I recall an old song by Tommy Dorsey, popular in the 1940s. You may have heard it:

There are smiles that make us happy
There are smiles that make us blue
There are smiles that steal away the tear drops
As the sun beam steal away the dew…

There are indeed many kinds of smiles! But besides the smiles listed above, there are deceitful smiles. William Blake speaks of this in his poem, “A Poison Tree”:

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles…

Blake imagines anger and wrath growing into apoisonous tree—anger and wrath “sunned with smiles and soft deceitful wiles.” So one morning the speaker of the poem finds his foe dead beneath the tree. For this foe, taken in by a smile, ate the fruit of this tree.

Now think of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In that play Claudius, who seems a pleasant enough fellow, murders Hamlet’s father, the king. Hamlet knows this and says of Claudius, “O villain, villain, smiling villain…One may smile and smile and be a villain!”

In both cases, in Blake’s poem and in Hamlet, a smile masks the heart of a murderer.

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I’ll never forget a story a good friend told me many years ago. I believe it is true, because this friend was not prone to lie or to exaggerate. He did not take drugs, he did not hallucinate, he did not drink excessively. But, like all of us, he wasn’t always wise. Foolishly, Carl prayed that God would give him a vision of evil, and his prayer was answered in this way:

One cold, dark night, driving alone on a deserted road, Carl sensed a presence. He turned to his right and thought he saw a demon seated next to him. Its coal-burning eyes were fixed on him, smiling death. Carl doubted and looked again, but the demon was real, not a figment of his imagination. Terrified, but fixing his eyes on the road before him, Carl pressed on until he reached his destination.

I wouldn’t recommend that anyone pray for a vision of evil! There is so much evil out in the open these days, anyway. But, you see, a demon’s smile is not deceitful. When a demon’s purpose is to terrify, he smiles with piercing hatred—a hard, cold, mocking smile carved on his damned face. Think of the movie Batman. Think of Joker’s smile. It is “Smiley.”

After this, Carl prayed for a godly vision. His prayer was answered this way:

One day, he visited his local butcher. This man was known to be sour and unpleasant. He hardly ever smiled. But when the butcher handed Carl a bundle of lamb chops, the man looked all smiles at him and said, “God bless you!”

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So what’s my point? There are two. First, let’s not be taken in, disarmed, or distracted by the wrong kinds of smiles; and then, knowing that there are so many kinds of smiles, let’s choose to smile on one another with a winning smile, revealing our open, generous heart.

For that is the right and godly thing to do.

Fr. Paul Martin
Annunciation & St. Paraskevi Greek Orthodox Church
New Buffalo, MI