A fool takes his identity from other people.
The wise man finds his identity in his Maker.
True love is deeper than the ocean.
In time, even a hamster wheel makes sense.
Cynicism is a cowards escape from reality.
A wise man can see past the thorns and into the beauty of a rose.
To marry a virtuous person is culmination of wisdom.
People are rarely thinking what you think they are thinking about you.
Why are Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon called wisdom literature? I mean, Proverbs is obviously about how to be wise. It even says so in the beginning. But Psalms? Their just songs, right? Ecclesiastes? Isn’t that just a spoiled king whining about how having everything isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? Song of Solomon? Please. Isn’t that just an erotic love poem? It is not even clear why it is in the bible, let alone part of the wisdom literature. This really does not make any sense.
This is what it looks like at first glance, something odd and apparently random…they call it wisdom lit just because they can, and in order to confuse us. It just does not make any sense.
On a closer examination, things become a bit clearer. After looking at psalms in depth, it began to appear that the purpose of psalms is to teach us to have the proper emotional responses to things, to give us an example of proper emotions, and via poetry help us to conform to the ideal.
With study, the purpose of Ecclesiastes also becomes clearer. While at first the author seems to be merely whining, on closer examination, it can be seen that the author might be point out the intrinsic value of wisdom, being good, etc. That despite how crazy it all looks from here, God is in control, and there are indeed absolute standards.
Song of Solomon seems a harder nut to crack. I mean, it is a love song. How much of a deeper meaning can there be? The task of delving deeper into Song of Solomon is made much more difficult by our squeamishness. We are afraid to delve into the depths, because it is ‘gross’ or even ‘immoral’. We have a hard time dealing with how sexually charged it is. But this is the very reason that why song of songs is so important. We do not know how to think about love, especially erotic love. As Christians, we tend to shy away and try to shut it down completely because it is so strong and dangerous. But it is a part of us, something from deep within our very souls. We cannot silence it without loosing a part of our selves. Love is a powerful, dangerous thing, but it can also be beautiful. We need to be taught how to handle this part of us, because on our own we seem to be very good at only triggering the explosively damaging nature of love, and missing entirely the beauty.
Song of Solomon, then, is an instruction book. Not on the art of seduction, but on what love is, what it is supposed to look like, and how we are supposed to respond. As well as teaching us how to love, Song of Solomon teaches us about beauty. It is a story about a beautiful love for a beautiful person told with beautiful words. To categorize Song of Solomon as ‘merely an erotic love poem’ is to categorize the David as ‘just another nude statue’. There is such a depth to the beauty of Song of Solomon that I do not think it would be easy to come to the end of it. It is a textbook on the appreciation of beauty.
Proverbs, then, seems the least profound of the wisdom literature, the least worthy. It only helps us to see truths in the patterns of reality that we have a hard time seeing ourselves. While Proverbs schools our minds, the other members of the wisdom literature school our very souls.
What is wisdom that schooling our souls fits into it? Or rather, how does one become wise by training one’s soul? What is wisdom? What differentiates it from knowledge? Is wisdom the ability to properly respond to knowledge and other external stimuli? In that case, training one’s soul is helping it to respond properly to external stimuli and knowledge, or growing in wisdom.
