The Sweetness of the World Is the Poison of the Soul
The Wise Man: O snare and trap laid in darkness, do I not know that all the things you have named to me, and you yourself, are like the trees said to have stood by a lake where Sodom once was? Those trees were fairer, more shaded, more comely than any trees on earth, yet whoever tried to search within them found rot, and in their fruit corruption, smoke, and bitterness. But you carry a bitterness far worse and far more poisonous, for the fruit of those trees only embitters the taste, while your poison, by sweetening the taste — that is, the desire of the flesh — kills the soul. For this all men ought to cry out to you: „O world, who are honey mixed with gall!”
Think Not That You Will Ever Form a True Friendship with the World
The World: I marvel greatly at your simple and small mind: how can you tell me I am honey mixed with gall? Whom have you ever heard say, „Oh, that I might die,” merely from weariness of the world? Ah, I know — you will tell me you know many such, and have heard many speak so, but I know the reason: not because of my wickedness, but because of the narrowness of their minds, which cannot bear or endure the smallest sorrow. But the one of sound judgment and whole mind will never speak so, nor ever mention such a thing. For who could hate his own nurse, not to say his own mother? For, as I have told you before, I count all men as my children; I nurse them as infants and care for them as my own offspring. And when I tend them so, and shield them from every harm, how, in what way, and who would wish to part from me? For I am good and gentle to all, and in all things. And who desires to part from what is good? And because I love them, they feel my friendship — and who would wish to become a stranger to his friend? No one! Behold, then, I am worthy to be desired and loved.
The Wise Man’s word is no figure of speech but a physician’s diagnosis: the poison that kills is not the one that embitters the taste, but precisely the one that sweetens it. So it was with the fruit by Sodom — fair to see, ash and rot within — the old icon of every pleasure offered to the senses before it has passed through the judgment of the mind. Saint Isaac the Syrian says that the sweetness of sin is felt only as long as its touch lasts, while its bitterness remains in the soul long after the body has forgotten it; this is why Scripture calls the world „honey mixed with gall” — not because it lies about the first taste, but because it hides the end.
The World defends her cause with the oldest and most effective of arguments: not her own wickedness, but the weakness of those who complain of her. It is the same device by which temptation disguises itself as a benefactor — „the fault is not mine, but your narrow mind.” Saint John Chrysostom observes that the world need not lie outright; it is enough for her to call herself mother, nurse, friend — words that belong by right to the Church — so that man no longer sees where he has strayed. A true mother gives birth unto everlasting life; the world’s nursing feeds with a milk that keeps only the appetite awake, until the soul, gorged on sweetness, starves for God.
The Apostle John is plain: „Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 Jn 2:15). And the Apostle James goes further still: „friendship with the world is enmity with God” (Jas 4:4). This is not hatred of created things — these remain good, for God made them — but the refusal to bind the soul to them as to an end in themselves. As Saint Maximus the Confessor teaches, passion lies not in the thing used but in the corrupted manner of its use; sweetness is not evil in itself, but becomes poison when man takes it for the soul’s food rather than the body’s need.
This is why the Wise Man is not swayed by the World’s gentle words, even when they sound like motherly care. Saint John Climacus teaches that whoever has truly tasted God can no longer be consoled by any sweetness that does not come from Him; and the surest sign of a false love is precisely its insistence on calling itself good, as though truth needed to praise itself. The parable of the Sodom apple remains: fair when seen from afar, ash when found up close — and, likewise, man’s only defense is not to draw near the world as to a friend, but to use it as a traveler uses the shade of a tree, without building his dwelling there.
