This week’s parsha starts with the Yom Kippur service, which is to atone for free will abuse. The abuse of free will is the greatest sin about sinning. That’s why a sin changes status based on a person’s will. If they willfully sin, they are called “meizid,” and had to bring one kind of sacrifice, and if they did it accidentally, they are called “shogeg,” and brought a lesser sacrifice, because the net effect on Creation was less.
This is also why Nadav and Avihu were killed the way they were, on the inside while their bodies remained intact. Their sin was executed in the physical world, but it was punishment on the inside one (their souls were “burned” out from within them). Their act may have been correct, but their intentions were not; their wills had been off the mark.
Hence Moshe Rabbeinu told Aharon back in Parashas Shemini that Nadav and Avihu had been greater than the two of them. Because they had become so inspired to serve G-d and connect to Him on such an ultimate level that it drove them to take the risk they did. That part of what they did had inspired Moshe Rabbeinu.
But G-d had already prescribed how He wanted things to run in the Mishkan. Rules were in place, upon which thousands of years of Jewish history were going to be based. Any “free-styling” in the service of G-d from that point onward had to be within the guidelines of halachah, not above them, as the act of Nadav and Avihu had been.
Some people believe that a Torah lifestyle limits free will because it limits what you can do and how. But that’s just the yetzer hara talking, which likes to do what it feels like doing more than what our souls want to do. Everyone knows that it takes more free will to live within a system than beyond one, especially when that system goes against the yetzer hara, as the Torah is meant to do.
That means taking a look at your life, especially your “service of G-d,” and asking yourself, “What can I do better?” or “Where can I do more?” If it’s a sin we’re talking about, then the question would be, “How can I do it less?” Either way, it takes free will, and that is the whole reason for Creation…for every moment of conscious life. So we might as well heighten our consciousness of it, and use it the way G-d intended.
