Catholic vs. Protestant - 2017-10-21 - Thoth Harris
There are 31 episodes in the Versus:Protestant series.
I met Thoth about 20 years ago when we were both agnostics. I met him through the University of Concordia Film department. Because of his sensitive creative nature, he has a lively sense of humour and a fresh way of seeing things. He now lives in Taiwan. • Support the CVS Podcast: https://www.patreon.com/CVS • Be a guest on a livestream: https://calendly.com/cvs-podcast
Under Construction
Under Construction
These YouTube transcripts are generated automatically and are therefore unformatted and replete with errors.
hi my name is faith Harris and this is Catholic versus Protestant tell the listeners a little bit about yourself who you are what you believe in how you came to believe it okay well I grew up in Vancouver and my parents weren't really religious but I think they experimented with a lot of different religions or beliefs and whatnot for a long time I thought of myself as agnostic and then at some point I became atheist and I was constantly reading Christopher Hitchens and looking at things from that sort of lens or that angle before I became a monotheists I was agnostic I was a nice guy then I became more and more atheistic and then I became a Satanist I actually became a Satanist really I did not know that but an atheistic Satanist which was mocking and ridiculing all religion in particular Catholicism you consider atheism Satan mystic of course but I was explicitly calling myself a Satanist most Satanists do not call themselves Satanists so if it's not that I wouldn't agree with that matter no but if it's not light it's darkness this is a very broad and general characterization of all evil did you ever dabble in Satanism not like saying I believe in Satan no and to be honest no I consider myself a Christian I don't really believe in Satan there is a satanic but I think if we hold to the idea that there is a sort of a person äj-- that is Satan then we actually do become seduced by that do you believe in good angels Michael Gabriel Raphael in an explicit sense no but there is another plane of existence definitely in terms of Satan I don't think he exists as a person as an angel is it no definitely not as an angel I think there is that power there but I think when Adam and Eve ate the apple it became that the ultimate separation and there became this sort of polarity you know it wasn't always this idea of a good and evil but Satan is in Genesis Satan is in Revelation and Satan appears all throughout the old and new testaments Jesus explicitly talks about Satan and how he's the enemy and he's the father of lies etcetera and so on so how do you reconcile that with your form of Christianity where Satan is just sort of a mythical idea well I don't know why I think Satan is not as important as a something that comes from our own anxious state but I don't think you can ignore the fact that Jesus Christ who is God incarnate talks about the dangers of Satan and how we must be on our guard against Satan Saint Paul and all the saints in the New Testament make this very clear that it's not a joke it's not just a fun idea or an outdated myth or child's fable it's a serious threat to our eternal Souls you know okay David here's how I see it I think we've been focusing for her too much on the one particular angel Satan because to me the one thing cover character of Satan is one sort of opposition figure to God that's problematic for me I think there are demons I definitely think there are demons and you believe they're eternal spirits but are we not considering them godlike then if we consider them eternal know your soul and my soul also have a beginning but no end where eternal in that secondary sense there's a problem conceptually if we consider demons to be that powerful if we consider them just as powerful as God we don't consider them just as powerful as God do you believe in an eternal punishment for the reprobate how that that's a big problem for me to write I want when we consider the words eternal what do we mean never-ending I know the meaning but eternal is constantly being confused by various religious texts because Hell doesn't really appear much but in the Old Testament where as hell is very much more portrayed in in the New Testament yeah there's a gradual unveiling of the truth of religion if you go to the Old Testament there were a lot of things that they were unaware of in terms the Train maybe the incarnation things like that they knew there was a messiah coming but they had a lot to learn and there's also Eastern religions hell's to consider as well the Buddhists hell definitely has this idea of eternal punishment but I think there's a there's a lot of avenues for redemption even from those hell's yeah that's the eastern way of thinking but from a Christian standpoint but even the Mormon Testament the Book of Mormon you have the idea that after a person is dead people can help redeem them yeah the Mormons I don't consider the Mormon as Christian because they deny the Trinity and they believe in many gods and there are many objectionable things in Mormonism that make it non Christian anti-christian but the question that I ask every guest no matter what worldview they hold is do you believe that there's a difference between the best-case scenario and the worst-case scenario for any human do we all end up with God and ultimately in heaven in a good place with God enjoying good things yes yes we do that's a heresy that we call universalism it's condemned by the Catholic Church if I know that no matter what I do on earth I will end up with God eternally blissful and happy it doesn't matter if they're a trillion to the trillion to the trillion to the trillion years of suffering that lead to that because that is literally nothing compared to all eternity of enjoying eternal bliss so I can literally do whatever I want I can explore the dark side with impunity because I know that