SOLOMON'S PARADOX

In 1 Kings chapter 3, God answered Solomon’s prayer request to be wise. God replied, “I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you.” Then Solomon demonstrated his gift of discernment when he solved an impossible conundrum concerning to whom a baby belonged. His handling of the case brought the truth to the surface. In counseling, this historical account became known as “Solomon’s paradox”. Simply stated it is when we “tend to reason more wisely about other people's problems than our very own”.

A look at King Solomon’s good and bad choices during his reign reveals that he often came down with “Solomon’s paradox”. God gave Solomon wisdom but also allowed him to personally go against this wisdom, resulting in bad consequences, such as romancing many foreign wives who then led him into idolatry. We know that the lessons from the Old Testament are there to instruct us today and we can certainly see Solomon’s positive and negative examples.

We now have the full canon of Scriptures which Solomon in part wrote. The Bible is God’s wisdom in print. We have the complete “how to” guide for making good decisions and plenty of negative examples of what not to do. We have God’s guidance and wisdom for every practical decision of life such as dealing with anger and conflict, singleness and marriage issues, gender and sexuality questions, and much more. In fact the website gotquestions.org has over 650,000 answers to practical questions, all using God’s wisdom from the Bible.

Dear Father, we thank you for your guidance and leading us away from evil. Help us to follow your leading and avoid many painful consequences. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.