On the Profit of Believing, as a Trump speech

On the Profit of Believing, folks. Tremendous profit.

On the Profit of Believing, by Saint Augustine, is my favorite text, but I worry that the archaic language in any accurate translation turns most readers off. And I care more about popularity than about accuracy, so I wanted a translation that sacrificed accuracy for ease of reading. I achieved this in a funny way by converting it to a Donald Trump speech using Kagi. The base text was the English one from NPNF. Footnotes were suppressed, and so was the paragraph numbering, although I might reintroduce either at some point. I made some vocabulary changes, changing “Donald” to “Augustine”, “curious” to “nosy”, and “opinion” to “conceit”.

Illustration for this blog post, made with Nano Banana.

On the Profit of Believing

Look, Honoratus, if a heretic, a total loser, and a guy who just trusts heretics were the exact same thing, I wouldn’t say a word. I’d keep my mouth shut, believe me. But there is a massive difference, a very great difference between the two. The heretic, in my opinion—and many people agree—is a guy who makes up fake news, false and new opinions, just for his own glory and to get ahead. Selfish! But the guy who trusts these people? He’s just a victim, deceived by a fake image of truth. Very sad! Because of this, I couldn’t stay silent. I have to tell you my thoughts on finding the truth. We’ve loved truth since we were very young, nobody loves truth more than us. But these vain guys, they’re totally out of touch. They fall into these physical things and think there’s nothing else out there except what they can see, hear, and touch with their five senses. And they take these bad impressions and use them to measure the deep, beautiful secrets of truth. Total disaster! Nothing is easier, my great friend, than saying you found the truth. But actually finding it? Very difficult, believe me. You’ll see from this letter. I’ve prayed to God, strongly prayed, that this helps you and doesn’t hurt you. I’m doing this as a friend, very pious, not for fake reputation or to show off.

So here’s the deal. I’m going to prove to you that the Manichees are treating the Catholic Faith very unfairly, very rashly. The Catholics, they use authority to get you ready for God’s light. But you know, Honoratus, we only hung out with those Manichee guys because they promised us pure reason. “No authority, no terror,” they said. “Just pure reason to lead you to God.” Sounds great, right? For nine years, nine long years, I ignored the great religion my parents taught me. Why? Because these guys said we were being superstitious. They said, “Don’t have faith before reason, we’ll give you the facts first.” Who wouldn’t be enticed by a deal like that? Especially a smart young guy like me, who wanted the pure truth and was tired of old wives’ tales. But why didn’t I fully join them? Why did I stay just a “Hearer” and keep my worldly hopes? Because I noticed they were all talk. Great at attacking others, very nasty, but terrible at proving their own points. Weak! But what about me, a Catholic Christian? I’m back now, drinking it all in, very thirsty, crying and groaning to get that life and safety back. And you? You weren’t even a Christian, you hated them, but you got sucked in by their huge promises of reasons. They talked so much, very vehemently, about the errors of uneducated people. We thought we had to believe them because we didn’t have anything else. It’s a trap! Like sneaky bird-catchers putting sticky stuff by the water to catch thirsty birds. They block the good water so you have to fall into their trap. Very unfair!

I could hit back at them, believe me. I could use all the sarcasm and wit in the world against these teachers. But I’m putting this in the letter to tell them to stop the nonsense. Let’s debate the real issues. Cause with cause, reason with reason. When someone leaves them, they always say, “The Light made a passage through him.” Give me a break! So empty. Anyone can see through that. I’ll let you figure that out, you’re smart. I wasn’t full of light when I was chasing the world—beautiful wives, rich pomp, fake honors, all those deadly pleasures. I wanted all of that when I was listening to them! And they didn’t teach me that, they actually said to avoid it. But now, when I give up all that shadow stuff and just eat healthy, they say I lost the light? But when I loved that bad stuff, I was shining? These people have no idea what they’re talking about. But let’s get back to business.

You know the Manichees trick the uneducated by attacking the Catholic Faith, especially tearing up the Old Testament. They have zero understanding of it, none. They don’t know how beautifully it works for young souls. And because there are some things in it that confuse careless people, they attack it publicly. But you can’t defend it publicly to a huge crowd because of the deep mysteries. The few smart people who can defend it, they don’t like public shouting matches. So nobody knows them unless you really look. So listen to me about this Manichee recklessness. I hope you take this well. God knows I’m not doing any evil tricks here. I just want to prove the truth. We’ve wanted this for a long time. I’m very anxious, because it was easy to make mistakes with you, but very hard to get on the right path with you. But I know God won’t fail me. I pray day and night. My mind’s eye is a little wounded from past bad habits, I admit it, I cry about it. It’s like opening your eyes after being in the dark, the light hurts, especially the sun! There is a tremendous good in the soul, and I’m not worthy of it yet. But God won’t fail me if I’m honest, if I love truth, and if I’m worried about you getting scammed.