I will eventually end up with God eternally happy and it completely undermines morality so that's why I find universalism repugnant but what's your perspective I don't think it's repugnant but you can do what you want and it doesn't matter you're gonna get the most amazing prize that you cannot do it you want okay so there are lasting consequences if you do the wrong thing oh definitely but that sounds like hell definitely I mean but do you believe in purgatory yes it's like a waiting room service between hell and heaven no it's a purification that you undergo because he can't be in the presence of God until you're perfectly purified and you're guaranteed to go to heaven there's no chance of going to hell once you're in purgatory but there's a purification that's very painful and very long but your fate is sealed for the good so what a lot of Jews believe and what a lot of Eastern religions teach is that there is a long and painful and torturous purgatory but that's the worst case scenario everyone ends up in heaven you'll just go through a purification process it may be long and painful but compared to eternity with God it's nothing yeah the criticism or the problem I've frequently considered with Catholic belief is the same sort of thing that you accused you know very slow of namely that you confess even if it's at the end of your life and you can be redeemed too as long as you show remorse that's simplifying it to a certain extent I mean you do have to do penance but I think there's much more necessary endurance to be undergone than that it definitely involves both events in this earthly life and sometime in the afterlife as well there is redemption beyond but to consider that eternal suffering is necessary is extremely pessimistic and almost you you use a word for atheism satanic because we were all we were all innocents once we were all babies once we all came from Christ we all came from God we're all created in His image do you believe in original sin yes of course because you said babies are innocent they're not innocent they are destined for hell until the baptism to me that makes no sense whatsoever the babies are innocent if that's the case why do we need baptism why do we need the sacraments why do we need prayer if babies are innocent why do you need Christianity that's that's my question is baptism a cesarean in an absolute way does it mean that if a baby is aborted that they will automatically go to hell there are many kinds of baptism there's baptism of desire baptism of blood the church never says that anyone's in Hell it only declare when someone is certainly in heaven as a saint a canonized saint but we don't know we leave it to the gods goodness in every case for example I have a sister that was not baptized she died at birth I believe in the church tells me to believe the church tells me not to despair of her salvation that God is good and that God can do whatever he wants and that he's not bound by the sacraments it's necessary to be baptized to be saved but God's not bound by that we are bound by that baptism is definitely a wonderful way into the faith but I don't think we're excluded I mean what if a person is held captive by the Taliban or for example and they decide oh well I want to become Catholic it's the baptism of desire like I mentioned earlier oh okay I see to me that that language is just needlessly complex eh no it's your intention do you want to do what the church proposes that you do because you have to realize that Jesus Christ is God incarnate he founded a church and that church is the fullness of truth of faith and morals necessary for salvation we have to avail ourselves of the sacraments we have to avail ourselves with prayer we have to submit to the Holy Father the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth the Pope and we have to we have to obey okay I agree with that yeah I have no problem with that but it's just a language to me that's incredibly complex yeah there are subtle nuances and we we always have to remember that God is good so long as we're striving to please God we're striving to keep the commandments and we're striving to obey we're not obeying like slaves and we're not demanding things from God like a mercenary we're loving God like a good son loves a good father so this is the example of Jesus Christ he's the good son that loves the good father and we looked to him and looked to how he obeyed the religion of his day yeah definitely I agree with either I wanted to ask you though I have one more thing to ask you about this before we move on to other subjects which is the parable of the laborers where the people that worked all day in the hot Sun complained when the boss gave the same wage to those who came in at the last minute and barely worked at all so this has to do with those Minna deathbed conversions that you that you spoke oh so disparagingly I think the framework within the institution makes the idea of converting too much of an AC solution perhaps okay I see what you're getting it you're getting at the sincerity of the conversion yeah for sure God's not stupid he's gonna see through that okay what is the brand or denomination of Christianity that you subscribe to if any I think if if I had to choose an institutional form Lutheranism okay and how long ago did you convert to monotheism four years ago three or four years ago okay and have you attended any church services in lutheran churches or other churches yeah in lutheran churches my I have been at my mother's Catholic Church she is Catholic okay she's a practicing Catholic yes that's right she went back to Catholicism in her fifties so there's been about 20 years since she went back to Catholicism did your mother's conversion back to her childhood faith did that affect you spiritually I don't think it has because she didn't talk a lot about it as I was growing up okay perhaps the best way to frame my religious experience is with a lot of what what I've been