Posted on 12/11/2019 12:20:42 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Dr. Chris Thurman is a Christian psychologist who claims that President Trump has no strengths and that any evangelical who supports Trump is a fool. Personally, I was not familiar with Dr. Thurman or his work before last week, but his article, “You Foolish Evangelicals, Trump Has Bewitched You,” got my attention, prompting me to write a response. Now, he has challenged my response with a follow-up article, issuing a direct challenge to me. I’m quite happy to respond.
In my rebuttal to his first article, I claimed that Thurman was as guilty as the hyper-zealous Trump supporters. He completely demonized the president while his over-zealous supporters make him into a saint. Now, in his second article, he has laid out a challenge: “I would like to challenge Brown and the others who criticized the op-ed I wrote to come up with one positive character trait Trump possesses. Just one.”
Consider it done!
Before taking up his challenge, let me first review Thurman’s evaluation of Trump as well as respond to some of his other direct questions.
According to Thurman, Trump has no “characterological” strengths, meaning, there is not one single good thing about his character. Not one.
Not only so, but Thurman speaks of “the fact that he is a deeply mentally and morally disturbed person.” Yes, this is a “fact”!
Thurman also speaks of Trump’s “malignant narcissism” (referring to him in these terms four times in the article). And he quotes Peter Wehner, who said that Trump is “a terribly damaged person, a broken man, a person with a disordered mind.”
In short, according to Thurman, “Trump is evil and [is] doing the best he can to tear our country down for selfish and malevolent reasons.” Therefore, “we should have nothing to do with him, remove him from office as quickly as possible, press the reset button, and get someone elected to the presidency who truly shares our core values as Christians.”
Oddly, Thurman wrote, “What is Brown’s beef with what I wrote? The best I could come up with is when he says, ‘Thurman seems blind to his (Trump’s) strengths and his potential to help America greatly.’ I assume this is Brown’s main problem with what I wrote — that I’m blind to what’s good about Trump.”
His response was stark and simple: there is nothing good about Trump. Nothing at all.
Thurman also wonders aloud as to why I felt the need to respond to him, since, by evangelicals who support Trump, he was referring to “evangelicals who foolishly support Trump in spite of the fact that he is a deeply mentally and morally disturbed person?”
Once again, I responded: 1) because Dr. Thurman so overstates his case, using every negative term in the book to describe Trump (including sociopath); and 2) because he urges evangelicals to distance themselves from Trump and not vote for him in 2020.
Clearly, I am not one who overlooks Trump’s glaring weaknesses. I never have and I do not plan to.
And, had Thurman simply suggested that we should look for another Republican candidate to run in 2020, I would not have responded. My good friend and colleague Darrell Bock, a respected New Testament scholar, was on my radio show, advocating for evangelicals to call for another Republican candidate to replace Trump. And I had no problem giving him air time.
But the fact that Thurman painted with such a broad, exaggerated brush called for a response, especially his branding any evangelical who planned to vote for Trump in 2020 a “fool.” Why then should he be upset that he has become the focus on my response (along with the responses of others he mentions)?
Dr. Thurman, will all respect, if you attack fellow-believers as “fools” who have been “bewitched,” you can expect some pushback from those believers. This is hardly shifting the issues or attacking the messenger rather than the message, as you wrongly allege. The sword cuts both ways, my brother.
And while you directed your critique to evangelicals who defended Trump at all costs, ignoring his errors and faults, you extended your critique to those who would vote for him in 2020. Again, that prompted my response, since I fall into the latter category.
But now for your challenge to name one single good character quality of President Trump.
First, he has kept his word to evangelical leaders, showing consistency and faithfulness. Surely these are good character qualities.
He promised to fight for our religious liberties, and he is doing so. He promised to appoint conservative, pro-life justices, and he is doing so – by the scores. He promised to move the embassy to Jerusalem, and he did it.
This is called integrity: sticking with your promises and commitments.
Second, despite his playboy past and his narcissistic ways, he seems devoted to his wife and children. Friends of mine who have gotten to know him personally, also spending many hours with his adult kids, tell me how deeply they respect and love him.
Third, he is determined to do everything in his power as president to “rescue the perishing,” to borrow a phrase from Proverbs 24, applied here to the unborn. And once again, people who have walked with him closely assure me that he really believes abortion is wrong. Is not that a positive character quality as well?
Fourth, his heart for prison reform and rehabilitating our inner-cities also seems genuine. Bear in mind that when Jared Kushner’s father was in prison, Jared saw the tremendous inequities of the prison system, and his concerns have now become his father-in-law’s concerns. Minority leaders have also attested to his genuine concern about impoverished Americans.
This too is a positive character quality in God’s sight.