So, the Old Testament, great book, is handed down in four ways: history, etiology, analogy, allegory. Greek words, folks! Don’t call me silly for using them. That’s how I got it, that’s how I’m giving it to you. We don’t have English words for this stuff. If I made them up, I’d look really stupid. History is what happened or was written. Etiology is the cause, why it happened. Analogy is how the Old and New Testaments agree perfectly. Allegory is when things are written but mean something else, a figure.

Jesus Christ and His Apostles used all of these. Tremendous. History? Jesus said, “Haven’t you read what David did when he was hungry? Ate the special bread.” Etiology? Jesus said Moses allowed divorce “because of the hardness of your heart.” Gave a reason for the times. Times change, folks, God’s Providence is amazing.

Analogy? It shows the Testaments agree. But the Manichees, what do they say? “Oh, the Scriptures were corrupted by fake falsifiers.” Weakest argument ever! I always thought it was weak, even when I was with them. You thought so too! It’s shameless, totally careless. They have zero copies to prove it. If they just said, “We don’t believe the writers,” that would be one thing. That’s what they do with the Acts of the Apostles. Unbelievable! It’s not just unwise, it’s stupid. That book has great stuff, but they reject it and call it fake. Why? Because they want to say their founder, Manichæus, brought the Holy Spirit! But the Acts of the Apostles says the Holy Spirit already came. So they call it fake news. They claim people falsified the books before Manichæus to mix Jewish law and the Gospel. But they can’t say that about the Holy Spirit, unless they think people predicted Manichæus was coming! We’ll talk more about the Holy Spirit later. Back to the point.

So we proved history, etiology, and analogy in the New Testament. Now allegory. Our Redeemer used allegory from the Old Testament. “This generation seeks a sign, only get the sign of Jonas. Three days and nights in the whale, so shall the Son of Man be in the earth.” Paul the Apostle, great guy, used allegory for the Exodus. “Our fathers were under the cloud, passed through the sea, baptized into Moses. Drank from the spiritual Rock, and that Rock was Christ!” Beautiful. But God wasn’t happy with most of them, they failed in the wilderness. “These things were figures of us,” Paul says. Don’t be lustful, don’t worship idols, don’t commit fornication—twenty-three thousand fell in one day! Don’t tempt Christ, don’t murmur. “All these things happened in a figure, written for our admonition.” Paul also has another allegory the Manichees love to talk about. Galatians. “Abraham had two sons, one of a bond-maid, one of a free woman.” Flesh versus promise. “Spoken by way of allegory.” Two Testaments. Mount Sinai is bondage, Agar. But the Jerusalem above is free, the mother of us all. Tremendous!

These very bad people, truly evil, while they try to get rid of the Law, they actually force us to approve these beautiful Scriptures. They look at what’s said, that people under the Law are in bondage, and they keep repeating that one quote, “You are made empty of Christ, all of you justified in the Law; you have fallen from Grace.” We say, okay, we grant that all these things are true, and we say the Law isn’t necessary anymore, except for the people who really need the bondage—the fools, frankly. The Law was enacted very profitably for this, because people who couldn’t be stopped from sinning by reason needed to be restrained by a tough Law, with threats and terrors of punishments that even fools can see. But when the tremendous Grace of Christ sets us free, it doesn’t condemn the Law, it invites us to finally obey its love, not be slaves to fear. Grace itself is a free gift, which these losers don’t understand came from God, because they still want to be tied up by the Law. Paul rebukes them, very strongly, as unbelievers, because they don’t believe that now through our Lord Jesus we’ve been freed from that bondage, which God put there for a certain time, very justly. That’s why the Apostle says, “For the Law was our schoolmaster in Christ.” He gave them a tough schoolmaster to fear, and later gave a Master to love. And yet in these rules of the Law, which Christians don’t use anymore—like the Sabbath, or Circumcision, or Sacrifices—there are huge, tremendous mysteries. Any pious person gets it. There’s nothing more deadly than reading it totally literally, word for word, a disaster! And nothing better than unveiling it in the Spirit. “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” That’s why “the veil remains in reading the Old Testament, not taken away; since it is made void in Christ.” Christ doesn’t void the Old Testament, just the veil! So through Christ it gets laid bare, which without Him is totally obscure. The Apostle adds right away, “But when you pass over to Christ, the veil shall be taken away.” He doesn’t say the Law is taken away. Not useless things hidden there, but the covering was taken away. If you look at it piously, not like these shameless rioters, you see the order, the causes, and the tremendous agreement of the Old and New Testaments. No jot left behind! The haters who condemn it before learning it, they are truly wretched. Sad!

