with Elisabeth Elliot or Rachel Saint. But I also recognized they had very few choices after their husbands were killed.

Thanks for the wikipedia article, mirele. I don't usually recommend wikipedia but this particuar article is interesting. When I attended a Baptist church, one of the older women gave me a book on the five men. Because I've always found evanglicalism unattractive, I didn't read it.

The Wiki said this about Rachel Saint.

Because of the martyrdom of her brother, Saint considered herself spiritually bonded to the Huaorani, believing that what she saw as his sacrifice for the Huaorani was symbolic of Christ's death for the salvation of humanity

I don't know what to think of that. She must have wanted their to be meaning behind her brother's death. It sounds crazy from an outsider's perspective but I understand the need to find a reason behind life.

Why did the women have few choices about becoming missionairies?

Saint and Dayuma, in conjunction with SIL, negotiated the creation of an official Huaorani reservation in 1969, consolidating the Huaorani and consequently opening up the area to commerce and oil exploration. By 1973, over 500 people lived in Tihueno, of which more than half had arrived in the previous six years. The settlement relied on aid from SIL, and as a Christian community, followed rules foreign to Huaorani culture like prohibitions on killing and polygamy. By the early 1970s, SIL began to question whether their impact on the Huaorani was positive, so they sent James Yost, a staff anthropologist, to assess the situation. He found extensive economic dependence and increasing cultural assimilation, and as a result, SIL ended its support of the settlement in 1976, leading to its disintegration and the dispersion of the Huaorani into the surrounding area. SIL had hoped that the Huaorani would return to the isolation in which they had lived twenty years prior, but instead they sought out contact with the outside world, forming villages of which many have been recognized by the Ecuadorian government.[28][29]

It sounds like the Chrisitianization had mixed results. On one hand, it stopped some fo the violence. On the other hand, it opened the community up for exploitation, destroyed their culture and led to dependency. The rules against polygamy aren't really biblical. Those are just modern interpretations of Christianity. However, the bible only says that the leader of the church should be the husband of one wife, not that the entire community has to end polygamy. Missionaries don't just sell Christinaity, they sell their version of Christianity. They don't tell the converts that there are Christians who disagree with the missionaries interpretation of the religion.