Mirror Check: Dangerous Desire

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Hollywood dates Hollywood. We have seen celebrities swap spouses, leave spouses, cheat on spouses— you name it. As a child of the 90s and early 2000s, this was what fed the tabloids. In many ways, lacking integrity (both physically and emotionally) has been normalized in our culture.

Does anyone here remember Brangelina? This was a romance with a shady beginning and a never ending divorce.

Exodus 20:14 (our mirror check) says: “You shall not commit adultery.” (ESV)

Like other commandments (5-10), this commandment relates to how we treat others with the bare minimum of respect. You don’t take or desire what is already someone else’s. If you have committed to someone, you keep that vow. It also deals with the heart and mind. Adultery can be an emotional matter; a matter of desire. (Matthew 5:27-30)

When one studies the life of David and his steps into adultery, it’s clear it all starts with desire. Its starts with the mind and eye. It’s important to check in often with what we desire and to hold it up against God’s principles.

Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us that the heart is deceitful above all things.

Hollywood may glamourize it, but I have never seen a family or couple come out unscathed from adultery. Adultery is like a bomb that shatters everything in its vicinity. Its consequences going deeper and farther than those involved typically imagine. There is no escaping those consequences.

When we lie, we are not free. We not only undermine our relationship with others and God, but the relationship we have with ourselves. We can try and avoid others, but we cannot escape God or ourselves. Jordan B. Peterson has an illustration that we cannot bend or twist reality. Reality is what it is. It’s a stiff board. You can think you have done it, but life always snaps back into place. It untwists itself. Or if forced too hard, it breaks all together. Dishonesty— it’s a dangerous path that leads to destruction without escape.

Mirror Check Questions: What are the desires I have allowed to take hold of my heart? Am I desiring someone that is not mine to desire? Am I honoring my commitments? How can I pray to better guard my heart and mind? Do I need to pray to ask God to help me walk in integrity?