When a seagull swooped over my head in the supermarket parking lot recently, I remembered a day many years ago when two of my longtime friends and I managed to sneak away from work on a late spring day and made some time for a beach retreat.

We had our chairs arranged in a circle, our thermoses of coffee, snacks and other essentials within reach, and were talking about recent events in our lives, when I found myself  yelling out, “Stop that seagull!”

My voice was barely audible over the waves, but my gesturing caught the attention of a friend opposite me, who nearly flung herself out of her beach chair onto the sand to retrieve a brown bag full of bagels being dragged toward the water by a very large and brazen seagull.

He had been standing next to her chair for an hour, sizing things up, waiting for a crumb to fall, darting forward at our slightest movements, and when he couldn’t stand it anymore he charged forward, grabbed the bagel bag and had it almost out of reach before we knew what happened.

And he had friends.

One of them stood directly in front of me, almost on my feet, in a stare-down the entire morning. He seemed experienced in his attempt to weaken my resolve, as if his beady little eyes would entice me to drop a morsel or two for his benefit.

But I stayed strong, and he called for reinforcements.

Almost immediately I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye, and soon realized we were now surrounded by seagulls that seemed to be putting great effort into acting nonchalant. Nothing to see here.

But we knew what they were up to.

With seagulls, there really is no acting. Their motive is always obvious. It’s all about the food. With people, motivation is not always so clear.

The inclination to use our wiles to get what we want is strong. But in those times, when we give in to the inclination, we put aside honesty, we compromise our integrity. When we resort to cunning and deviousness, embracing “the end justifies the means,” we move away from Gospel values.

Catholic author C.S. Lewis put it this way: “Not to be, but to seem, virtuous – it is a formula whose utility we all discovered in the nursery.”

That discovery often proves to be a great challenge to living a truly Christian life, and Scripture reinforces that “guile” is no path to God.

Dire warnings about the consequences of cunning behavior are repeated in Psalms and Proverbs, but in the Gospel of John there is a delightful, even humorous story that reflects the importance for disciples to be “guile-less.”

Jesus was gathering disciples. Andrew had already joined him when Jesus also found Philip and invited him, saying, “Follow me.” Philip then found Nathaniel and extended the same invitation to follow Jesus, “the son of Joseph from Nazareth.”

Philip replied, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

When Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him, he said of this new disciple, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”

Jesus valued Nathaniel’s forthrightness because Jesus recognized that Nathaniel’s heart, and motives, were pure.

If we take the Gospel seriously, it is important for us, then, as disciples, to routinely examine our own hearts and motives to be certain our God will see the same thing in us.

As for the seagulls, there were no bagels for them that day. Don’t get me wrong, I love seagulls, but once you feed a scavenger, you will never get rid of them.

The next time we retreat to the beach, it’s bright colored umbrellas for us, bagels and a side of water pistols.

Mary Clifford Morrell is the author of “Things My Father Taught Me About Love,” and “Let Go and Live: Reclaiming your life by releasing your emotional clutter.”