reading recently and what inspires me what inspires me about faith what inspires me about nature I just started reading Ralph Waldo Emerson recently this idea of transcendentalism it's just incredible his ideas about nature just make me so drunk you know you can get a drunk with ideas perhaps I can find a to the attentive eye each moment of the year has its own beauty and in the same field it be holds every hour a picture which has never seen before and which shall never be seen again the heavens change every moment and reflect their glory or gloom on the plains beneath the state of the crop in the surrounding farms alters the expression of the earth from week to week the succession of native plants in the pastures and roadsides which make the seven o'clock by which time tells the summer hours we'll make even the divisions of the day sensible to a keen observer the tribes of birds and insects like the plants punctual to their time follow each other and the year has room for all by watercourses the variety is greater in July the blue haunted area or pickerel weed blooms in large beds in the shallow parts of our Pleasant River and swarms with yellow butterflies in continual motion art cannot rival this pomp of purple and that's one passage that really really gets me and I see God in nature everywhere and in habits of animals and in my cats I have four cats and the boundless loves that the animals can show us and which tragically stupendously we really do not respond to sufficiently you know the cruelty that would show nature that we show towards animals is unbounded to me that is the satanic the skinning of animals alive the factory farms which treat living beings like garbage the scarring of nature the the brutal torture of waterways and forests is beyond is there you must like our new pope I have mixed feelings to be honest I love his energy his is positivity but I sometimes think that he's too tolerant perhaps what do you think of Saint Francis of Assisi from what I understand he was a lover of animals so what a great saint to be named after they are the flowers of France Saint Francis is definitely always on on my mind to read yeah so do you believe that we have access to those things that are transcendental or do you believe like Conte and Manuel Conte that we don't have access there's the new monel world in the phenomenal world and we're sort of stuck in the phenomenal world we definitely have access and it's at our own human failings that we should blame for not having that axis it seems to me the the Christian mystics would be right up your alley then which ones well st. Teresa of Avila's st. John of the Cross there are many famous museums my mother my mother was trying to turn me on to reading I think it was Aquinas yeah yeah he's he's a mystic so I will definitely get around to reading that but I read some Rene Girard who's that he is Catholic intellectual from France okay he's the one who came up with the scapegoating being the result of such mimetic violence it's an incredibly fascinating and quite relevant critique of modern violence as well as ancient violence so many artworks and so many current events could be analyzed using his theories of memetic violence yeah he's definitely when one of the big influences on my recent thinking and as a Catholic you should definitely read him he's he's absolutely fascinating interesting this sort of segues into prayer what is your prayer life like are you striving to make progress in prayer struggling i I would not say I have a regular schedule or even a ritual not not in a traditional sense I don't kneel down on the floor as a ritual I don't do anything like that but when I'm going through anxiety for example when I'm driving my scooter trying to get to the train station and there's so many bad drivers around me I have incredible sir nervousness and anxiety I pray but this kind of prayer that I do is not praying for my own safety or anything for my own benefit it's more thinking showing thanks to God just allowing me to be here to experience life forgiving existence do everything that's amazing before petition comes we need to acknowledge that God is good and God is a source of every good and to thank him in to love him yes I totally agree answers on a question of appreciation and I think you're pretty advanced in your prayer life if you're jumping right to praise and thanksgiving I hope so but you know the Catholic teaching is that every time you raise your thoughts to God that is prayer yeah that's my idea too yeah since your conversion what percentage of everyday are you aware that you're a creature of but I guess this is what the east calls mindfulness yeah I really wish I was at even 50% but I believe I met only 15 or 20 percent I'm I don't believe that I met at a level that it should be and I'm glad that you bring up Eastern religion because I actually think that it has ironically helped me become Christian yeah for sure not because it's as an opposition to any Eastern religion on the contrary I think Eastern religions are just as much a valid experience that comes from God as our Christian religions yeah there's truth everywhere it's not just a matter of that I mean most of the major religions and I won't get into Islam today because I don't have a good conception of them I actually have a lot of negative feelings about them about is Islamic religions that's as much as I will say at this point but other Eastern religions like that with some and Confucianism and so forth often come out with the same sort of positive reinforcements that judeo-christian traditions express themselves as well you know the honoring of your father honoring of the mother and doing unto others as others would do enter you the Confucian version of that is it's almost the same you know so it all comes down to the point in Genesis where God scattered Babylon the Tower of Babel was was destroyed and all the languages and all the cultures were dispersed and so