There is the story of Susan Boyle and there is the story of Job. For those familiar with the biblical text in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Job was recognized by God as a righteous person. The beauty of the Job story is that God had confidence in Job; for when Satan declare to God that it was none other than Job’s wealth that motivated Job to serve God, we are told that God allowed Satan to put Job to the test, saying, in effect, do what you will but touch not his soul. Through the extraordinary tests, including a body wracked with pain, Job never turned his back on God; and God indeed recognized Job as a righteous person. It is worth mentioning 
at this point that Susan Boyle is characterized as a devout woman, a woman of great faith. At their best, devout people are people with remarkable inner strength, to which physical appearances as such simply cannot do justice.
We would all like to believe that if there is a God, then He will never forsake us just so long as we remain righteous individuals. Indeed, many who do not believe in God nonetheless hold that God cannot be holy if He should sake the righteous. In a Psalm, King David claimed that he never seen the righteous forsaken.
In a very straightforward sense, the appeal of Susan Boyle speaks to this very deep, deep religious ideal. Her appeal expresses the hope articulated by King David that God does not forsake the righteous.
Having sacrificed much of her life to care for her ailing mother, Susan Boyle did what was truly noble—even if not obligatory. And righteousness is not about doing just enough to get by. Rather, it is about affirming and confirming one’s unshakable commitment to the Good, notwithstanding the enormous adversity which one faces. That, after all, is the story of Job.
Equally relevant is that there would appear to be no sense of bitterness on Boyle’s part. While she most certainly grasped that she could sing, it appears that she has no bitterness at all for putting her desires on hold in order to attend to her ailing mother who died in 2007.
As I have said, while this was not obligatory, it was surely commendable. And one important piece of evidence that we have that one has acted with purity of heart in making sacrifices on behalf of another is precisely that fact that one has no bitterness on account of having done so.
Again, notice the parallel to the story of Job. He never became bitter for the suffering that he endured.
Putting these considerations together, what we get in Susan Boyle is a living symbol of what it means to live an unpretentious and unassuming life with self-contentment (but not complacency) and purity of heart.
Truth be told, then, a great many of us are not really happy with ourselves. Susan Boyle was more content with her “ordinary” 
appearance than most of us are with all of our attempts to be glamorous or, in any case, attractive well-in place. If Boyle were not so content, then she would have shown up in very different attire and with a make-over all ready in progress. Yet, it would appear that not even a make-over will detract from that which attracts us to Boyle: moral simplicity and purity of heart.
Truth be told, then, a great many of us are not really happy with ourselves. Susan Boyle was more content with her “ordinary” appearance than most of us are with all of our attempts to be glamorous or, in any case, attractive well-in place. If Boyle were not so content, then she would have shown up in very different attire and with a make-over all ready in progress.
And here the story of Job has a thunderous power to it. Job was more content to be a righteous person than he was to be a wealthy person. And quite simply the biblical lesson of Job is thus: One who is more content being righteous than being wealthy is one whom not even Satan himself can touch.
Susan Boyle is a modern Job with all that this represents in terms of the ideal of living a morally good life, and so of having a life unsullied by the nonsense of modernity. And perhaps evidence of this comes from a rather unsuspecting part of her moment on Britain’s Got Talent, namely Boyle’s exiting.
Some have insisted that it is she who got the last laugh. But if you attend to the way in which she exited, what one unequivocally sees is a sense of gratitude, appreciation and goodwill—and not smugness on account of having surpassed the unwarranted expectations that the audience had at the outset. She had won everyone’s heart. And that meant more to her than the initial ridicule of which she had been the object. Alas, this fact about her sets Susan Boyle apart from a great many of us, who will find away to hold a grudge although we have emerged ever so victorious.
Some of us are theists; some of us are atheists. In either case, if we have any semblance of decency about us we want it to be true that righteousness or, in any case, immutable moral decency of character is what prevails.
This is the ideal—this is the hope—that Susan Boyle represents.
If there is a God, then there is, indeed, something ever so affirming about the idea that God would have confidence in us. Susan Boyle reminds us of that very profound truth.
As of today (21 April), some 36 million people have watched her YouTube video. This, surely, is as much about her character as it is about her singing. When was the last time that was true?
