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Volume 3 · Honest HereticsLesson 33About 22 minutes

Purity and Shame

Who were you taught was responsible for purity: the one who looks, or the one who is looked at?

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The center · Matthew 5:28
28but I tell you that everyone who gazes at a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.

In this lesson

Many people who grew up in church in the 1990s and 2000s remember it. Girls were told to cover up so the boys would not stumble. Teenagers signed cards promising to wait. And the warning came with an object lesson: sex before marriage leaves you used, like a piece of gum someone already chewed.

You're not imagining it. Much of that teaching put the burden on girls for what boys did with their eyes, and taught anyone who failed that they were damaged for good. People still carry that shame into their marriages and their bodies. It came with Bible verses attached, but it did not come from Jesus.

Measured against the center

A contradiction
Making women responsible for men's lust, and treating sexual sin as permanent damage, contradicts Jesus, who put the burden on the one who looks and sent the woman called a sinner away forgiven.

The rest of this lesson is in Volumes 2-4 online

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