By Their Fruits We Know Them

There is an interesting piece of Scripture that I have been considering for a while.  It is found in Matthew 7:16, and in one of its many translations, it is the one you are most familiar with as reading "By their fruits you will know them."

While the verse starts out warning us against false prophets, the ultimate, metaphoric point is that good trees produce good fruit, and bad trees produce bad fruit.

This piece, of course, is about Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has several children from his three marriages, and given the situation of a very wealthy man, multiple marriages, multiple children, the stereotype would almost have to apply, wouldn't it?  That would be where the kids are a handful, they go off and get into trouble, insist on pampering, that sort of thing.

So admit it -- at some point in this political campaign, you took a second look at the eldest three grown children, 38, 34 and 32, out on the campaign trail, doing interviews for their father's campaign on their own.  You looked a bit more on their positions of responsibility as executive VPs over the Trump businesses, and the fact that they are given that responsibility -- Donald Trump almost casually says that when he is president and has to detach himself from the businesses, the kids will run it.

You look at all that, and you startle yourself into thinking,  "You know what?  Those are three incredible children!"  You think that, given the stereotypical outcome of fathers of such wealth and prominence, it would be enough if one of them turned out OK.  But apparently, they all did.  And while they were given access to work up to their positions because of their family, they clearly have succeeded in them, and no one would question their ability.

Listen to them speak.  They are highly intelligent, very capable of making their points and supporting them, possessed of a clear understanding of their world.  And they are equally clearly devoted to their father, which is not a trivial point.

Someone asked Donald Sr. which of his children would be in charge of the business when he becomes president.  In an answer unmellowed by "I hope" or "We'll see how it works", Trump pointed out that they would run the company together, as each one had leadership over a specific part of it and, as the children themselves then agreed, they work together without argument.  None seems to be trying to one-up the others.

"By their fruits you shall know them."

Certainly I have been up and down as far as the support for Donald Trump for the presidency, although I will just as certainly vote for him in November.  Part of that is assessing the different Donald Trumps that are presented to the USA -- the different faces, the different facets, the different roles.  It isn't which one is real; they are all real in their own way.  The composite of what we see is what we have to evaluate.

But I cannot get past seeing those children, mature, intelligent, confident, competent and devoted to their father.  I see them and realize that, of all the different ways of looking at Donald Trump, at all the ways he presents himself, none -- none is a shred more important than Donald Trump the father.  And as his grown children clearly portray, he was really good at that.

"Good trees produce good fruit", the verse in Matthew reads.  And while he has my vote regardless, I am willing to upgrade my opinion of Donald Trump several notches, on realizing that there has to be something exceptional about the man to have the result he did, and what those children tell us about the father and the man.

And that's a message we all should read.

Copyright 2016 by Robert Sutton
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