Larry Hart


Let me begin by saying I very much appreciated receiving your email, and the generous spirit so characteristic of you with which it was written. Brenda and I remember you often with many good thoughts. If this response seems a little too lengthy, please know that this is because I want to be as thoughtful as I can in answering your questions and clarifying those places where I seemed obscure in my last response.

To Judge or Not to Judge
First, as to your concerns about where I seem somewhat judgmental to you: I think, and Biblical scholarship bears this out, there is a basic difference to be found between judgement and. judgementalism. It is a difference to be found in Scripture, not in the use of different words but by the context of whatever text is under consideration. Judgement in its negative sense arises out of the fears, anxieties, resentments passions, and malice in our own heart; and is, therefore, capricious, harsh, and unpredictable in the emotional, psychological, and or physical pain it inflicts, or would like to inflict, on those it condemns. It often focuses on the trivial and inconsequential with a degree of seriousness that can become more problematic than the original issue itself; that is, the level of seriousness itself can become the larger problem. Judgement in its positive sense is something more like thoughtful discernment. It is the ability to determine right from wrong, good from evil, and health from pathology. Discernment requires a high degree of self-understanding, purity of heart (removing the planks from our own eyes) and honesty––honesty with God, ourselves, and others. What AA calls “rigorous” honesty. Of course, that I want and try to follow the path of discernment rather than judgementalism is no guarantee that I do so with any great success. Nevertheless, there is a difference between the two.

Wise Serpents and Harmless Doves
When you say you “disagree with my distinction between big and little sins,” I assume you are responding to my writing that, “The Bible makes a distinction between rather garden-variety sinners and people who are cruel and evil.” As surprising as it may seem, Scripture itself, although it does not use my casual phrasing, bears this out. Depending on which translation you use, Numbers 15:22-32 and Psalm 19:3; make a distinction between the seriousness of a sin of ignorance, mistake or unintentional, and sins that are presumptuous, deliberate, or defiant. You ask, with a humility I know you possess, “But who am I to judge another person’s level of sin?” But if we cannot see the gulf between the moral and spiritual character of say a Jean Valjean and the Thénardiers in Les Misérables; or, to use a real life illustration, between a young and wealthy man “chasing women,” as you put it, and a lecherous old sex addict pursuing porno actresses and sexually assaulting multiple women on airplanes, on busy streets, at home with his wife in the other room, and in that Bergdorf Goodman Department Store dressing room (the latter a legal fact), we are, indeed, in real trouble. Jesus once said, “Be wise as a serpent, and as harmless as a dove.” We can’t do that if we confuse naivete, permissiveness, gullibility, or even kindness with an honest and clear-eyed assessment of reality.

Calling Names or Speaking Truth
My point in noting that Jesus called Herod “that old fox” (vermin), was simply to demonstrate that being non-judgmental does not mean being too “nice” to speak the truth. However, I am not sure what you mean in using King David’s adulterous and homicidal behavior as a case for non-judgmentalism. Perhaps you mean that God loved David even though David did some terrible things. However, as you may remember, the story ends with God sending the Prophet Nathan to confront David with the evil he has done and to tell him that his sentence is that violence (the sword) will never depart from David’s own family. Sadly, for David, even though he acknowledged his wrong and sought to make amends the best he could, there were still consequences that could not be evaded. As for Moses whom you also mention as being a leader who sinned, his fate was for his life to end viewing, with longing, the promised land from a lonely mountain without being able to enter it with his people. Again, forgiveness does not necessarily mean all consequences and responsibilities are nullified. Furthermore, there is a considerable difference between the person who continuously takes his or her own moral inventory and promptly admits wrongdoing, and the person who lives in denial of their own character flaws or destructive behavior. The: “We are all guilty of wrong doing and therefore should not judge another” defense, all too easily becomes a form of both psychological and spiritual denial, the denial that even if something is factually true it is irrelevant, and that itself defies both formal logic and common sense in that, in this case, making a “judgement” (discerning) is the very thing voters are being asked to do. Finally, I am a little curious as to why, given how notorious Donald Trump is for calling people  names, you are more concerned with how someone as inconsequential as myself characterizes him, than with how someone as influential and powerful as he is characterizes and accuses the innocent.