But, skipping the deep stuff for a minute, to deal with you like a great friend; using my own tremendous power, not just wondering at the so-called “experts”; there are three kinds of errors when people read. Three kinds. Number one: you think something false is true, but the writer didn’t even think that. Number two, not as big but still very bad: you think something false is true, and the writer actually thought it too. Number three: you get a great truth from it, even if the writer had no idea. That’s a great deal, maybe the whole fruit of reading. Example one: someone reads Maro and thinks Rhadamanthus is judging dead people in hell. Wrong on two levels! He believes fake news, and thinks the writer believed it. Example two: Lucretius says the soul is just atoms and dies. If you believe that, you’re a loser, even if Lucretius believed it. What good is it to agree with a guy who’s totally wrong? Example three: Epicurus praises continence, and you think he’s all about virtue. Epicurus was all about bodily pleasure, terrible guy, but you didn’t fall for his bad opinions, you just got a good message out of it. That’s actually very smart, very worthy of a man. Like if someone told me a friend loved his childhood innocence, and I praised him for it, even if the guy just liked playing games and eating. Nobody would be angry with me for finding the good in it. A just judge would say, “Augustine, you did a great job finding the positive when you could have thought ill.”

And, this being so, look at the Scriptures. Same thing. Sometimes a guy writes great, people don’t get it. Sometimes both are bad. Sometimes the reader gets it, but the writer was a disaster. I don’t blame the first guy, I don’t care about the last guy. The best kind, the absolute best, is when the writing is perfect and the readers get it perfectly. Very rare! Sometimes the reader gets a good sense, maybe better or worse, but still good. But when everyone agrees and it’s perfect for life, that’s the ultimate truth. No room for error. But it’s hard to know exactly what a dead writer wanted. You can’t just ask them. But if their writings have helped millions and millions of people, you gotta believe they were good people.

So I want them to tell me, what’s the problem with the Catholic Church? If it’s the first error, big charge, but easy to defend. We just say, “Wrong, we don’t believe that.” If it’s the second, also big, but we beat them easily. If it’s the third, no charge at all! Look at the Old Testament. Do they say it’s good but we read it wrong? They don’t even read it! Do they say it’s bad and we read it wrong? We already proved them wrong. Do they say we read it good but it’s actually bad? That’s just attacking dead people because they can’t beat us! I believe those men were great, truly divine. God commanded that Law. I could easily convince anyone with a fair mind. I’ll do it later when you’re ready. But for now, isn’t it enough that I wasn’t scammed?

I swear to you, Honoratus, and to God, there is nothing more prudent, more beautiful, more religious than the Old Testament kept by the Catholic Church. You’re surprised, I know. We used to think differently. But it’s total foolishness—we were just kids—to abandon the great teachers and listen to these haters who declared a bitter war on the authors. Who learns Aristotle from a guy who hates Aristotle? Nobody! Who learns Archimedes from Epicurus, who didn’t understand it at all? Total disaster. These guys attack the Law for no reason. They’re like that weak, foolish woman—you know the one—who got mad at the sun because a Manichee woman praised it, and she started stomping on the sunlight on the floor yelling, “Look, I’m trampling the sun and your God!” Crazy woman! That’s what these guys look like. They don’t understand the Scriptures, but they attack them to get cheers from the uneducated. Believe me, these Scriptures are lofty, they are divine. Total truth. Perfect for renewing your mind. You just have to approach them with respect. I could prove it, but it takes time. First I have to make you stop hating the authors, then make you love them. If we hated Virgil, we’d never understand him. We’d just listen to the haters. But because we love him, we figure it out. If a teacher can’t explain Virgil, we blame the teacher, not Virgil! We should do the same for the Holy Spirit’s writers. But no, we thought we were so smart, we didn’t even read them, didn’t get teachers, just listened to the fake news from the haters and believed thousands of phony fables. Sad!

But now I’m going to keep going with what I started, folks, if I can, and I’m going to deal with you very strongly, not to just give away the Catholic Faith right away, but to show everyone who cares about their soul—and you should care, believe me—the tremendous hope of divine fruit and finding the real truth. Nobody doubts that anyone looking for true religion already believes they have an immortal soul, a beautiful soul, that needs this religion to win, or they want to find that exact thing. So all religion is about the soul. The body? Who cares about the body after you’re dead? It causes no anxiety if your soul has what it needs to be blessed. It’s all about the soul, folks. But this soul—and I’ll tell you why later, it’s very complicated, nobody understands it better than me—it makes mistakes. It’s foolish, we see it all the time, until it gets wisdom. And maybe that wisdom is true religion. Am I giving you fake news? Am I forcing you to believe blindly? No! I’m saying our soul, which is totally bogged down in bad deals and foolishness, is looking for the truth. If that’s not you, excuse me, go share your wisdom somewhere else. But if you know what I’m talking about, let’s find the truth together.