now we have so many different varieties of religion and that I think the religion aspect of that is similar to languages it's just another expression of human aspiration towards heaven are you a fan of CS Lewis I have not written the reason I asked and the reason I recommend it is because he converted to God and he he hesitated between Hinduism and Christianity that gave me a deeper respect for Hinduism when I heard about his conversion story and I've since interviewed two Hindus and I have to say I was very moved by their love of God what do you think of the Sikh idea of being reincarnated into another human I might be wrong about that but am I correct they believe that yeah they believe that I really like the idea it fascinates me and I often think it might very well be the case I so often feel like I've lived this life before again and again and again it's an eerie feeling right and people say oh like Nietzsche's eternal return and say no this cheapening is it's something else but I don't think I would consider myself a Sikh but I wouldn't doubt that there's a possibility of that I categorically deny the possibility of reincarnation because my church tells me so we live one life and then the judgment so it's contradicted by the Holy Scriptures now I don't lean on the Scriptures alone I lean on a church which gave me the scriptures which interprets the scriptures for me as st. Augustine famously said in which I love repeating to no end I would not believe the Scriptures if it were not for the authority of the Holy Roman Catholic Church so this brings me to the question of authority what is the authority by which you give assent to Christian truths and Christian doctrines is there any authority or is it your own private judgement there is the religious texts however we have to realize that they have been translated and passed on again and again and again even at some points changed or gone through revisionism or parts of them destroyed or even distorted or you never know I but then there's also points of the scriptures that do ring true and this goes with any story that we feel has a sincerity about it and so even even a contemporary literature if it has sincerity it's like the words of any prophet you know do you think that the Holy Scriptures are different because God is their primary author or do you think that they're just a collection of writings that have been translated mistranslated distorted and they're they're no better or worse than any other collection of edifying writings you know we don't know for sure but I know for sure I know for sure because the church tells me that the Bible is divinely revealed by God that God is the primary author of scripture in its original form not in its translate what the church says about the translations that come down to us is that those Bibles that get the stamp of approval by the Catholic Church there's nothing here in this translation which is offensive to the truths of the Catholic faith concerning faith and morals it doesn't mean that it's a perfect translation it doesn't mean there's not room for improvement it doesn't mean that we can't find older manuscripts that will help us make better translations it's just saying there's nothing here that bars us from reading this there's nothing here that contradicts the faith and that's why we need oral tradition that's why we need a living Magisterium that can tell us what to believe and what not to believe and where we're right where we think that we're wrong and where we're wrong where we think with it we're right in my religion there's a Canon of Scripture there's 73 books and those books alone have God for the primary author and public revelation ceased with the death of the last apostle john and any private revelations that come now we were not obliged to believe them even Our Lady of Lourdes Our Lady of Fatima Our Lady of Guadalupe we're not obliged to believe any of that when the church approves of an apparition were allowed to but we don't have to believe any of these private revelations but we do have to believe and conform ourselves to the public revelation which is Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition when it comes to doctrines like let's say the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist how do you come to decision if that's true or false I don't really have any opinion on that matter don't you think it's kind of important to find out because Jesus Christ said in John 6 you will have no life in you unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood I don't feel I'm particularly qualified to judge that okay I can give you lots of places to start in terms of research if you look at the early church fathers in the 1st century the 2nd century or 3rd century 4th century 5th century you'll see very Catholic descriptions of the Eucharist the mass all of the Catholics teachings so a lot of people come into the Catholic faith because they thought that the early church was Protestant and then they go back to look at it and they realize it's thoroughly Catholic there's a three-volume set by jury Ekans called the faith of the early fathers and he can learn a lot by looking at that so we've talked about prayer we've talked about your conversion it was there anything else that you wanted to talk about yeah this can do a discussion about certain aspects of the of the Old Testament I'm really I'm really fascinated by some some of the books just just just to start off what are your favorite books from the Old Testament Genesis Exodus I love Joel I love a lot of the prophets I'd say my my weak point is the historical books just because I'm not I don't tend to grasp stories about history sometimes they're a little bit either obscure or they seem needlessly violent I think Joshua and proverbs might be my least favorite to read they're heavy heavy and repetitious I actually quite liked Chronicles but my favorite stuff like you mentioned Joe that's just incredible