Great Again
I have to admit I do not know what is meant by “make American great again,” or what historical period is being referred to––when America was great and when it fell from that greatness. So, I will just say, I think the Greek philosopher Heraclitus was right: “You cannot step into the same river twice.” The temporal world is fleeting, constantly in flux, its kingdoms fading, its history like a vague and swiftly passing dream. Someone may long for some past white America and worry that soon all the white people will all be a darker shade of brown. Given the global movement of people today and racial demographics being what they are, that is exactly what will eventually happen. It is statistically inevitable. However, I fail to see the tragedy in that. This is just a personal aside and expresses one of my biases, but I think being bald I would look better, be more handsome, as a man with more color. Be that as it may, nostalgia, whatever it is for, is a kind of soul sickness, a longing for an idealized past that never existed and the belief that the future can never be as good as what was. So, the best we can do is to live well in the context of the present moment. But beside not knowing what historical period is meant, I don’t know what is meant by “great.” How is the greatness of a nation to be measured? Is it measured by military power, by gross national product, by scientific and technological achievement, or by the number of its billionaires? I can tell you with absolute confidence, the American empire will not last forever––no empire does. The life of every empire is finite, and its existence can be plotted on a bell curve. That is simple historical fact. Plato (438-348 BCE) in his Republic tried to find a way around that inevitability but obviously failed. Every empire, from its inception, suffers from the congenital and morbid disease of pleonexia (greed). I think there is also another question we need to ask, “Why would anyone want American to be great?” Why not good, kind, peaceful, or just?

Competency
As to why I see Donald Trump as cruel and evil, or parallel to that why I see him as lacking the competency to serve as president. I scarcely know where to begin. The last I read, over 70,000 mental health professionals have signed a petition, saying “Donald Trump manifests symptoms of serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incompetent to serve as president. A book written by over two dozen mental health experts argues, as does his own niece who is a clinical psychologist and has hadthe opportunity to observe him “up close and personal” over a period of many years, that Trump, whether due to personality disorder and /or other mental health issues, is not fit to be the president. There are a few professionals who would argue that it is impossible to make that diagnosis from a distance. I would normally agree, especially if in regard to historical figures, say like Beethoven, but in the case of Donald Trump there is a mountain of observable evidence.

Trumps, IQ is estimated to be in the dull normal range––probably around 90. His vocabulary and verbal process, which is easier to evaluate and quantify objectively, is at about the fourth-grade level. I have come to that conclusion not only from the data I have read, but from my own experience as a public-school teacher, my training and work as a counselor in various professional settings, and from the accounts of people like Bill Barr and others responsible for briefing Trump on security issues.

As to why I consider Trump to be an evil person. In the koine Greek in which the New Testament was written there are two words for evil. The first word is kakos, which describes a thing which in itself is evil––things like cancer, a drug or gambling addiction, a spinal injury resulting in paralysis, or homelessness and hunger. The second word is poneros, which describes a person or a thing which is actively evil. The person who is poneros is the person in whose heart there is the desire to hurt or harm. The Hebrew word for “evil” is ra’ a general term denoting physical harm or personal distress, but more often refers to immoral or unethical action, to what is wicked, to what causes misery, hurt, distress, or injury, and to what is unkind and vicious––as in destructive and cruel. Although M. Scott Peck, the well-known author and psychiatrist, wrote his book People of the Lie as a psychiatric study of evil, I have always thought it harmonious with a Christian perspective. In it Peck defines evil as that which kills, diminishes, or destroys life in any of its forms––physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, or spiritual. Jesus said to certain leaders (in first century Jewish Palestine there was no real distinction between political and religious leaders): “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” You should have no difficulty in coming to a full sense of what evil is if you put the Greek and the Hebrew definitions along with Peck’s thesis together with Jesus’s words. Evil is, as M .Scott Peck’s young son announced, “live spelled backwards.” Peck calls his book People of the Lie because evil people don’t want to be found out. They want to look, to appear, good. Consequently, most of them are not found in prisons and jails. They tend, instead, to be in corporate boardrooms, political office, or ecclesiastical leadership. But one of the easiest ways to detect them is by the trail of destruction they leave in their wake. Another way to say all this, is that what matters is the pattern of someone’s life. A methamphetamine addict who is clean for a year, uses this Monday, and then stays clean after Tuesday can talk about having had a slip. But if after a year clean and sober uses every day it’s not a slip. It’s active addictive usage. It’s the pattern that counts. It’s what we leave in our wake that matters.

