Jewish Recovery Thought - Balak

"And the people began to go astray after the daughters of Moab.”

Numbers 25:1

The name of this week's reading, Balak, refers to the name of the Moabite king who battled the Israelites prior to their entry into the Land of Israel. Daunted by the divine protection enjoyed by the nation of Israel, Balak sought the advice of the wicked prophet, Bilaam. Bilaam explained that no strategy would be effective against the Israelites so long as they were connected to G-d, but that if one could lure them to turn away from G-d, they would then become vulnerable to their enemies.

Balak and Bilaam thus devised an elaborate scheme to entice the Israelites with harlots. The harlots successfully seduced many Israelite men and even led them to worship idols. It seems that Bilaam understood what many of us have learned in recovery -- that it is the pursuit of gratifying our most basic instincts that disrupts our natural connectedness with G-d.

It is particularly interesting that Bilaam specifically chose the desire for sex as the lure. It is instinct that draws us into self-will and away from the will of G-d and no instinct is more powerful or more deeply rooted than our physical, emotional, and mental drive for sexual gratification. Our sexuality touches upon almost every part of our ego -- self-esteem, the desire to be accepted, emotional security and so on.

One ought not derive a puritanical message from this story -- that sex is evil and provokes divine wrath. To do so would be to miss the point entirely. The point is that whenever we choose to selfishly pursue any kind of instinctive drive, we separate ourselves from G-d. Sex, as it were, just happens to be one of those things –- or perhaps the thing –- that most exploits our powerlessness over our own will.

Giving our life and our will over to the care of G-d, as our program suggests, can be frightening. We worry that perhaps G-d won’t take care of us and we’ll be left to fend for ourselves. In building our case, we point to all the problems we have even in sobriety. Many of us may even feel that G-d has ‘turned His back’ on us.

But our reading this week tells us that precisely the opposite is true. If we are facing an absence of G-d in our lives, we should ask ourselves where it was that we turned our back on Him and not the other way around. Did we make decision somewhere along the line to take care of ourselves rather than to let G-d do the job? Did we feel that if we left things up to G-d, he wouldn't cater to our desires as we would wish? If we look honestly at ourselves and the choices we have made, we will see that it is we who rashly chose to part ways with Him if only to be free for a while to run after more of what we want.

Fortunately, however, it is our very problem that holds for us a solution. Nothing but our own will can upset the natural state of G-d’s constant care for us and it is the surrender of our will to His that restores the natural order, allowing G-d to determine what is best for us so that we we may always receive the help and care that we need.