Wisdom and Song Lyrics
Recently I asked some people about songs that were important to them. One guy responded immediately: “Hotel California. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” It captured his experience of addiction and questioned the goals he was chasing.
Songs mix reflection and pleasure. We like a lyric that makes us think, an ironic twist that holds us captive. Add musical charm, and the words invade us even deeper.
Our discussion got onto song lyrics because of the Old Testament book, Proverbs. It’s often called a manual of advice, rules, or instructions. Yet its first nine chapters are song lyrics.
Proverbs tells us about wisdom by its genre alone: wisdom is bigger than instructions.
We assume wisdom is really good information, backed up by 30-year studies, gained from experts, gurus, and streetwise practitioners. Once you capture the data, you can meet your goals.
But the lyrics of Proverbs challenge my goals. If I’m chasing plastic prizes, the lyrics offer diamonds. They’re not big on mere information.
In one song, for instance, a father sings that his son should “treasure up” his words, cry out for wisdom, seek it like silver or hidden treasure. If the son does, he “will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.”
Wisdom starts with a desperate yearning for the highest value, the turn from chasing toys to seeking a personal knowledge of God himself.
By hiding wisdom in poetry, the Bible shows that beauty, reflection, and desire are more important than information. After all, information only tells us how to get a prize, while beauty predetermines which prizes we want.
From this point of view, our problems don’t come from bad data. Conflict, joylessness, broken relationships come from bad goals. To change those goals, we have to pierce the shallow attractions of selfishness and witness the threatening radiance beyond — the glory of God.
That’s why the Bible gives out wisdom in song lyrics. It calls the heart to recognize God’s beauty and reach for Him.
