Hear

Let's pretend God clearly communicated through Scripture that, for reasons known only to him, it is wrong for his people to sit in the red chairs. So God's Torah says, "Thou shalt not sit in red chairs." The role of spiritual leaders would be to communicate this teaching to each generation, and perhaps to suggest ways that this rule could best be maintained in their particular day and age. So the next generation of religious leaders makes a suggestion: "God's people should never be within ten feet of a red chair." This "fence" is designed as a helpful tool to aid people in their desire to obey God's law, but now an insidious process begun.
The next generation inherits that new suggestion as a rule and tacks on their own "helpful" addition: "It is wrong for God's people to even look at red chairs." There, that should help people deal with the problem of temptation. Further generations add: "God's people must never be in the same room as a red chair" then "in the same house as a red chair" and so on. Eventually, most of the religious leaders' time is taken up debating whether or not it is spiritually lawful to shop at IKEA! A whole lineage of rules and regulations that God never intended thus evolves around this one topic. Sin-avoidance has been systematized, righteousness has been mechanized, and little room is left for deviation and diversity.