Series: The Ten Commandments
The Seventh Commandment:
Freedom and Sex
Exodus 20:14, NRSV
Matthew 5:27-30, NRSV
Reflections
I am not advocating a return to the days of hiding… sexuality, but I am noting that the power and charge of sex are maintained when there is some sacredness to it, when it is not on tap all the time…
— Naomi Wolf
from “The Porn Myth,” in New York Magazine
- Modern take of seven deadly sins: Sinning Boldly article on a book series by Oxford University Press
- Catholics believe you destroy your freedom by sin
- Modern readers think you gain freedom that way
- Many believes Christian sexual ethics is to destroy freedom, to be restrictive, to be prohibitive
- But the scripture we read is not meant to suffocate us, but to liberate us from lust, and free us to love
- Bible doesn’t say sexual desire is bad
- Lust is not same as sexual desire
- Lust is sexual desire of pleasure only, without any kind of love and care
- Sexual desire is not just bodily function
- The liberal view of sex in the west has no mystery
- 3 invitations from words of Moses and Jesus
- To Heal
- from being sexual sinners
- no scar and wound is too deep for Jesus
- To transformation
- v28: not just to behave properly, but also in intention and thinking
- To taste God’s Love
- promise making, promise keeping
- God’s vow to us, in Jesus
