On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
ten lords a-leaping…

The ten lords a-leaping have traditionally been linked with the Ten Commandments—not as a picture of dominance or hierarchy, but as an image of people living under God’s lordship, learning how to move freely within the gift of God’s law.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
— Exodus 20:2

Before the commandments are given, freedom is named.

The commandments are not introduced as a ladder to climb toward God, but as a response to freedom already given. They are spoken to a people newly released from oppression, learning how to live without becoming enslavers themselves. They are offered as a way of living that resists the very patterns of domination the people have just escaped.

In this older imagination, the “leaping” matters. Obedience is not meant to be heavy or joyless. It is a response entered into willingly, even gladly—a way of stepping into life rather than shrinking it.

In public discourse today, rules are often wielded as tools of control, exclusion, or punishment. Law is experienced less as protection and more as threat. Even within churches, commandments have too often been used to shame, police, or silence.

Broken Theology refuses to turn the commandments into tools of fear or shame. Read rightly, they are not about proving righteousness or restricting life, but about protecting relationship. They set boundaries that make life together possible—limits so that freedom does not become harm, and power does not become abuse.

In a world where laws are often bent to serve the powerful, the commandments remain a quiet protest. They insist that no one is above restraint, and that faithfulness is measured not by status, but by care.

The commandments do not promise a perfect society.
They offer a way to resist becoming cruel.

The leap, then, is not over others.
It is toward a shared way of life.

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May freedom find form
in just limits, held with care—
life shared, not taken.