A Restorative Justice Story

BreakPoint WorldView » February 2009

On January 3, 1956, along a river bank, five young men all in their 20s were stabbed and left to bleed to death. None of the perpetrators were ever brought to justice. The names of the victims – Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming, Nate Saint, and Jim Elliot.

Yes, this was the slaying of perhaps one of the most well-known group of missionaries of the 20th century. These men and their families were called to take the Gospel to Ecuador, to the unreached Auca tribe – a tribe well known for their violence. They first arrived in Ecuador in 1952 to begin the work of making contact with this tribe who did not have the Bible and had never heard of Jesus. In doing so, these five men became more like Jesus than they ever imagined. They literally laid down their lives for the well being of their fellow man.

Chronicled in the 1957 best-seller, Through the Gates of Splendor, Jim Elliot’s wife, Elisabeth, tells the story of these men, their mission, and their death. It inspired a generation to missionary service. But the sacrifice of these men is only the beginning of this story. The truly sensational part of the story was what happened next. Painfully aware of the danger and taking her 10-month-old daughter with her, Jim Elliot’s wife, Elisabeth, returned to live among the same tribe that killed her husband and his companions. For two years, she shared Jesus with them and worked to earn their trust and learn their language. As a result, many members of the tribe became followers of Jesus, including some who had committed the murders.

Dramatized in the 2006 movie Tip of the Spear, the story of this brutal crime, forgiveness, and redemption holds more lessons for believers than simply a call to missionary service. It is a story of how a biblical response to crime can change individuals, communities, and history.

If a similar multiple murder happened today on the streets of a large city in the U.S., there would be an outcry for punishment. The nightly news would prompt us to double-check our locks, and urge our policy makers to get tougher on crime.

How many of us, if we had been victims like Elisabeth Elliot, would respond not by pulling further in, but by moving further out? How many of us, would return to the community that harmed us and live out Jesus among them? How many of us would choose to forgive rather than to get even?

When we hear this story as a story of missionaries who died in their response to the Great Commission, we are inspired. We also need to hear this story as the story of victims who responded to brutal crime with love and forgiveness.

When we hear of Elisabeth Elliot’s response to the slaying of her husband, are we inspired to forgive? Are we challenged to seek the kind of justice that restores both the victim and offender? Are we inspired to love those who took away what we loved above all else in this life? Are we prompted to go into prison to meet those convicted of crime to share the redemptive love of Jesus Christ? Are we moved, like Elizabeth Elliot, not to run from those who have harmed us or our neighbors, but to open our lives to them on behalf of Christ?

At Prison Fellowship we believe that no one behind bars is beyond redemption. In Matthew 25, Jesus made it clear that if we visit a prisoner we visit Him. And we dare not forget that in Jesus’ final moments on the cross, He promised fellowship in Paradise to a repentant criminal condemned to death.

As Phillip Yancey reminds us in the book, What’s so Amazing about Grace?, the Gospel is a scandal and inherently offensive to us. When grace and love are given to us, we think it is “amazing grace.” But when we are asked to extend the grace and mercy of Jesus to those who have harmed us it is offensive and a scandal. For a widow to take her 10 month-old daughter, and live among those who killed her husband and extend grace and mercy to them is hard to embrace.

Followers of Jesus and local churches need to see crime, not just as it is portrayed on the local nightly news, but as Elisabeth Elliot saw it: an opportunity to dramatically demonstrate the redemptive power of the Gospel among those everyone else wants to despise. What would it take for you and your church to see “criminals” as just such a people group? What would it take for you and your church to risk demonstrating the “scandal” of the Gospel and make the invisible Kingdom visible to a doubting world?