A Lesson from Balaam - Rabbi Shlomo Farhi

I believe that Balaam had a very high heart. An incredible potential. But like the safer of Hinuch says, you know who a person is? A person is what they repeatedly do. You become what you do repeatedly. If you're a rasha and you do mitzvot again and again and again and again, the mitzvot will change your heart. The good in it, the light in it will bring you back to the good. What if you're a tzaddik and you keep doing bad things? For the right reasons even. Those averot will turn you. And you'll become a rasha. Doesn't matter how good of a person you you were when you started. So every day, Balaam, this is his job, he calculates the moment of God's anger and then he curses and he rains down hellfire on some guy's head, on some nation's head. I don't care what kind of soul you were born with. I don't care how good of a person God made you. If you wake up every day and you say, like Jackie Mason said, "Every day you wake up and you say, who could I sue?" Who are you going to be? Who are you going to become? And even a thing that nobody would do, drown babies, give away your own daughters for prostitution, Balaam can do. His heart had grown completely dim.