Imagine we haven’t even heard a religious teacher yet. Brand new deal. We have to go out and find the people who know this stuff, if they even exist. Suppose we find a lot of different people, all saying different things, total disaster, trying to grab everyone for themselves. But some of them are huge. Very famous, tremendous crowds, practically everyone is with them. Do they have the truth? That’s a great question. But shouldn’t we check them out first? If we’re going to make mistakes—and we’re human, we make mistakes—shouldn’t we at least be with the biggest crowds?

But the haters and losers will say, “The truth is only with a few people.” Oh really? Then you already know what it is, if you know who has it! Didn’t I just say we were looking for it like beginners? If you guess that only a few have it, but you don’t know who they are, what if those few are so smart they lead the massive crowds? Look at the schools, folks. Do we not see how few people are actually great speakers? The schools are totally packed, overflowing with young guys. Do they look at the huge crowds of beginners and say, “Oh, I’m going to study the losers instead of the great Tullius?” No! Everyone wants the best, the stuff our great ancestors confirmed. Millions of people try to learn it, very few get it, even fewer use it, and only the absolute best become famous. What if true religion is like that? What if millions go to the Churches, but that doesn’t prove nobody gets perfect? If we only had as many teachers as there are perfect speakers, our parents would never send us to school! We follow the big crowds to learn things only a few can master. Why wouldn’t we do the same for religion? You’re risking your soul, folks! If the absolute best worship of God is with a few, but it’s agreed upon by the massive crowds—and it happens, believe me—what do we say when people call us foolish for not looking there? “I was scared of the big crowds?” Give me a break! You weren’t scared of the crowds when you went after money, or winning, or good health, or a great life! Everyone wants those, few get them, but the numbers didn’t stop you!

“But they said crazy things there,” they tell me. Who said that? The enemies! The fake news! For whatever reason, they’re enemies. “I read it myself,” you say. Really? You wouldn’t even try to read a tough poetry book without a teacher. You need Asper, Cornutus, Donatus, all these guys, just to understand a poet who wants applause in a theater. But these sacred books, which the whole world agrees are totally divine, you just rush in without a guide? You dare to judge them without a teacher? And if you see something that looks crazy, you blame the book instead of your own terrible, corrupt mind? You should be looking for someone very pious, very smart, highly recommended, to teach you. Was he hard to find? You should have looked harder! Not in your country? Travel! Cross the ocean! Go to the places where these tremendous things actually happened! Did we do that, Honoratus? No. We were foolish kids, condemning the most holy religion—which has taken over the whole world, by the way—based on our own terrible judgment. What if the confusing parts in the Scriptures are there on purpose? To make us look harder for the hidden meaning? People do it with poets all the time, finding deep meanings in things that look totally inappropriate.

Is there any law stopping us? Any bad reports? Any secret weird stuff? No! Nothing! All the laws, divine and human, say we can look into the Catholic Faith. The laws love it. Nobody is threatening us. The highest ranks and powers are totally devoted to this divine worship. The name is the most honorable, the most famous. What is stopping you from looking into it carefully, to see if this is the pure truth that all the nations are cheering for?

So, like I said, if we’re looking for a religion to clean up our souls, we have to start with the Catholic Church. It’s huge. More Christians there than Jews and idolaters combined. Now, there are some heretics, total frauds, they all want to be called Catholic, they call everyone else heretics. But there is only ONE real Church, everyone knows it. It’s the biggest, and the smartest people say it’s the most truthful. But the point is, there’s one Catholic Church. The heretics have their own little names they can’t deny, but everyone wants the name Catholic. Even the human laws are Christian now. I’m not saying that proves everything, but it’s a tremendous start. We don’t have to worry that God’s true worship needs our help, but it’s great if we can find the truth in the safest place possible. If not, then we’ll go look somewhere else, whatever the risk.