Of course, I can hear the retort already, namely, “None of this is genuine! The man is a sociopathic narcissist whose goal is to destroy America.” To quote Dr. Thurman directly, he is “doing the best he can to tear our country down for selfish and malevolent reasons.”
My response is simple: Dr. Thurman, you know the man from a distance and you have judged him severely, going over and above the righteous judgment God calls for.
And so, again, with all respect, I say this: Let’s all do our best to remove the plank from our own eyes before we try to remove the speck from the eyes of others.
The words of Jesus are sobering in this regard: “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matt 7:2).
Finally, let us not forget that for many of us, a vote for Trump, with all his flaws and shortcomings, is a vote against an extremely dangerous, radical leftist agenda.
That’s a big reason I plan to vote for him again in 2020, as things now stand. Throwing around the “fool” word in this context is not wise. As fellow-evangelicals, we can do better.
Dr. Michael Brown (www.askdrbrown.org) is the host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program.
Did Thurman write a similar piece about the baby-killing Hillary and Barack?
What about their support for same-sex marriage?
I suspect he’s another liberal Democrat.
Am I incorrect?
Rather than think of what the President has done right, I wonder what is wrong with Dr. Thurman.
I wonder if he is a wolf in evangelical sheep disguise.
Christian Freudism is an oxymoron, those who believe in it suffer cognitive dissonance, a mental illness. Imagine a mentally ill person lecturing us on our mental illness. Sheesh!
He's a real gentleman.
This may offend some, but here goes: I have never met a “psychologist” who themselves were not nuts. I guess the studying mental disorders, particularly without the discipline of a medical degree, somehow appeals to people with snakes in their own brains.
Thurman is a twisted, perverse character who espouses Christian evangelicism as if it were an axe used to cut down one’s enemies. It is not. It is, at best, an admonition for love, a love Mr. Thurman has not experienced.
I suspect he’s a TDS wolf in sheep’s clothing
Yeah the creepy guy who doesn’t think abortion is a bad thing. I read his article in the Christian Post when we discussed it here.
Perhaps the site should be renamed “Moloch Post.”
<< [Thurman’s] article, “You Foolish Evangelicals, Trump Has Bewitched You,” >>
Trump’s main promises were fair trade, border control, and putting America first in general. That’s why we voted for him. And for the most part he’s delivered. So how exactly are the political positions in question anti-Christian? We voted for a President, not a religious leader. There was no bewitching of Evangelicals or anyone else. We all knew what we were getting, and don’t regret it for a second.
No Bro, you are correct.
Thurman is yet another Swamp creature that has exposed himself as a RINO and should be shunned like David Frum.
Has he publicly declared that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior and that Jesus is God in the flesh, born of a virgin and lived a sinless life but was tortured and nailed to a cross for mankind's sins and he was buried but rose on the third day bringing salvation to all mankind and the only way to The Father is through him?
Speaking of monsters you won’t find a greater concentration than at any APA convention. If Thurman is wants to deal with Monsters there are those in his profession that give ECT to young children. He’ll find plenty of narcissistic sociopaths in his own backyard.
No question in my mind that if Hillary had been elected president, Christians would be suffering major persecution right now (as they will be if the Democrats win next year). That’s why I voted for Trump (in the primary and general). He was the only GOP candidate who could beat Hillary, and I still feel I did the absolute right analysis on that.
Trump is the primary thing holding back the floodgates. Just look at how all the evil people in this country are constantly going after him (Democrats and all the others on Satan’s side). Now down to impeaching him on entirely fictitious charges.
Plus he has gotten people on the Supreme Court I am hoping are going to stand for religious liberty.
Not quite.
Border control was first, but the second closest promise was to get us out of undeclared foreign wars. Those are not aspects of the same issue but rather two separate issues he has worked hard on.
Another issue seen mostly by those who have attended his rallies but barely even a whisper from the mainstream press was his promise to go after pedophiles and sex trafickers. I assume that this Thurman fellow knows about that but doesn’t consider it a good thing.
Liberals have taken over most seminaries too.
I ought to know. I worked around a few that had been under the liberal tutelage.
Heh, heh, I just heard a presentation where it was mentioned that at Princeton Seminary you can get an M.Div. and then be ordained without ever having taken a course on the Bible. So you have folks from there who are TOTALLY ignorant on Scripture, going into the mainlines.
What are all these “flaws and shortcomings” they keep talking about?
Getting us out of undeclared foreign wars would fall under the “putting America first in general” part of my post. But yes, I should’ve given it separate mention.
I’d guess that not only is Thurman against (or at least indifferent to) Trump’s crackdown on sex trafficking, but against his hardline stance on abortion as well. And no doubt considers border control to be racist.
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