As I have mentioned before, Tim works for a company that recommends books that will enhance its employees’ understanding of positive corporate perspectives, personal dynamics and values. He does a lot of driving for his job, so he conveniently listens to them on audiobooks, but he sends the hardcover books to me. One of his more recent gifts is a New York Times bestseller by Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at The Wharton School, titled: Think Again- The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. I can understand why it is a bestseller; it is a terrific read, offering many useful quotations and insights. The subtitle is one:
The power of knowing what you do not know.
The second quote is a line from the third chapter titled The Joy of Being Wrong. Adam Grant writes:
Discovering that I was wrong felt joyful because it meant that I’d learned something.
The third quote is one he uses to introduce the Epilogue.
“What I believe” is a process rather than a finality. Emma Goodman
President Donald Trump made news the other day with a raw confession to Fox and Friends:
“I want to try and get to heaven if possible, I’m not doing well. I hear I’m really at the bottom of the totem pole.”
He made the comment after trying unsuccessfully to broker a peace deal for Ukraine, thinking that a deal, saving the lives of thousands, might move him up the salvific pole. Journalists, social media, political pundits and religious scholars had a field day with the confession, but they immediately questioned whether his peace effort was really about getting into heaven or securing a Nobel Peace Prize. Trump is an extraordinarily weak and insecure person. He has no idea that there are things he doesn’t know. He believes that he is never wrong and has no one in his inner circle, those sitting in his Cabinet or his White House faith office, that will tell him so. I can’t imagine that he ever experiences the joy of learning anything. His beliefs are a finality, arrived at absent of process.
His stunning confession, plastered all over the news, however, gives us all an opportunity to reflect on the essentials of what it takes to get into heaven. Trump needs only to read his own hot selling bible. And we need only read ours.
The Bible provides passages that answer our questions and bring clarity to our confusion. Consult Mark 10:17-30; Luke 10:25-28 and Matthew 22: 34-40 and Acts16: 25-34. They report on accounts of people from varying backgrounds, a common man, a teacher of the law, a rich young ruler and even a jailer. Each is shown the way and what to do. The requirements are simple but not easy: Keep the commandments and then fulfill them by loving in the way God tells us, first, fully God and then in equal measure, our neighbors.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like unto it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22: 34-40)
Luke adds the familiar story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37) to Jesus’ command to make clearer what is required of us, namely, to know who our neighbors are and be a neighbor to them. In the parable, after a traveler is beaten, robbed and left for dead, a priest and Levite move to the other side of the road and pass him by. The Samaritan, upon coming near him, attends to his wounds and then brings him to an inn where he pays in full for his lodging, food and rehabilitation. He did not ask for the man’s papers or for reimbursements He simply showed compassion, generosity and mercy to a man in need.
Matthew’s Gospel is also uncompromising in the explanation of what is required of the one who is inquiring about eternal life. In response to Trump’s confession to Fox and Friends, James Martin S.J (August 20, 2025) wrote a piece “Faith in Focus” title: President Trump says he wants to enter heaven. As a Catholic priest, I take that seriously. It was in the form of a letter addressed to President Trump.
The second thing to remember is that Jesus was clear about what it takes to gain entrance in the kingdom of God. Perhaps the most direct explanation Jesus gives of who is included and who is excluded comes in the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in a passage often called the “Judgment of the Nations.”
There, Jesus tells the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, where he compares himself to a shepherd separating the sheep (good) on one side and the goats (bad) on the other. My friend Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish New Testament professor, once joked that she tells her Jewish audiences that if you get to heaven and you see two signs, “Sheep This Way” and “Goats This Way,” follow the sheep.
But what determines who is a sheep and who is a goat? It’s simple. Jesus says that the sheep cared for him during their time on earth. But, they ask, “When did we do that?” Jesus says that whenever they cared for “the least,” they were caring for him directly. You probably know this famous passage:
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.
Likewise, the goats are told that they didn’t care for him during their time on earth. They ask the same question of Jesus: “When did we not care for you?” And they are told the same thing. When you didn’t care for the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked person and the imprisoned, you didn’t care for Jesus.
Given all the questions about how to get into heaven, it is refreshing that Jesus is so clear.
So, who would that mean caring for today?
Those who are hungry and thirsty are legion in our country. How are you caring for them? Remember: Caring for them is caring for Jesus. Many of us struggle with how to do this, but as president, it’s in your power to cut off aid—or increase aid—to precisely these people. But there’s more: Jesus is also clear in the Parable of the Good Samaritan that caring for our “neighbor” is meant in the broadest possible sense. Today, that includes caring for the poor and hungry overseas as well.
The “stranger,” in Jesus’s day, would have meant, as it does today, the migrant and the refugee. (“Resident aliens” are fixtures in the Old and New Testaments, and we’re constantly asked to care for them.) But let’s get back to Matthew 25 and think about the stranger as Jesus himself. The prisoner, too. Not to put too fine a point on it but imagine Jesus in Alligator Alcatraz. That’s something of what Jesus is talking about. If we mistreat the migrant, the refugee or the person in prison, we are mistreating him.
The untreated sick are still in our hospitals and on our city streets—as well as in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and in the developing world. Are we helping them?
Overall, the question Jesus asks his followers is: How are you caring for all these people?
I hope that Trump gets to read Martin’s letter and learns something he did not know or how wrong he has been. His resume and record, with all his illegal actions, cruelty, greed and corruption, are certainly enough to put him in the goat category, maybe not even at the bottom of the totem pole. However, in matters of faith and belief, it might not be unwise to “Think Again,” remembering that there is power in knowing what you may not know yet and there is joy in discovering that you may not be entirely right. I say this because over the five decades of ministry, I have learned some things from my parishioners. In my book Voices from Pulpit and Pew, I reflected on something I learned from Glenden Dunlap and his relationship with his beloved but Alzheimer’s stricken wife, Grace. Here is what I wrote:
Let me explain what I mean. It is not uncommon these days for people who have placed loved ones in nursing homes to be asked about the cognitive abilities of their loved ones, especially in cases where Alzheimer’s is the debilitating disease. The most often asked question is something like:
“Does she know you?”
I feel a deep and immediate inner sadness when I hear that family and friends no longer visit because meaningful recognitions or communication no longer occur. In all the discussions I ever had with Glen directly or overheard, there was one repeating theme that carried the message of our operational theology. When asked about how Grace was doing, Glen would always be direct and honest in what he would describe about Grace’s progressively failing condition. Invariably, he would be asked the above question, and I never heard him respond with anything other than:
“It doesn’t matter whether she knows me--- what matters is that I know her.”
That response captures and expresses what I think is at the center of our congregational understanding of God. What is so amazing about God’s grace is that no matter what the measure of recognition we may or may not offer God, what matters is that God knows and loves us, fully and unconditionally. I trust that this theme was and is emphasized repeatedly, in worship and mission and at meetings. (pp. 29-30)
In the end, we may all be surprised by an Amazing Grace that saves wretches like us.
Remember, belief is a process.
Blessings to all.