Song of Songs.

"The Bible will be the poorer without the inclusion of the Song of Songs, which celebrates the love of husband and wife?"
I am agree with the statement above that the Bible will be the poorer without the inclusion of the Song of Songs. My reasons is first, the song of songs is a poem that celebrates the love of man and woman, which is a beautiful gift from God. Second, the song of songs reflects about the deepest love of God toward man which demonstrate through Christ who loves us and died for us. Without the book of song of song it is difficult for us to see the picture of the depth of love between man and woman, which reflects the depth of God's love toward His people. Third reason, this book is also useful for generation to generation to see what is true love in the midst of distorted meaning of love and sexuality in human life. Especially in our time now, where love, gender identity, sex are distorted and misunderstood (homosexuality, transgender, free sex, pornography, sex abuse, etc). This book will help us to find and celebrate the beauty, richness and the holiness of love that God created and gave as a beautiful gift for human life. The bible become richer with this book along with other books in the bible. As the world will be tasteless without love likewise the bible without this beautiful book of poem about love. This book is the only one genre which the whole book describe about the richness and beauty of human love in our bible.
First, the song of songs describe about celebration of the dynamic of love between man and woman. Through all the human history, love songs is the most often created and sung by people through all the season and time. Agur in his saying at Proverb 30:19, said that there are three things that are too amazing for him to understand, four things that he does not understand and one of them is the way of a man with his maiden. Love is a mistery, and this book pictures out the mistery of the relation which called : love.
Why the love between man and woman is important to be exposed the bible? Love between man and woman is a gift from God. From Song of songs we can see about the longing of the woman for the man, her anxiety, the confession of her weakness (deformity), how she adores his beloved and her struggle about him. And the response of the man that he loves her as His precious jewels, he adore her beauty with the beauty of creation. From this book, we learn about what is love. We learn about how man and woman long to know and understand each other. Love is the basic element which unite man and woman.
Love describes as a long for each other, to have each other, mutual giving to each other, feeling secure, trusted and accepted, adore and desire for each other. This book give us a scetch of how strong love is, which is mentioned that love is strong as death. The love in this book also involve their friends (community). Love is something that can be seen by people, it is between man and woman but it is also related to the relation with other. God gives this love to man and woman to enjoy, celebrate this love in the institution of marriage.
Second, the song of songs as the picture of God's Majestic love to His people through Jesus Christ. Human souls are longing for the union with Him. When I read this book in the perspective of God's love to His people, I realized that God's love is so undescripable deep toward His people. In other side, God's people are long for the love of the redeemer of their life. God can see the church's beauty in the midst of our deformity. God accepts to us in His love. In Ephesians stated : “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord”, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;” , “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” Eph 5:22,25,32. One thing interested me when I read Hudson Taylor book about Song of Songs, he stated : “Our attention is here drawn to a danger which is pre-eminently one of this day: the intense activity of our times may lead to zeal in service, to the neglect of personal communion.” 1
Third, we live in the world which has distortion about the concept of love, marriage, and sex. The distortion of sexuality because of sin. The pevertion of human self-image and sexual identity. We faced a lot of cases of homosexuality, transgender, adultery, divorces, etc which caused by the pervertion of humanity by sin. This book song of song is an important book to bring to its place the meaning of man and woman love to its original place. This helps us to see sexual relationship is holy. We are now bombardired by negative image of love by advertisements, movies, books, etc which give the image of love related to lust. Especially the images of lust love in pornography which is open to public and easily to access by internet and other media. The beauty of love as God's gift destroyed by these porn images. The pronographic images always tend to humiliate sex , make it dirty with human lust. But this book is different, it is a painting out love of man and woman in a beautiful art language and image.
How this book helps us to see the beauty, richness and the holiness of Love? The physical relations in this book expressed in the institution of marriage. It is not only physycal, but also mental, emotional2. This book song of Song will help us to have a healthy self image about our selve andto help spouse to build their self image better (full acceptance, to be loved and love, to give and receive, to complementary each other). Song of Solomon also teaches us to be sensitive to the needs of spouse, sexual love is more than simply physical but consider the needs of other wholistically and with purity3.

Footnotes:
1J. Hudson taylor, Union and Communion, (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship Inc) p.25
2Don Anderson, Song of Solomon, Make Full My Joy, (New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1987). p.79

3Don Anderson, Song of Solomon, Make Full My Joy, (New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1987). p.128

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