Conclusion of this article.

On Turning Away from the Wicked

We bequeath to you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to depart from every brother who acts disorderly, and not according to the tradition which you have received from us.

(2 Thess. 3:6)

Bad associations corrupt good morals.

(1 Cor. 15:33)

§ 135. Nothing harms a person, especially a young one, as much as an evil company. For just as the treatment of the good is a school in which a person learns Christian philosophy, that is, an honest life, without books, so the treatment of the evil is the cause of extreme corruption. Even if someone is good of nature and well educated, if he is with the depraved, it is difficult and almost impossible for him not to become corrupt. For malice, like pitch, sticks and imperceptibly enters good morals and infects them.

It is said that healthy eyes, when they look at sick eyes, take harm themselves, but do not benefit them in any way. In the same way, the good one, living with the evil, spoils himself, but does not correct them. "As sick eyes," says St. John Chrysostom, "harm the healthy, and as one who has leprosy infects the clean, so the treatment of the evil corrupts and corrupts good people. And Christ commands not only to avoid them, but also to cut them off, saying: "But if thy right eye offends thee, pluck it out and cast it away from thee" (Matt. 5:29)" (Discourse on Psalm 4).

Therefore, reason, Christian, with whom you want to have fellowship; and until you know completely, do not cling to anyone, lest you fall into the abyss of perdition. It is better to live with beasts than with evil people. "Evil people," says the same St. John Chrysostom, "are more harmful than poisonous snakes: for these openly apply their poison, and they infect them every day secretly and insensibly" (In the same discourse).

§ 136. Woe to the young children who have corrupt parents! Where can they leave such parents when they are forced to live with them in the same chambers, to sit at the same meal, to watch their words, deeds and all their actions? For youth, since it is in itself inclined to all evil, requires diligent observation, good education and instruction, and instead meets it with a great evil – the poisonous temptation of parental morals. For the manners of parents are for young children, as rules, according to which they follow them; and what they notice in them, they themselves get used to.

Hence it happens that the children of evil parents are more evil than they are, and the grandchildren are even more evil, and so the evil grows until it is stopped by the judgment of God. For temptation is nothing but a fire that has intensified, and further and further stretches and devours the animate temples.

Woe to the young children from this temptation. But woe to the parents, who, instead of useful teaching, infect young hearts with an evil example, as with poison! Woe to the man through whom temptation comes, says Christ. "It would have been better for him if a millstone had been hung around his neck and drowned in the depths of the sea (Matt. 18:6-7).

"Parents," says St. John Chrysostom, "who neglect the Christian upbringing of their children, are more lawless than child-murderers. For infanticides separate the body from the soul, and they plunge both the soul and the body into hell of fire. That death, according to natural law, cannot be avoided in any way; and this one would have been possible if the parents' negligence had not been the cause of it. Moreover, bodily death will immediately abolish the resurrection; but no one can compensate for spiritual destruction" (Discourse against the Detractors of the Monastic Life, ch. 3).