“Suffering is never for nothing, Joni.” It’s a different era now. Many young people I know don’t recognize the name of Elisabeth Elliot. They live in an egalitarian culture where everyone’s story is extraordinary, whether it has the stamp of Christ or not. The leaders they look up to lack heroic qualities. Courage is rare. Good character, rarer. Moral purity feels arcane. Suffering should be mitigated at all costs. And if it cannot be avoided, it must be drugged, divorced, escaped from, or prayed away.