So, having laid out these perfect principles—I should win this case right now, frankly, against anybody—I’ll tell you what I did. I left you, crossed the sea, totally hesitating. I listened to that guy they promised would be incredible, like he came from heaven to explain everything. He was just okay. Good speaker, but like the rest. I was in Italy, thinking very strongly, not about staying in that terrible sect I fell into, but how to find the truth. Nobody wanted it more than me. Sometimes I thought it was impossible, maybe the Academics were right. But then I’d look at the human soul, so smart, so full of life, and I knew the truth was there, we just needed a divine authority to show us the way. But who had the authority? Everyone claimed they did. I was in a forest, folks, no way out, total disaster. I was praying, crying, begging Divine Providence for help. Then I heard the Bishop of Milan. Great guy. He made me want to look into the Old Testament, which we used to think was terrible because of bad information. I decided to be a Catechumen in the Church of my parents until I figured it out. If you’ve been tossed around like I was, and you want to stop wasting your time, follow the Catholic teaching. It comes straight from Christ through the Apostles, and it’s going to keep going forever.

“That’s ridiculous,” you say, “everyone claims that! The heretics claim that!” I know, I know. But the heretics promise they’ll explain all the deep secrets right away. They attack the Catholics for asking people to believe first. They brag about not making you believe, just teaching you. Sounds great, right? Wrong! It’s a total scam. They have no real power, so they use the word “reason” to get a crowd. People love hearing that, they think they’re so smart, and they rush right into the poison. True religion, folks, you have to believe first. You believe, you act right, you become worthy, and then you understand. You need strong authority, or you can’t even get started.

Maybe you want a reason why you should believe before you’re taught. Easy. Just listen fairly. Tell me, why is believing bad? “Because being credulous is a fault,” you say. “Like being suspicious.” Okay, I accept that. But we also say being nosy is bad, but being studious is great. What’s the difference? You say a nosy person looks into things that are none of their business, but a studious person looks into things that matter to them. But wait! If a guy is traveling and asks everyone how his family is doing, he really wants to know, but we don’t call him “studious.” A studious person is someone who works hard to learn great things, liberal arts, making the mind beautiful. And if you just want to hear about your family once, you’re not studious. You have to want to hear it again and again. Same with being nosy. If you listen to a useless story once at a party, you’re not nosy. You just cared about it for a second. So, just like there’s a huge difference between studying something once and being a studious person, and a difference between caring once and being a nosy busybody, there is a massive difference between believing something and being a credulous loser!

You say, “Should we believe in religion?” Look, believing is one thing, being gullible—which is very bad, nobody wants that—is another. But you can’t say believing in religion is a fault. It’s like drinking versus being a total drunk, okay? If you think you can’t believe anything, you have no friends. Zero friends. Sad! If you don’t believe your friends, how are you even a friend? I don’t see it. You have to believe something at some point. You ask, “How is it not bad to believe before you know?” I’ll tell you. What’s worse: giving religion to a bad person, a total faker, or believing the great people who give it to you? You have to believe the good people. If someone gives you religion, how do you prove you’re honest? You say, “I have a good conscience, believe me, no fraud here.” But you can’t see into their soul, folks. So if they say, “Look, I believe you, but shouldn’t you believe me too? I’m giving you a tremendous benefit,” what do you say? You have to believe them. It’s a great deal.

But you say, “Give me a reason so I can follow without being crazy.” Maybe. But knowing God is a huge thing, tremendous. Do you think everyone is qualified to understand the deep, deep reasons? Very few people, believe me. Are you one of them? You say, “I don’t know.” So you want them to believe you, but you won’t believe them even once? Not fair! Even if you’re a genius, one of the few, what about the others? Do we just leave them behind? No, we don’t do that. We have to lead them step by step to the top. That’s true religion. You have to believe first, clean up your act, follow the rules—great, necessary rules. If you’re a genius, does it hurt to start by believing like everyone else? No. If you rush ahead, you set a bad example. We have to walk together safely. That’s what God wants, what our great founders wanted. If you fight this, you’re going nowhere. Even geniuses crawl on the ground without God. You need God, and you need to care about people. It’s the best way to Heaven, believe me. You can’t have friendship without trust. Why shouldn’t we trust God’s ministers when they trust us? It’s the safest way, much better than causing danger and being a bad example.

So who shouldn’t we follow? The ones who promise pure reason. They think they’re great, but they’re not. There are two good types of people: the ones who found the truth—very blessed, very happy—and the ones looking for it the right way. Then you have the losers. Three kinds. First, the ones who think they know everything but know nothing. Fake news! Second, the ones who know they don’t know, but don’t even try to find out. Third, the ones who don’t know and don’t care. Terrible. You have understanding, belief, and conceit. Understanding great things is beautiful. Belief is only bad if you believe bad things about God or get conned easily. Otherwise, it’s fine. But conceit? Very bad. If you think you know it all, you can’t learn. It’s arrogant. We owe understanding to reason, belief to authority, and conceit to error. The blessed understand and believe. The seekers believe authority. But the know-it-alls? Total disaster. If you just believe authority when you don’t know, you avoid being arrogant and wrong.

