Hungry and Full of Praise

Passage: Proverbs 27:7,20-21

One who is full loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet.

Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man.
The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and a man is tested by his praise.

I have a friend who is a professor of literature.  He recently mentioned he was preparing a lecture series comparing the characters of Job and King Lear.  Never needing to be asked for my opinion, I enthused about the Book of Job.  Many Bible-believers are simply confounded by Job; non-religious people – even those who appreciate the book’s artistic merits – are offended by the God it presents.  I argue that in fact Job is the key to understanding not only the Bible, but the Christian faith.

Here’s why: the Book of Job is a response to the charge that God is not intrinsically worthy of praise.  The book opens with a confrontation between God and Satan (or ha’satan, “the accuser”) in which Satan alleges that the only reason for Job’s devout worship is the nice things God has given him.  “Take away all his stuff,” says Satan, “and Job will curse you to your face.”  The wager between God and Satan isn’t a wager about Job’s righteousness.  It’s about God’s praiseworthiness.  What the book maintains is that God deserves human praise regardless of what’s going on in human life.  Job’s righteousness is his simple insistence: no matter the evidence in my own life, God is God; and God is good. 

The Book of Job is classified, along with Ecclesiastes, Psalms and Proverbs, as the “Wisdom Literature” of the Bible.  Proverbs, which seems practical rather than theological, nonetheless upholds the lesson at the heart of Job – namely, that the good life revolves around God rather than goods.  The verses above highlight the fact that a life built on goods – possessions, property and pleasure – is not only unsustainable; it’s ultimately unsatisfying.  The three verses seem at first only loosely related.  In fact they build on one another.  The first verse establishes a truth that is plainly visible in our experience: those who have a chronic overabundance of anything – food, sex, stuff – experience decreasing enjoyment of anything.  This leads in turn to the obsessive pursuit and acquisition of more, the subject of the second verse, which also identifies insatiability as a natural tendency of fallen humanity.  

But what of the third verse?  The true test of a person is the consistency and quality of their praise.  What happens to your capacity to praise God when you have been deprived of something you want or need?  Do you praise God only when you have more than enough?  Or can you, like Job, declare at any time, “God is God, and God is good?”  True faith looks for the gift and grace of God in any circumstance.  And true faith maintains that God and God’s actions are always praiseworthy.