I'm Not an Ingrate | Rabbi David Sutton

There's a famous story with the Chafetz Chaim. He was traveling in a wagon, and the driver wanted to stop and have his horse graze in someone else's field. And he told the Chafetz Chaim, If anyone's looking, give a holler. And the wagon driver takes his horse towards the field and the Chafetz Chaim yells: Somebody is looking! And the man goes running off with his horse, and a few miles later, they start again. He starts to take him in the grass and again the Chafetz Chaim yells: Someone's looking! And again he runs away. And the wagon driver in the third time starts getting suspicious. He says: What's going on? Who's looking? And he says: Hashem is looking. That's the way the Chafetz Chaim lived his life. Someone is always looking. The Ramak, in his Sefer Tomer Devorah, invokes this concept, when it comes to preventing ourselves from sin. Without a doubt, there is nothing that God is not watching and seeing. And he also says that there's not a second that God is not pumping energy into us. So we have a one-two punch. God is standing there, כביכול, energizing us when we plan on sinning. And one might say, Can God stop us from sinning and remove the strength? And the Tomer Devorah says, Don't say, Heaven forbid, that He’s unable to withhold this benefit from the sinner, because God can, in a moment, do that. He could pull it back. And yet God is watching us, not just pumping energy into us, but watching us as it's happening. And the Tomer Devorah continues and says, God should say, Since you're sinning against me, sin with your own source of life and energy, not with mine. But God doesn't do that. And therefore, one should think to himself, I'm not an ingrate. I'm not a person that has bad Middot, it's just that we're not aware. Rav Chatzkel Levenstein says an unbelievable thought. He says: If I have somebody watching me, if I know there's a camera in the room now, I'm not going to do certain things, I'm not going to look at certain things. So why is it that I know God's watching and still I'm able to sin? And he says it's really a phenomena. It's supernatural. Because if we would really feel God is watching us, like I know my friend is watching me, we would lose our freedom of choice. That's what Rabbi Yochanan told his students, I bless you you should have fear of God like fear of humans. They said: That's it? And he says: I wish that you had fear of God like you have fear of humans. That means it's not something we naturally have. We have to work on ourselves to realize that God is watching and God is looking at us. And that's a life's work. But when you have that cognizance, that awareness that God is watching and God is looking, that gives you an ability to control yourself. And that's one of the lines in Pirkei Avot, God's watching, God's looking. So He's energizing us and He's looking to see what we're doing with that energy. Don't we want to do the right things?