Let me ask you this. If you only believe what you know, how do kids love their parents? You can’t prove who your parents are with reason! You just can’t. You trust your mother, the nurses, the doctors. Mistakes happen, babies get switched—it’s true, it happens—but we still believe! We have to. If we don’t, family, the most sacred bond, is destroyed by total arrogance. It’s sick. If you take care of parents you think are yours, nobody blames you. But if you refuse to love your parents because you’re scared they might be fake? You should be thrown out! Believe me, if we don’t trust things we can’t perfectly prove, our whole society goes down the tubes. Total disaster.

Listen folks, I’m going to tell you something, and I think by the time I’m done, you’re going to agree with me very strongly. When it comes to religion—knowing God, worshipping God, tremendous stuff—you can’t listen to these people who tell you, “Don’t believe anything, we have all the reason, we’re so smart.” Wrong. Look, everybody knows, people are either fools or they’re wise. And when I say wise, I don’t just mean the high-IQ guys, though we love them, I mean the people who really, truly know God and live beautiful, perfect lives. Everybody else? Total fools. Sad! And let me tell you, if you’re a fool, it is much better, much safer, to just listen to the wise people instead of doing your own thing. Because if you do something and it’s not right, it’s a sin. Total disaster. Only the wise have the right reason. So the wise man? He never sins. Perfect. The fool sins all the time, unless he’s doing exactly what the wise man tells him to do. He’s like an instrument, a very good employee for the wise man. So if it’s better not to sin, all the fools out there would be doing great if they just served the wise. We do this in business, right? Buying, selling, real estate, raising kids, running your beautiful properties. You use the experts. Religion is way harder than real estate, folks. Way more sacred. So if you’re a fool, and you want a great, religious life, your only choice is to find the wise men and obey them. It’s the only way to beat the foolishness. Believe me.

But here’s a very tough question, maybe the toughest. How do we fools find the wise man? Because everybody—and I mean everybody—claims to be wise. Fake news! They all disagree on the most important things. So the fool asks, “Who is the wise guy?” And frankly, I don’t see how he figures it out. You can’t recognize something if you don’t know what it looks like. Fools don’t know wisdom. It’s not like gold or silver where you can just look at it and say, “Wow, that’s beautiful,” even if you’re broke. Physical stuff comes from the outside. But wisdom? That’s inside the brain. If you don’t have it, you can’t see it. So the fool is totally blind to it. As long as he’s a fool, he can never, ever find the wise man on his own to save him from the disaster of being a fool. Impossible.

So this huge problem, since we’re talking about religion, only God can fix it. Only God. And frankly, if you don’t believe God is there and that He actually helps us, you shouldn’t even be looking into religion. What are we doing here, folks? What are we looking for? If you don’t believe it exists, it’s a total waste of time. Nothing is more backwards than that. It’s like coming up to me, asking for a massive favor, but you think I don’t exist or I don’t care about you. Crazy! What if finding the truth is incredibly hard, and you have to work very, very strongly to get it? What if the struggle is just a workout for your brain so you can handle the truth when you get it? Look at the light—beautiful light. But if you’ve been in a dark basement, the light hurts your eyes. You can’t handle it. Or if you’re very sick, you can’t just eat a massive, beautiful steak. The doctors—and I know the best doctors—they hold you back so you don’t get sick again. If you didn’t think you were going to get better, you wouldn’t listen to them. So why would you do all this hard work for religion if you don’t even believe in what you’re looking for? That’s why the great Catholic system—tremendous majesty, by the way—got it exactly right: you have to have faith first.

So these heretics—total losers, and we’re talking about people who call themselves Christians—I ask them, what’s your reason? Why are you telling me not to believe? If they tell me to believe nothing, then I don’t believe true religion even exists. And if I don’t believe it exists, I’m not looking for it. But God, He’s going to show it to me because I’m looking. It’s written, “He that seeketh shall find.” Beautiful words. I wouldn’t even go to this heretic who tells me not to believe, unless I already believed something! Is there anything crazier than this guy getting mad at me for having the exact same faith that brought me to him in the first place? Total madness.

