I was in college when I learned to memorize the 10 commandments. It was when my sister and I attended an evening service and the Pastor challenged us to memorize the 10 commandments through the aid of our fingers, telling us that His goal was to send us home having the 10 commandments memorized.
I remember walking out of that service thinking it was almost too easy; that something this old and this serious fit so neatly into the span of ten fingers. But they did! I even tested my memory by retelling them with my fingers. And in the years that followed, I taught others too, hoping to amaze them like I did before.
The technique the Pastor taught us made remembering the 10 commandments easy.
While I couldn’t show you the memory technique in this blog post, here’s Exodus 20:1-17, in case you need a refresher—or in case, like me, you’ve recited it so many times that the verses started to blur:
Exodus 20:1-17 CSB
1 Then God spoke all these words:
2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery.
3 Do not have other gods besides me.
4 Do not make an idol for yourself, whether in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth.
5 Do not bow in worship to them, and do not serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me,
6 but showing faithful love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commands.
7 Do not misuse the name of the Lord your God, because the Lord will not leave anyone unpunished who misuses his name.
8 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy:
9 You are to labor six days and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. You must not do any work — you, your son or daughter, your male or female servant, your livestock, or the resident alien who is within your city gates.
11 For the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.
12 Honor your father and your mother so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
13 Do not murder.
14 Do not commit adultery.
15 Do not steal.
16 Do not give false testimony against your neighbor.
17 Do not covet your neighbor’s house. Do not covet your neighbor’s wife, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
What brought all of this back to the surface was something I read in one of my daily reads, and I made sure to keep a note that I write a blog post about it.
Brian McLaren, author of We Make The Road By Walking, wrote that the 10 commandments were a response to the human need of moral guidance, to help us live our lives in freedom. He worded the 10 commandments this way, which I find relevant for the culture we are living in today:
- Put the God of liberation first, not the gods of slavery.
- Don’t reduce God to the manageable size of an idol—certainly not one made of wood and stone by human hands, and not one made by human minds of rituals and words, either, and certainly not one in whose name people are enslaved, dehumanized, or killed!
- Do not use God for your own agendas by throwing around God’s holy name. If you make a vow in God’s name, keep it!
- Honor the God of liberation by taking and giving everyone a day off. Don’t keep the old 24/7 slave economy going.
- Turn from self-centeredness by honoring your parents. (After all, honor is the basis of freedom.)
- Don’t kill people, and don’t do the things that frequently incite violence, including:
- Don’t cheat with others’ spouses,
- Don’t steal others’ possessions, and
- Don’t lie about others’ behaviors or characters.
- In fact, if you really want to avoid the violence of the old slave economy, deal with its root source—in the drama of desire. Don’t let the competitive desire to acquire tempt you off the road of freedom.
What really made me ponder over and over while reading Brian’s worded 10 commandments was about how I should “think of the Sabbath not as being deprived of activity, but as a day of liberation from the 24/7 workweek of a slave.”
It made me rethink of rest. And I’ve been sitting with that ever since.
Rest as freedom.
jessa 
Start the conversation