incredible poetry it's just I could just read that again and again and again there's also the book of Esther and of course Psalms or you know there's some that have been set to music you know like with all these psalm 126 you know it's such incredible music and and when you go back and read the psalm em it's like oh my goodness it's just unbelievable how I'm moving at this my favorite song is Psalm 50 where David repents of his sin with Bathsheba look it up here it might be 51 I don't know how the numbering works 50 is the Mighty One God try 51 off if you're white make it have mercy on me Oh God that's it have mercy on me O God according to your unfailing love according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin for I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me against you you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge surely I was sinful at birth sinful from the time my mother conceived me surely you desire truth in the inner parts you teach me wisdom in the inmost place cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean wash me and I will be whiter than snow let me hear joy and gladness that the bones you have crushed rejoiced hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity create in me a pure heart O God and renew a steadfast spirit within me do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me then I will teach transgressors your ways and sinners will turn back to you save me from blood guilt Oh God the God who saves me and my tongue will sing of Your righteousness Oh Lord opened my lips and my mouth will declare your praise you do not delight in sacrifice or I would bring it you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit a broken and contrite heart O God you will not despise in your good pleasure make Zion prosper build up the walls of Jerusalem then there will be righteous sacrifices all burnt offerings to delight you then bowls will be offered on your altar mmm it's incredible I can't believe that when passed me by it because I underlined so many passages in Psalms but that one really is it's something did you want to read any more passages that you like oh yeah they're phony okay here here's I mean it's not poetic and beautiful in a way that Psalm 51 I just read is but you know in Shakespeare's Macbeth you know at the ending when the rebels were fighting against Beth are led by the man who is born of no woman supposedly and I mean that that's almost an idea that's opposite of Jesus I mean not a Antichrist but Jesus was born of a virgin but there's no father supposedly other than God Macbeth's nemesis was supposedly born of no woman but here's the interesting thing he and his soldiers carry branches from the trees of Birnam woods macbeth thinks that the whole forest is attacking him but there is a passage and judges that that comes from you know it's judges 946 on hearing this the citizens in the tower of Shechem went into the stronghold of the temple of El barrese when abemolik heard that they had assembled there he and all his men wind up on Zelman he took an axe and cut off some branches which he lifted to his shoulders he ordered the men with him quick do what you have seen me do so all the men cut branches and followed a black they piled them against the stronghold and set it on fire over the people in sight so all the people in the tower of Shechem about a thousand men and women also died next album Ellis went to Sabbath's and besieged it and captured it inside the city however it was a strong tower to which all the men and women all the people of the city fled they locked themselves in and climbed up on a tower roof abemolik went to the tower and stormed it but as he approached the entrance to the tower to set it on fire a woman dropped an upper millstone on his head and cracked his skull hurriedly he called to his armor-bearer draw your sword and kill me so they can't say a woman killed him so his servant ran him through and he died when the Israelites saw that a butler was dead they went home that's God repaid the wickedness that abemolik had done to his father I murdered murdering his 70 brothers God also made the men of Shechem pay for all their wickedness the curse of with some son of jerubbaal came on them it's not it's not clearer to me in Macbeth whether it's supernatural or purely psychological I think it's probably more psychological I mean it Macbeth was extremely paranoid at the end of the play and he also was susceptible to extremely strange beliefs and no it's like doing anything he could to destroy the enemy so this brings to mind the sort of notion of clarity and vision because when we're in the darkness were subject to fear and paranoia like you said and madness and since your conversion to God have you witnessed in your own heart and mind a sort of clarity where now you can look at Bible passages and see them completely differently and even look at moral situations in the world well maybe you thought before that this was acceptable that was acceptable but now that you have God in your life are you pro-choice or pro-life and were you did that change with your monotheism yeah it did change actually I don't consider myself so strictly pro-life that I would try to change the government's view on it or try to force anybody else to change their view on I know that the Catholic Church says very strictly life begins at conception and certainly a life technically does begin there but in terms of consciousness and soul or spirits becoming part of the body I don't know for sure of course but I think that if we say that consciousness is present in the body there is definitely no question that you're destroying the human life you have to be more discerning about what you do and I think to say that oh just you because you're men you cannot have a say in this is a bit specious but it's not only a matter of allegiance to gender I mean that's a life is a life and the fact that there's a conscious being