Too Slick for Our Own Good

Transcript

Our culture has a certain fondness for the slick hustler who can “pull one over” on others. St. John Climacus, however, warns us of the terrible damage we do to ourselves when we fool others:

Guile is a perversion of honesty, a deluded way of thinking, a lying disposition, false oaths, ambiguous words, a dark secrecy of heart, an abyss of cunning, deceit that has become habit, conceit turned into nature, a foe to humility, a pretense of repentance, an estrangement from mourning, hostility to confession, a teacher of willfulness, a cause of falls…diabolical life.