“I don’t know why today every criminal is simply a חולה. Is there not such a thing as a Yetzer Hara? There are enough Gemaras about the Yetzer Hara that I don’t need to bother quoting. Everyone has one. B”H, most of us are עומד על נסיון, some/most of the time. But laziness, taivah and peer pressure can do terrible things to someone who needs that extra bit of freedom. Not every עבירה can be blamed on psychological trauma!”
I guess I’m also really a liberal despite the fact that I also probably come across as extreme right wing in the CR :).
I have a hard time believing that anyone can truly be bad deliberately. It’s just not logical to be deliberately bad. I always feel like there must be something behind it and like there must be a way to reach everyone.
To some extent (as I always have to remind myself) this does not seem to be the Torah’s hashkafa. There clearly is a concept of reshaim such as Haman, hitler, nazis, Arab terrorists, hard as it is for me to grasp.
On the other hand, to a certain extent, it is the Torah’s hashkafa. According to the Torah, everyone has the potential to do Teshuva, and there are many Gedolim stories about Gedolim who saw the good in everyone and thus were able to bring it out.
Even if you say that it’s not psychological and it’s the Yetzer Hora, according to Chazal that is a psychological problem on some level אין אדם עובר עבירה אלא אם כן נכנס בו רוח שטות
As you wrote, most people are able to be עומד על נסיון most of the time. It is in a person’s best interest to be Frum and most people who are brought up Frum stay that way. For those that give in to their yetzer hara and stop being Frum, I think there must have been some reason why they had a harder time than most (be it nature, nurture, or something that happened to them), even if it’s not something so obvious like abuse or psychological problems.