there makes a big difference and a conscious being to have a sense of conscience a chance to experience the world even if it is inside the womb the early church did go back and forth about when exactly the soul was infused into the body but the church eventually decided dogmatically that it's at the moment of consent I don't have any qualms about that if that's what you believe but the fact that the hierarchy has such power power over institutions and children and you know aboriginals in Canada and so far that that's been a big issue what do you feel about that as st. bernard famously said the church is black but beautiful she's ugly and disgusting when you look at her from the outside but once you're inside and once you're able to distinguish the baby from the bathwater the baby is beautiful and the foul and disgusting bathwater is all due to sin both actual sin and original sin and none of it can be pinned on the baby who is Jesus Christ so there's a real clear distinction in my mind between the good parts which all come from the God and the bad parts which all come from sin and I feel the same way in my day to day life when I do something good I don't get any of the credit and when I do something bad I get all of the blame now I can share some of that blame with my parents and my entourage and you know Satan and so on and so forth but when it comes to my judgment I will be judged for the the evil that I consented to even though it was presented to me on a silver platter by my friends and family or society at large or the movie that I watched or the music that I listened to it doesn't really matter when it comes down to it we're all subject to temptation and the trick is to not take pleasure in that temptation and not give way to that temptation and fall into sin and the people in the hierarchy are no different Pope Francis and all his entourage they're men they're sinners they're in need of a savior they're not infallible personally the office of is infallible the man himself is not infallible so what is the definition of office in at the point then when you sit on the chair of Peter and you you define in a very structured and clear way that this is a teaching for all of the universal church to assent to and to obey that is invoking the charism of infallibility papal infallibility when he teaches in union with all the bishops for the whole world to believe now if we can find an example of this in in the Bible where Jesus said of those sitting on the chair of Moses do what they say not what they do because they're hypocrites and these people are sinners like everyone else so we have an example of that where there's a chair there's an office and we can find that in the Old Testament too we have all this imagery of the passing on of the keys we have the prime minister that would be Peters role and the binding and the loosing and all these sorts of things they have direct parallels in the old law in Judaism and they continue the chair of Moses the chair of Peter it's all one continuous chain so there's no break between Judaism and Christianity as the your adherence to a Catholic faith changed your political positions or medical ideas that's all only by furnishing philosophical and theological framework the church admonishes me and the church tells me I have to care and I have to get involved if I can but I resist that calling because I hate worldly power I hate the world of one of my favorite passages in the New Testament is render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render up to God what is God's yeah thank you or or they come and adage give the devil his due yeah I really have an aversion to politics so that's a bit of a maybe a character flaw in me how about you um I think it's definitely influenced my political thinking because it's made me both more tolerant but at the same time or skeptical I used to be liberal and I guess I'd become more conservative but technically I'm actually libertarian we should listen to our hearts listen to our conscience and have respect for the world around us nature to animals and to be just what I moved by politically in the New Testament is the way Jesus treats prostitutes tax collectors and those despicable layers of the social order and I think that this does shape our outlook on life if we look at politics through the eyes of Jesus Christ I think we'll see the sort of innocent but misguided sheep with a lot of compassion and will see the wolves and sheep's clothing that are pretending to guide and care for the sheep as our main enemy so in that vein what could you say to someone to just make them feel that there is hope what would you say just to wrap up the interview what would you say to anyone that might be out there listening now life is extremely dark it's so often seemed hopeless sometimes it goes away with time but time isn't everything there are people around you sometimes it seems like they don't care but you have no idea how much your presence is going to be missed when you have a big tree in your backyard and you depend on that tree for a shade or a coolness for comfort for the birds to be near and someone cuts down that tree that tree is gone forever and the people that are responsible for taking away that tree are going to feel that same emptiness the world is so interconnected everybody needs everything everything that's there it is we all need each other with every action of bad faith we completely destroy that connection and it's it's really a terrible thing to do so let's stay together stick together no matter what tiny connection you might have it's necessary to hold on to it don't demand anything of it but if the passion is there don't be afraid to show that passion feel that emotion feel the connection that's there because we're there don't let go don't let go if you like it will do if you've got some questions see and I'll tell all you've got to do is ask all you're about to do got to do is ask all you're about to do