The Past Predicts the Future
So, what has Trump left in his wake? What pattern can be seen?
1) The crude sexualization of his daughter, Ivanka, on a Howard Stern’s show was, in my opinion, not just creepy but evil. Do you imagine for a moment that it had no impact on her––that it was not hurtful?  He used the same exact expression of Hope Hicks who ran crying from the Oval Office when he said it. There are least three sexual assaults that we know of, none of which were without harm, for there is no assault and no abuse that does not do damage. But we do know of the specific damage it did to E. Jean Carroll.
2) Building multimillion dollar projects and then declaring bankruptcy (five times) is a great way to get expensive projects completed for free, but does anyone really imagine that his bankruptcies were without devastating consequences for businesses and workers. In the Old Testament not paying workers the wages due them is by definition “wicked.”
3) He has now been married three times and betrayed his sacred vows every time. That’s a direct hit on what? Eight lives? I’m not saying his wives were merely innocent by standers, I am saying these three failures and betrayals are spiritually and psychologically diagnostic, and neither the diagnosis nor prognosis is good.
4) The Hollywood Access tapes are also diagnostic. He wasn’t just a young rich boy boasting of his sexual prowess. He was a nearly sixty year old man and ought to have grown up––at least a little. Instead, he displayed, as he has often, a vision of women as nothing but sex objects to be used for his own gratification. My goodness! Half the population of the country is female. How can he work in their best interest when he doesn’t even see them as persons.
5) In the top tier of Trump’s administration there was a staggering 92% turnover as of January 20, 2021. Mark Esper, Defense Secretary under Trump, called Trump a “threat to demonocracy,” John Bolton, Trump’s one time Security Advisor, declared Trump “unfit to be president.” Sarah Matthews, former Trump aide, says, “It is mind-boggling” how many members of his own staff have denounced him¬¬ and believe he is dangerous and incompetent.” Former Trump Attorney General William Barr says Trump was “manic, unreasonable, and off the rails.” But what is truly stunning is not just the rate of turnover, but how Trump turns on and trashes the people who have served him.
6) He is a pathological liar. There seems to be nothing he does not lie about and no place where he does not cheat¬¬. To name a few: he lies about his golf game, his hair, his wealth, his education, his taxes, his business dealings, his crimes, and his achievements as president. The selling of stock in his media company is, whether legal or not, a scam. That he is guilty of fraud is now another legal fact. As I sit here writing I am listening to a Trump ad claiming that my vote could be canceled out by someone who is not even a citizen. That’s just not true, but there are people who will be afraid and believe it, as crazy as it is. But that’s all Trump has to rely on. Truth and reason are strangers and aliens to him, his friends are mendacity, fear, chaos, and anger.
7) He is an angry, impulsive, and violent man. It is impossible not to see in photograph after photograph, in video clip after video clip, or hear in speech after speech, a man saturated through and through with anger––with paranoid rage. If you or I engaged in the kind of witness tampering and threats against the courts, or those only tangentially connected to court officers, he has we would be in jail. Get in his way and he will make your life a living hell. At political rallies he has encouraged his supporters to smash protestors in the mouth. He is noted for his temper tantrums and furious rages in which those around him, and responsible for advising him, become afraid to speak to him or to give him bad news. He warned on Truth Social of “death and destruction” if he were charged with a crime. He claims that if president he has the power to send political opponents to prison, mental institutions, or to assassinate them with impunity. He, and some of his henchmen like Roger Stone, are known to have said they want opponents dead. When it was revealed that he had gone to the White House Bunker during a protest, something he thought reflected negatively on him, he said according to