While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. Numbers 15:32
To pay the bills in college, I waited tables at an Italian restaurant where we served wine, poured from a box kept back in the cooler. I remember the first time I poured myself a glass of wine back in the cooler, slugging it down. It felt wrong. I didn’t even like wine, but I liked the alcohol. I told myself that my employer let us drink soda while working. This isn’t any different. Still, I knew it was wrong and unhealthy. But it felt good, and I wanted it, so I repeated the behavior on my next shift. My conscience didn’t protest as much the second time. Soon, I was secretly drinking a glass of wine during my shift and then another when I was done. By the tenth shift, my conscience went silent. It was almost a relief not to feel bad about it and I never suffered any direct consequences. Still, the lax attitude I developed toward chemicals later turned into an opioid addiction, in no small part because I’d silenced my conscience towards alcohol. My conscience was trying to save me from myself, but I ignored it so much that eventually, it just stopped working.
Today’s passage illustrates what happens when we deliberately ignore right and choose to do wrong. In the story, God repeatedly warned the Israelites not to labor on the Sabbath. He’d cautioned them of dire consequences. Still, one ill-fated man went out to gather sticks on the Sabbath. This may seem like nothing to us, but in this context, the act was a willful defiance of God. This man knew he wasn’t supposed to do it. He understood it was wrong. Somewhere along the line though, he stopped concerning himself with God’s will. Perhaps he’d gotten away with private sin often enough that he thought God would never respond. His conscience, which should have saved him, was silenced and so, he deliberately defied God – and was promptly stoned to death for it.
The story offends my sensibilities. It seems awfully severe that God would have someone killed for picking up sticks. The sticks weren’t the issue though. The issue was the deliberate defiance of God. I’ve been there. In my addiction, I abused my conscience so much that I just didn’t care about right and wrong anymore. I cared only about the drug. Living in faith and recovery now, has meant that God has breathed life back into my conscience, renewing my mind. Just as I can deafen myself to God’s voice by ignoring it, I can heighten my sensitivity to his voice by listening to it. Ignoring God’s voice is disaster. Following his will is life. So, daily, I must exercise my ability to listen to that voice, doing what I know to be right.