Proverbs 2:10
"For wisdom will enter your heart and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul."
This Proverb answers one of the most important questions of life. How do we make additions to our soul or internal programming? As we live our life we will be adding to the software that runs our bodies. The place of our software is our soul. This is described as our heart in this passage. Notice that the Proverb says that if we do what has been suggested, that wisdom will enter our heart. We won't just use some wisdom or act wisely in an instance, but it will be added to the internal programming.
Remember what Moses says about our life – that it will last 70 + years and that at the end God will examine our soul to see how much wisdom we have amassed. Have we just occasionally stumbled across wisdom or have we really internalized wisdom in which it has become a part of our internal programming?
On a side note... It is clear that in the Christian worldview our bodies, brains, heart, eyes, arms, legs, etc., are the hardware of this life and our soul is the software of this life. All of our life we are adding programs to the basic software package we came equipped with. One day our soul or software will be uploaded to a different place and cleaned of its selfish tendencies and then reloaded into a new hardware in a new setting. Pretty exciting stuff! It is the stuff that we have loaded on the software that matters and not the hardware. That will wear down and become obsolete. While it is important to keep the hardware in good condition, it is not the hardware that ultimately matters – it is the software.
and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul
This is an interesting phrase, because it sets up at least two directions to follow its thinking. First, that real knowledge – when accepted and embraced along with wisdom – is a very pleasant thing. Solomon is motivating us toward knowledge and wisdom by speaking of the pleasantness of possessing it.
However, the second implication of this part of the Proverb is more disturbing and that is that it is possible for knowledge to not be pleasant to your soul. That it is possible in rejecting wisdom and pursuing foolishness that real knowledge will be very disturbing and deeply painful. I think of those people who have built their life on fool's pleasure when the truth of the way life really works comes crashing down on them. I think of those who are wicked, believing that this life is all there is and that they are getting away with flaunting man's rules. What will knowledge feel like when they are still conscious on the other side of death and are moving toward judgment day? Knowledge will not be pleasant to their soul.
There are spiritual, moral, emotional, and mental realities in this world that one should pay attention to. It is only as one lives in the world that God created that knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.
Until tomorrow,
Gil Stieglitz