Song of Solomon 1-4, 1 Timothy 1-4

Wow, what a week to be the guest blogger.  We have Song of Solomon and Timothy.  Today we will catch up on Song of Solomon and tomorrow will focus on Timothy.

My first response, and how I begin is wow... an uncomfortable book today within a Bible Study and can you imagine...worship!  Why is this?  Song of Solomon is a book of love poems...very sensual, descriptive love poems.  So why is this difficult, and really, to be able to express the kind of love that is shared with us, isn't it the most amazing, descriptive, emotional love that we find in Scripture.  Reading commentaries, many scholars argue that this is a book of of secular love poetry that made it into our canon by accepting the parallel that this is analogous to God's love for Israel, which later then is shared with the concept of Christ's love for the Church.  Or is this simply love poetry expressing a deep sensual love between two people?

Some excerpts:
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!  For your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out; therefore the maidens love you... How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful!  Your eyes are doves behind your veil.  Your hair is like a flock of goats, moving down the slopes of Gilead.  Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing...Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, that feed among the lilies...You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you, Awake, O north wind, and come, O south wind!  Blow upon my garden that its fragrance may be wafted abroad.  Let my beloved come to his garden and eat its choicest fruits."

Back to the questions:  Allegory of love between God and Israel? Or raw sensuous love between lovers?

My answer is...Yes! 

Allegorically speaking, reading this as I was discussing blogging about this with a friend of mine) makes you blush, makes us vulnerable.  The poetry paints a physical, but even more more, a spiritually deep love where we say yes.  In studying Song of Solomon in my Old Testament class, our professor helped show us how these poems take us back to the Garden of Eden.  It moves us from after the fall (read Genesis 3:15-18), and back into the garden, lost in love- in deep adoration, mutually between two lovers  (play Journey or Air Supply Song here).  This combines a deep intimacy within two lovers that make us crave a deep physical and spiritual love, a kind of love we seek with a partner, and even deeper, a connection with something much greater, the kind of love that connects us with God. 

Yesterday, I shared fellowship at the table with my father and grandfather.  We had three generations talking about television today compared with the early shows my grandfather loved.  He shared how funny at the time I Love Lucy was, and my Dad shared how shocking Elvis was when he was on the first Ed Sullivan Show.  That in the home, this wasn't allowed, but as soon as he was in the car, all the kids were singing Elvis songs.  Today, I shared with reality television and sitcoms, so much seams to have to be shocking, to the extend of out-shocking what has ever been done before.  My dad laughed and said that it sounds like I am getting old.  Why do I share this...

I share this because too often we are caught in the shocking.  I worry with our youth today on where the line is between love and lust, the physical and the spiritual.  We as a Church need to look at the kind of love modeled in Song of Solomon.  To look at it as raw sensuous love between lovers... we need to talk about this, and celebrate the kind of love two people can (and should) share with each other.  The Church too often, whether it done overtly, or through the absence by not discussing, sends a message that sex is bad.  Reading and discussing Song of Solomon can help us dispel this and show how beautiful a relationship is between lovers.  By talking about this, we can respond to the other messages being shared through media, internet, and pressures that are real to our children.  This helps share a difference between true love that is to be celebrated, and unhealthy relationships that tempt us in.

On even a deeper level, we need to allow ourselves to be vulnerable to the love of God and the love of Jesus Christ.  This is a love that changes us, helps us enter into a relationship that is fuller.  The kind of relationship that sheds the legalism and allows and instead helps us connect in conversation.  This is also the kind of love that helps us fulfill loving God with all our heart, mind, and soul, and love our neighbor.

Meanwhile, I am going to borrow "Your hair is like a flock of goats, moving down the slopes of Gilead.  Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes that have come up from the washing" for the next card I write to my wife... 

Blessings, Rob