And get this, all the heretics say, “Believe in Christ.” Can you believe the hypocrisy? They are totally contradicting themselves. First, we have to ask them: where is this “reason” you promised? Where’s the big brain stuff? If it’s so bad to believe without reason, why are you begging me to believe someone without reason just so you can give me your reason later? Are you going to build a beautiful skyscraper on a foundation of rashness? I’m using their own words here, folks. I think it’s incredibly healthy to believe before you have all the facts, especially when you’re not ready for the facts. It preps the mind. It plants the seeds. Without it, sick souls can’t get better. And these heretics mock it, but then they have the nerve to tell us to believe in Christ. Shameless! Next, I tell them, I already believe in Christ. I know what He said is true, even without the “reason.” Is that what you’re going to teach me? Let me think about this. I haven’t seen Christ in person. So who did I believe? I believed the massive crowds, the incredible reports from nations all over the world. The Catholic Church has the biggest crowds, everywhere, all the time. Why wouldn’t I listen to them about what Christ commanded? They’re the ones who got me to believe in the first place! Are you heretics going to be better teachers? I wouldn’t even know Christ existed if it weren’t for the big crowds and the history. But you heretics? You’re tiny. Very few people, very angry, very new. Nobody trusts you. Zero authority. So what’s this crazy idea? “Trust us that you should believe in Christ, and let us teach you.” Why? If the big crowds failed, I’d just stop believing in Christ altogether before I’d ever learn from you. Such arrogance! “I’ll teach you about Christ,” they say. What if I didn’t believe in Him? You couldn’t teach me anything! “But you have to believe,” they say. Oh, so I should believe YOU? “No, we use reason.” Then why should I believe in Him? “Because of the reports.” From you or from others? “Others,” they say. So I should believe the others so YOU can teach me? Maybe, except the others told me to stay the hell away from you because your doctrines are a disaster. Deadly! You say they’re lying. So I’m supposed to believe them about Christ, but not believe them about you? “Believe the Scriptures,” they say. But if you bring me some brand new, unheard-of book, with tiny crowds and no proof, I’m not believing the book, I’m just looking at the losers handing it to me. I’m not buying it. You’re breaking your promise, forcing faith instead of giving reason. You’re going to send me right back to the massive crowds. So do me a favor, stop the obstinacy, stop trying to make your fake brand famous, and go talk to the leaders of the big crowds. Learn from them. Without them, we wouldn’t even know what’s going on. Go back to your basements and stop setting traps for the people who actually have the authority.

Now, if they say we shouldn’t believe in Christ without absolute proof, they aren’t even Christians. The pagans say that, and they’re foolish, but at least they’re consistent. But these people claim to be for Christ, and then say “don’t believe anything without perfect proof”? Give me a break. Christ Himself—and this is in the history they believe—His number one thing was getting people to believe in Him. The people back then couldn’t handle the deep secrets of God. Why do you think He did all those massive, incredible miracles? He said it Himself: He did them so people would believe. He led the fools with faith; you try to lead with reason. He demanded belief; you fight against it. He praised the believers; you insult them. If He didn’t turn water into wine—and do many other things—nobody would have followed Him. He said, “Believe God, believe also Me.” When the guy believed his servant would be healed just by Christ’s word, Christ loved it. He didn’t call him rash. Christ brought the ultimate medicine for our broken system. He used miracles to get authority, used authority to get belief, used belief to build massive, tremendous crowds, and used the crowds to build a history and a religion so strong that neither the lying heretics nor the violent nations could ever tear it down. Unbeatable.

So look, I might not be a teacher, but I’m advising you very strongly. A lot of people want to look smart, and it’s hard to tell who the real fools are. So pray to God. Pray hard. Groan, maybe even cry—if you’re into that—and ask Him to save you from the fake news and the errors, if you want a great, happy life. It’s much easier if you just obey His commands, backed by the tremendous authority of the Catholic Church. The wise man is totally connected to God. God is Truth. You can’t be wise unless your brain touches the Truth. But between the foolishness of regular people and the perfect Truth of God, you have the wise man right in the middle. The wise man copies God. The fool needs to copy the wise man. But since fools can’t understand deep reason, God gave us miracles. Right in front of your eyes! Fools love miracles. It gets their attention, cleans up their lives, and gets them ready for the real reason. We needed a man to copy, but we couldn’t just put our hope in a regular guy. So what did God do? The most beautiful, gracious thing ever. The pure, eternal Wisdom of God became a man. Incredible. He did things to make us want to follow Him, and He suffered things to take away our fear. You can’t reach the ultimate good if you’re scared of losing your money or your health. So He was born in a miraculous way, did amazing things so we’d love Him, and then He died and came back to life to totally destroy fear. And He did so much more, I could go on forever, showing us how great God’s mercy is and how high He can lift us up.

