David M. Shribman: Heaven beckons to Trump

Donald Trump has begun to worry that he might be going to hell.

The other day he told "Fox & Friends" that "I want to try and get to heaven, if possible." He followed with an unusually candid self-assessment: "I'm hearing I'm not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole." He suggested his effort to win peace in Ukraine would be "one of the reasons" he might get to heaven.

He followed that up with an email to supporters last week. "I want to try and get to Heaven," he repeated, as if repetition would be persuasive with higher counsels. He concluded this unusual cri de coeur with: "I've launched a 24 HOUR TRUMP FUNDRAISING BLITZ."

Ronald Reagan conjured up a fantasy 11th commandment ("Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican") that was honored until the advent of Trump. Let's add, in direct reference to the current occupant of the White House, a 12th commandment: "Thou shalt not doubt the authenticity of an American president's religious faith."

Trump was confirmed as a Presbyterian, but he said that his parents "taught me the importance of faith and prayer from a young age" and that he now considers himself a "nondenominational Christian."

"Melania and I have gotten to visit some amazing churches and meet with great faith leaders from around the world," he once said. "During the unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak, I tuned into several virtual church services and know that millions of Americans did the same."

Although questioning the religious commitments of presidents from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama has been part of the American conversation for centuries, the purpose here is to offer some citations from Scripture that might guide Trump in his raucous second term, and might perhaps remind a man of high political authority that there is a higher authority to whom, his faith must tell him, even presidents must answer:

— Proverbs 25:18: A man that beareth false witness against his neighbor is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow.

In this excerpt from a section of the Bible that is intended to show wisdom and to instruct humankind lies a sobering entreaty for the truth — one that might shake a president who, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker, produced 30,573 falsehoods during his first four-year term. It was Washington, to whom Trump compared himself in his speech before a joint session of Congress earlier this year, who said in his farewell address, "I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is the best policy."

— Isaiah 47:8: Now then, listen, you lover of pleasure, lounging in your security and saying to yourself, "I am, and there is none besides me. I will never be a widow or suffer the loss of children."

This excerpt is God's warning to Babylon, personified here as a woman who believes herself immune from loss or misfortune. Trump has a sense of invincibility that this passage ascribes to Babylon and that, God warns, is unwarranted and doomed.

— Micah 6:8: He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Two vastly different men, the impious Warren G. Harding (1921) and the pious Jimmy Carter (1977), opened the Bible on which they took the ancient oath of office to this excerpt, also a favorite of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. It is a call for mercy, perhaps appropriate for a president who villainizes and taunts his opponents. Moreover, humility is not one of Trump's strong suits.

— 1 John 1:8: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

This is good advice for a man whose first impeachment grew out of a phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urging an investigation into Joe Biden — a call Trump called "perfect" — and who avoids self-criticism at every turn.

— Psalm 51:10: Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.

This is not a commandment to wreak vengeance upon enemies, to punish foes, or to weed out from the government people suspected, rightly or wrongly, of insufficient loyalty to the incumbent president. It takes a pure heart to resist that. Grover Cleveland, Trump's predecessor as the only president to serve nonconsecutive White House terms, had that forbearance and in his inaugural address called for the end of the "animosities of political strife, the bitterness of partisan defeat and the exaltation of partisan triumph."

— 2 Timothy 2:24-25: And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.

This is not in Trump's playbook. Perhaps in his new heaven obsession, he will adopt its guidance.

— Psalm 25: 1, 2, 4, 5, 19-21: Unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me ... Show me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day ... Consider mine enemies; for they are many; and they hate me with cruel hatred. O keep my soul, and deliver me: let me not be ashamed; for I put my trust in thee. Let integrity and uprightness preserve me; for I wait on thee.

This was one of the favorite psalms of Clinton, who, until Trump made a similar claim, was certain he had engendered more enemies than any previous president. (Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Richard Nixon are contenders in that derby of public disapproval. Also let's note that the Psalms are ascribed to David, who had a surfeit of enemies himself.) Clinton, who traced his faith to Bible sings as a boy in Arkansas and an early trip to hear the Rev. Billy Graham preach, was more overtly religious than Trump, but the message applies to both: This Psalm includes a confessional ("Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great") and argues there is comfort in God's "tender mercies and thy loving kindnesses."

•••

David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.