The painter, not just the canvas, is in view for the Christian writer. He speaks the truth truthfully, sincerely, as he knows it before God. Out of the overflow of the heart, the pen writes. He says with Job, “My words declare the uprightness of my heart, and what my lips know they speak sincerely” (Job 33:3). And with Augustine, “What I live by, I impart” (quoted in James Stewart, Heralds of God, 10). We err if we finely craft content but not our lives. Christian writing is done from a higher art.
The Wisdom Literature (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) is not simply insightful in its content, but delightful in its craft. As dwarves with rare jewels, these authors didn’t just discover golden nuggets of wisdom; they shaped them, forged them, hunched over their obsession, inspected them, held them up to the light, cut them, and framed them into sentences poetic and memorable.
We are wise to enter their mines and learn their skill, not just to discover beauty but to adorn it beautifully. Briefly, then, I want to travel into the mountain of these sages’ eloquence, exploring the deeps of their craftsmanship. Notice what was spoken of one such sage:
Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth. (Ecclesiastes 12:9–10)
Handcrafted writing, beautiful writing that adorns God’s wisdom, weighs and studies, arranges with great care, and seeks out words of delight and writes words of truth uprightly.
Weigh the World, Study Scripture
Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying.
First, to write well, this master-jeweler prepared well. Superior gifting did not alibi sloth. That the Preacher possessed superlative wisdom (Ecclesiastes 1:16) did not shorten his preparation. He pored over the wise sayings of others; he wrote wise sayings of his own. And we, with lesser wisdom and ability, also measure and ponder, read and study, roast the truth over in our minds, never tire to hunt each morning for fresh discoveries in the forests of God’s Book.
Particularly, we do not just study how to write, but what we write about. We must have knowledge to teach. Here, some of us step along a cliff’s edge, tempted to preoccupy oneself with how we say over what is said. Many have lost their footing. Pride drags much of man’s toil over the edge to shatter upon the rocks. I grimace when I discover myself painting, like the worst of modern art, indistinct displays of my own artistry, instead of the landscape or the glories beyond.
No, the writing life gropes for metaphor and imagery and beauty because it has heard creation singing God’s praises and has seen his beauty in the face of Jesus Christ. In other words, we love God’s diamonds more than our metal rings and sentences that hold them. In all things, his Son must have preeminence (Colossians 1:18). The wise never lose sight of a God greater than our pens can ever tell. “What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as [the reader’s] servants for Jesus’s sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). So, first, we weigh and study and place all in the light of God and his truth.
Arranging the Flowers
The Preacher did not merely weigh and study, however; he “taught the people knowledge, . . . arranging many proverbs with great care.” He made straight, he put in order, he composed. He forged proverbs, wisdom compressed into Hebrew poetry, what Robert Alter calls “the best words in the best order” (The Art of Biblical Poetry). He engraved the truth to be remembered, considering both style and structure. He knew that to add order was to add beauty and force. He knew a proverb or poem could be less or more than its parts.
Whether compiling proverbs of others or composing his own, he saw that truly beautiful writing has pleasing cohesion. One note out of place disrupts the recital — and is detected even by those who have never heard the music before. How? Because beauty has its anatomy, its symmetry, its mathematics, its order. Assonance, alliteration, metaphor, contrast, and more — the science of lovely prose.
Our God is a God of order and beauty, and he will not have his children fight. Beautiful writing is not a collection of notes struck on a whim, but a symphony; not a handful of casually picked flowers, but a pleasing bouquet. Marvel has their Avengers; Christian eloquence her Arrangers — of words and phrases and paragraphs and chapters. Such writers position their thoughts, others’ thoughts, and (most importantly) God’s thoughts into the vase with “great care.”