Test of Character – Proverbs 27:21

Tom Sawyer, the hero of the Mark Twain novel by the same name, is mistaken for dead and that Sunday at church people, young and old alike, begin to recall poor Tom and eulogize him.  The best one boy can come up with is, “Well, Tom Sawyer, he licked me once,” but several other boys were beaten up by Tom so this didn’t stand out so much.  The minister recalls the boy with fondness and that behaviors of Tom at the time “had seemed rank rascalities, well deserving of the cowhide.”  Faint praise, but the boy was loved.

The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and a man is tested by his praise. (Proverbs 27:21, ESV)

Our proverb today tells us that if you want to know the purity of silver or gold you must put it to the fire.  The less dross that floats to the top, the more pure the silver or gold.  A person’s worth may be likewise tested by the praise others give of him or her.

To be sure, we may be inclined to inflate someone’s character in a funeral eulogy, but when someone is still alive and people praise him or her, we may learn the true nature of their character.  Do we live for praise?  If we did we probably would not be praised.  People praise those who live for others.

The movie Chariots of Fire about the Christian Olympic runner, Eric Liddell, begins with the funeral of his competitor Harold Abrahams and the memories of one who knew them both returns to their glory days.  Both won Olympic races but we see the character of Liddell when he is willing to give up a chance at his best race because it is on the Sabbath.  He is able instead to run another, not his best kind of race, and wins gold.  Abrahams becomes a statesman, and Liddell goes to the mission field in China.  He is imprisoned by the Japanese when they invade China and dies in the camp.  But the testimony of camp survivors of how much he did to help them make it shows his true character in yet another time of testing.

At the end of the movie a title appears on the screen and notes that the athletic community grieved the loss of Harold Abrahams for his work for his country, but at the death of Eric Liddell, all Scotland mourned.  What will your praise be like?