A man tells his barber he's concluded God doesn't exist after witnessing widespread suffering and injustice.
1. Proyecto Misericordia is a Catholic devotional radio program that opens with the full Chaplet of Divine Mercy, led by the host and accompanied by a traditional Catholic melody.
2. The host is not identified by name in the available transcript; the program is addressed to listeners who call in at 99-88-30-10.
3. The episode's core argument is that God does not solve problems through miraculous intervention because he has chosen to act through human beings performing works of mercy — and this is why suffering exists: it creates opportunities for others to act as God's instruments.
4. The first parable: a man visits his trusted barber and formally declares that God does not exist, citing a woman left homeless by her husband, underpaid workers, children working to stay in school, and a visually impaired apple-seller whose goods were scattered by a careless passerby.
5. The client frames his atheism as a 'formal conclusion' rather than an emotional reaction, telling the barber he has decided to remove God from his life entirely starting that day.
6. After the haircut ends and the client leaves, the barber runs down the street to catch him and delivers his counter-argument: he points to a group of disheveled, unkempt young men passing by and says 'do you see? Barbers don't exist.'
7. When the client immediately protests that barbers obviously exist and those men simply haven't visited one, the barber says 'Exactly, Johnny — that is the problem. God has always been there. Those who choose not to go to him end up like those men.'
8. The host explains the theological point: just as unkempt men prove barbers are available but unused, people living without God prove God is available but unchosen — not absent.
9. The second parable follows immediately: a visually impaired girl sells apples on a busy street to earn bus fare to bring food to her sick, bedridden mother and younger siblings.
10. A careless passerby knocks over her entire display and runs away without stopping; the girl, unable to see well, gets on hands and knees to search for her apples by touch in the dirty street while praying 'God, help me.'
11. Multiple suited executives pass without stopping, each internally justifying their inaction — the host voices their thoughts: 'I am a senior executive with a reputation; I cannot be seen picking up apples in my suit.'
12. One executive, described as wearing a silk tie and a modern suit, stops, sits beside the girl, cleans each apple with his silk handkerchief, reorganizes her display, and gives her money from his wallet.
13. The girl, who has been praying aloud for God to descend and help her, hears only the man's kind voice and asks him 'Are you God?' — the host says she 'was not mistaken,' because the act of mercy made the man God's instrument.
14. The host cites the Gospel line 'what you do for one of my brothers, you do for me' as the theological foundation: God acts in the world through human mercy, not direct intervention.
15. The episode then includes a meditation on the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16), read aloud, followed by a reflection on how the rich man's sin was not his wealth but his failure to notice and respond to Lazarus's need, which was visible right at his gate.
16. The host argues that all listeners possess some good — health, faith, hope, joy, material resources — that others around them are lacking and yearning for, and asks them to identify what they have normalized that others are craving.
17. The Lazarus reflection ends with the host applying the parable to missionary work: people with faith and hope live next to isolated rural communities where the only priest arrives once a month for 10-15 minutes and has time to hear only three or four confessions.
18. The host describes elderly women in those communities whose children left for the United States five years ago and who have no one to talk to, arguing that those with faith have exactly what those women need.
19. The final segment addresses the tension between social comfort and acts of generosity, using the example of someone pressured by a parish priest to volunteer for a fundraising raffle — the host argues that the person who reluctantly says yes is not the one who 'lost' but the one God loves most.
20. The episode closes with a call to listeners to activate the 'secret code' of love that God placed inside every human being, arguing that doing so — even at personal cost — will always result in things working out.