his own staff: “Whoever did that (leaked that information) should be executed.” It was difficult for saner minds around him to convince him that the United States can’t just drop a nuclear bomb on Venezuela because it is annoyed with the Venezuelan president. I don’t need to listen to or watch MSNBC to know that he incited the murderous January 6th attack on the capital which injured 174 police officers and resulted in the death of five others. I can watch the footage from his rally and the attack on the capitol and interpret it for myself. Just as I can grasp the hate and anger in Hitler’s speeches without hearing any commentary. When the terrorist mob screamed for Mike Pence’s lynching, Trump’s own staff report that Trump said Pence “deserved it.” He destroyed the lives of two poll workers by accusing them of voter fraud. He didn’t just subject children to the trauma of separation from their parents at the border but did so in such a way that some of them will never be reunited. He subjected those detained at the border to inhuman living conditions. Of course, to Trump all this trauma doesn’t really matter or arouse pity because to him, or so he says, “they are not human.” I think such behavior justifies my use of the word “cruel” to which you object. I know about the cruelty at the border, not just from watching the news, but from talking personally with people who were doing “charitable” work with both children and adults on the border at that time. He and his administration did everything possible to wreck the effort to counter the effects of global warming. Again, how do I know that? I know it because his own words and the words and actions of his administration are on record, and because I have tried to read and understand the scientific research. I have talked personally with scientists involved at a high level with climate research. He is, indirectly, responsible for thousands of COVID deaths. So, I am not really impressed by the claim that Trump is merely the victim of fake news. But my real point is that Trump is toxic––poisonous to everyone and everything, even to this fragile plane we inhabit. Trump supporters think they are safe from his wrath, but the reality, as shown repeatedly in history, is that no one is safe from the capricious and erratic behavior of any tyrant. Even though you are a friend, tell him he is the equal of Jesus and he will smile, bring him bad news and he will throw his lunch against the wall. Who do you think has to clean the ketchup off the wall? Do you think he cares? The only life that counts is his own, not because he, like most politicians, has an oversized ego, but because he is, clinically speaking, a narcissist––a clinical disorder far more serious than simply having a big ego.

A Final Note
Well, I have to stop now. I used to collect hard copies of the angry and bizarre things Trump says and does but the clutter became so great on my desk that I had to stop. Now I see an entire book, well organized and concise, would not be able to contain the evidence for psychologically or pastorally diagnosing Trump as incompetent and evil. It is simply too much to keep up with the debris he leaves in his wake. So, I will just say that the best predictor of increased future chaos and violence is past violence and chaos.

Notice that none of the above is about a policy issue. It is all about character and fundamental competency, about universal moral values, and good and evil. I have no idea how to solve things like the rather intractable border problem. Of all the candidates I thought Nicky Haley had the most reasonable and practical suggestion for at least how to investigate the problem. But I do know the difference between treating people who arrive at our border cruelly or humanely. As a pastor I have had many strange people, some of them scary, show up at inconvenient times at the church door. I have tried to treat them all with kindness––even if they were threatening and I had had to call the police. I also know, as Brother Possum learned too late, not to put a viper in my pocket. I want you to know I wish no harm to Donald Trump. I pray him no harm. I wish him no suffering. I do pray God will render him completely impotent, powerless to do any individual or any nation any further harm. What I cannot do is “call evil good or put darkness for light.”

Peace and everything good,
Larry+