A LOOK OF AGONY

“I loathe my very life;  therefore I will give free rein to my complaint  and speak out in the bitterness of my soul.” (10:1)

Most of the complaining that people do is petty and sinful, arising in one way or another from the fear of losing something to which they are neurotically attached. But when a person is in the situation of having literally nothing left to lose, the result may be a different kind of complaint altogether.

Job has already admitted that it would be nice if he could just pull himself up by the bootstraps and stop being an old sourpuss. But he cannot, for “if I say, ‘I will forget my complaint, I will change my expression, and smile,’ I still dread all my sufferings” (9:27-28). Under such circumstances the wearing of a smile would be the wearing of a mask; it would not be a true smile at all but a simper, a pasteboard lie. We should not be surprised to learn that references to smiling are rare in the book of Job. What is more surprising is to consult a concordance and discover that the word “smile” occurs hardly at all anywhere in the Bible!

In short, Scripture never suggests (unlike many churchgoers) that the wearing of a cheerful countenance is a good tonic for the soul. On the contrary in Ecclesiastes we read, “Sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart” (7:3). How is it we have bought the lie that a Christian’s face is only publicly presentable when the corners of the mouth are pushed up? The Apostle James actually exhorts us to “grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom” (4:9). It is not that James has anything against joy and laughter; but he wants them to be genuine. As the poet Emily Dickinson put it in her trenchant style, “I like a look of Agony, because I know it’s true.”

Undoubtedly Scripture exhorts us to “rejoice in the Lord” and to “be of good cheer.” Yet nowhere are we commanded to “put on a happy face.” Nowhere are we told that it is all right to complain in the heart while outwardly appearing bright and jovial. How much damage has the feigning of happiness done to the cause of Christ! If we look at the character of Jesus, can we escape seeing a streak of morbidity broad enough to make us uncomfortable? While we never read of our Lord laughing, we do know for certain that “Jesus wept” (John 11:35), and that in the Garden of Gethsemane He said, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:34). How would we react today to hearing a fellow believer speak so gloomily? Would we upbraid him for grumbling? Would we immediately try to cheer him up? The very presence in Scripture of writings as dark as Job and Ecclesiastes should set God’s people free to confess their disillusionment, to frown and complain when appropriate, to be fed up with life, or to “speak out in bitterness of soul.” For the view of the Bible is that it is far better to be sincerely discouraged and world-weary than to pretend enthusiasm, better to be authentically sad than artificially happy, better to have honest doubt than phony faith.

It has been said that the primary task of the preacher of the gospel is to get his people lost—for only then can he begin to get them saved. Before people can be introduced to Christ, they need to be introduced to the unconscious complaints that inhabit their souls beneath all the painful smiles, and before they can grow in Christ they must learn to distinguish between petty, selfish complaints and the legitimate kind. The end of faith, after all, is not religiosity but reality, and reality is something that cannot be painted on but that must well up irrepressibly from within. According to Proverbs 15:13, “A happy heart makes the face cheerful”; but the process will not work in reverse. If anything, the excruciating effort of insincere smiling will make a sad heart even sadder and will drive a wandering soul farther than ever from the truth.

Mason, M. (2002). The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything. Crossway.