Readings for today: Song of Songs 1-4, 2 Corinthians 8:16-24, Psalms 50, Proverbs 22:22-23
The Song of Solomon is one of the most difficult and least understood books in all of Scripture. It’s one we tend to avoid in our sex-saturated culture. The language is far too intimate. The imagery too graphic. We don’t want to picture it much less reflect on how the Spirit might speak to us through it. So we flip through the pages as fast as we can to get to the end so we can avoid any embarrassment.
But what is this book about? The love of a man for a woman? The love of God for His church? Perhaps both? Are we comfortable thinking about our relationship with God in sexual terms? Or is that a bridge too far? it certainly was for many of the ancient rabbi’s. They put a content warning on this book, restricting it to those who were 30 and over. Then again, the ancient church often read this text as they approached the Lord’s Table. They recognized the deep intimacy God desires to have with us and they affirmed such love by tying this book to the most sacred act of worship. I firmly believe the Bible is inviting us to approach God in the most intimate of ways. The language of the Song is meant to arouse. Meant to touch the deepest places of our hearts. Meant to draw us into intimate embrace with the Father.
Our inability to embrace this book reveals how deep our corruption runs. We are so confused when it comes to human sexuality. We have bought the lie that it’s all about our personal pleasure. We have depersonalized it through pornography, casual hook ups, and apps like Tinder. We see sex as dirty yet secretly gratifying. Something to be enjoyed and yet something to be feared. Our culture boasts of sexual freedom but then seems shocked when such freedom leads to broken relationships, disease, abuse, and violence. We want all the pleasures sex brings but none of the responsibility. If there’s anything the #MeToo movement has taught us, it is that our sexual appetites are insatiable. Our lusts are impossible to satisfy. Sexuality without restraint is destructive and traumatic.
And yet, sex is God’s creation. Sexuality is something He instilled within each of us. We are created as sexual beings and when the Bible talks about “knowing” another person, it often uses the most sexually intimate of terms. The same is true for “knowing” God. God designed sex to be the ultimate experience of “knowing.” A way for us to express our deepest affections. Our deepest emotions. Our deepest vulnerabilities. All within the safety of the covenant bonds of marriage between a man and a woman. All within the safety of the covenant bond we share with Jesus.
So is it possible to see the Song of Solomon as a prayer? As a way to express the deepest desires of our hearts to God? As a way for us to ask for deeper intimacy with Him? Or does our broken human experience of sexuality warp our thinking? Corrupt how we understand this most powerful and primal of drives? Does it poison this well and thus prevent us from fully grasping the depth of relationship God desires to have with us? There’s a reason Christ calls the church His “bride.” There’s a reason God so often refers to Himself in the Old Testament as a “husband” and Israel as his “wife.” Marriage is the place where a man and a woman become “one flesh” before the Lord and it is designed to point beyond itself to something even greater...the “oneness” God desires to have with His people for all eternity.
Readings for tomorrow: Song of Songs 5-8, 2 Corinthians 9, Psalms 51, Proverbs 22:24-25