This is the best authority, believe me. It lifts your mind right off the dirt and turns you away from this world to the True God. Authority is the only thing that gets fools moving toward wisdom. If you can’t understand the deep stuff, it’s bad to be tricked by fake authority, but it’s a total disaster to just sit there and do nothing. If God isn’t running the show, forget religion. But look at the world—so beautiful, it has to come from somewhere perfect. And everybody has that little voice inside telling the good people to seek God. So we know God set up an authority, a beautiful stepping stone, to lift us up to Him. And this authority uses two things to move the fools: miracles and massive crowds. The wise guys don’t need them, sure. But we’re talking about getting the rest of you to be wise, to stick to the truth. A dirty soul can’t do it. And what’s a dirty soul? It’s loving anything other than God and your own soul. You gotta clean it out to see the truth. Trying to see the truth before you clean your soul is totally backwards. So God gives the blind man authority to get him ready and cleaned up. Miracles and crowds, folks. What’s a miracle? It’s something huge, unusual, totally beyond what anybody expects. People love it. It hits the senses. Now, some miracles just make you say “Wow.” Like if a guy starts flying. Cool spectacle, but it doesn’t do anything for you. But if a guy is dying of a terrible disease, and someone heals him instantly? He doesn’t just say “Wow,” he loves the guy who did it. That’s what happened when God showed up as a True Man. He healed the sick, cleaned the lepers, made the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear. Turned water into wine. Fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread—tremendous. Walked on water. Raised the dead! Some miracles fixed the body, some were secret signs for the soul, but all of them proved His absolute Majesty. That divine authority pulled in all the lost souls. You ask, “Why don’t we see that now?” Because if it happened every day, it wouldn’t be a miracle anymore! It wouldn’t move anybody. Look at the day and night, the stars, the four seasons, the leaves falling and coming back, the incredible power of seeds, the light, the colors, the tastes. If you saw that for the very first time, your head would explode. It’s a total miracle! But we ignore it all. Not because we understand it—nobody really knows how it all works—but because we see it every day. We get used to it. So those big miracles happened at the perfect time, the best time, to build a massive, beautiful movement of believers all over the world.

But habits, folks, they have tremendous power over people’s minds. Bad habits, from too much lust, are easier to hate than to actually change. Do you think it’s a small thing that not just a few smart guys, but massive crowds of men and women in so many different nations believe and say we shouldn’t worship dirt, or fire, or anything you can touch, but only approach God with our minds? People are fasting, drinking just water, going days without food. They’re being chaste, giving up marriage, giving their estates to the poor, even being willing to die for it. Not everyone does it, and even fewer do it perfectly, but whole nations love it. Nations are saying, “We want this.” They feel bad they can’t do it themselves, but it points them to God. God did this through the Prophets, through Christ—who was incredible, by the way—the Apostles, the Martyrs who gave their blood, very tough people, and the Saints. Tremendous miracles at the perfect times. When you see this massive success, are you going to doubt the Catholic Church? It has the absolute highest authority, from the apostolic chair through a tremendous line of Bishops. The heretics, they lurk around, very bad people, but they get condemned by the people, by the councils, and by the majesty of miracles. To deny the Church the top spot? It’s either total impiety or just headlong arrogance, frankly. If you want wisdom, you need faith first. Don’t be ungrateful for God’s tremendous help. Every subject needs a teacher, so what’s more arrogant than refusing to learn the divine mysteries from the experts, and just condemning them when you don’t know what you’re talking about?

So if you’re listening to me, and I know you are, and you care about yourself, trust the good teachers of Catholic Christianity. Pray to God. He created us, He punishes the bad ones, and He’s very merciful. You’ll have the best books, the smartest Christian men, and calm thoughts to find what you’re looking for. But you have to completely abandon those wretched, wordy people—the Manichees. Total disasters. They just look for evil, and all they find is evil. They make their listeners crazy! They make them frantic. Lethargic people just sleep, but these frantic people, they’re dangerous, they attack the good people trying to help them. God didn’t create evil. He doesn’t make mistakes. He doesn’t get upset by passions. He doesn’t command sin, and He never lies. They used to tell us the Old Testament was bad—fake news! Total lies. The Catholic Church taught me incredible things that those Manichees, with their weak bodies and coarse minds, just don’t get. God isn’t physical. You can’t see Him with regular eyes. He doesn’t change. If you get that, all their fake arguments are totally overthrown. God didn’t create evil, but He saves us from it. It’s proven, very strongly. No Persian fairy tales here, folks. The truth is totally different from what the Manichees say. But look, we’ve talked a long time, longer than I planned. We’re going to end the book here. I haven’t even really started on the Manichees yet, haven’t even touched their nonsense. I just wanted to clear up the fake news about true Christians that was maliciously spread around, and get you ready for the real, divine truth. Let’s leave it here for now, and when you calm down, we’ll do the rest.