To answer this, I must go back in time to a different era. During the late sixties, I found myself living in a hippy commune in Oregon. When it came to counsel on how to deal with property taxes or where to get the best deal on power tools, this was a rational decision. However, it quickly became obvious that I was also being seen as a guru. This usually didn't help.
People seeking gurus are hard to discourage.
So they would just regard such pronouncements, which I meant quite literally, as some sort of cryptic master-student verity that required deep contemplation to understand. When I was 14 years old, I became enamored with a particularly smooth talking protestant minister. We became friends and he became my main adviser on growing up. At one of the practice sessions, I decided to ask him about an issue that had been puzzling me. I was dating a girl of the Roman Catholic faith.