"gods" of Mammon

“gods” of mammon

It was March of 1980. I had been teaching for 6 years. I had plenty of distractions during those teaching years, doing a photography business building my house and a house for my parents during summer vacations and weekends. As a result I had fallen behind in accumulating the necessary credit hours necessary to maintain certification. I had a mortgage to pay, a wife, Rhoda, and one year old child to provide for. I was desperate to find an escape route from teaching.

I watched the ads for employment in the Newspaper. Responding to one ad in the newspaper they asked me what kind of car you drive. A 1966 Chevy I told them. Are you the best salesman you ever met was the second question? Blown away by both of these questions clearly I was not the person they were looking for. Then I read an ad for a company called American Farmer. They advertised a sales job for farmers which could possibly pay $35,000 a year. That was income three times higher then I was receiving teaching at our church high school. So I called.

It was snowing the day Mr. Williams drove into our lane in his big white Cadillac. I remember him saying, “Selling this program you soon will be building an addition on your home.” He really looked the part with pressed suit, lots of jewelry and with his German accent he carried sophistication that really impressed this simple farm boy. This is the most promising program to help the American farmer to come along in a long time, he said.

Rhoda could not stand the guy. I think she must have been like Pilate’s wife….”have nothing to do with this man!” Well, I wasn’t interested in building an addition to house but I was hoping I could just pay the mortgage and support our son. I could only think that maybe this is a way for me to escape teaching. The pressure of earning a living soooo made me want to believe everything he said was true. I swallowed his line “hook, line and sinker”. I suspect Rhoda felt like she lost the husband she knew.

At any rate, I took a personal day from teaching to go out and visit the farmers with Mr. Williams. At a little diner on top of the hill above Manheim Auto Auction we had breakfast. He went over the program once more. Farmers sign up for membership costing them $300. This membership gives them the privilege of buying direct from manufacturers or wholesale for almost everything imaginable because of the large buying power which American Farmer has. We then went out to visit the farmers. We visited 4 farmers and each one signed up. I was excited. I could not wait to get started. Evenings and weekends for the next two weeks I signed up 11 persons including my brother David.

A couple of things happened that should have raised red flags in my mind but I seemed to block them out of mind. My Dad drove up to Hershey to look up the address and he could not find the place. He saw a number on the back door of a warehouse with an unmarked flatbed truck but that was it. But then my brother started getting quotes back and discovered “wholesale” was little or no discount at all and then delivery was questionable. I was devastated at that point and quit selling. A guy from my church discovered what they actually were doing. They would get quotes from one dealer in your area then bargain with a dealer from another area for a discount hoping to save the farmer a few dollars. So it wasn’t wholesale at all. American Farmer became an additional middleman. I was deceived and I had sold this product to my friends and deceived them. I felt horrible. It was hard to look at them in the eye on Sunday morning when I met some of them in church.

Interestingly a month later I saw Mr. Williams picture on the front page of the newspaper. Here he was picked up by the police in the same diner he took me to in Manheim. He was apprehended for selling Mercedes Cars which did not exist. He was the classic Con-man. The Car was rented, his house was rented, his life was all a front and he had no money at all. It was reported a year later in the newspaper that American Farmer had declared bankruptcy.

I continued to live with these strong feelings of guilt for my involvement in this deception for 2 more years. Finally, I had enough money to pay all the farmers back the 300 dollars they had invested in the program. Interestingly every last person had tried the program and found it very frustrating and shelved it. Amazingly not one farmer held me accountable for my deception. Everyone had put it behind them….but certainly they remembered. It felt so good to me give them their money back. It was a load I carried for three years.

I learned a lot through this experience. I realized how strongly I wanted to believe something even though there were red flags waving. I realized it is possible to block out certain truths from your mind if it conflicted with what I wanted to believe even though the evidence is really clear that I was wrong. . I realized how easy it is to present material in ways not fully truthful because I so wanted to make a sale. My living depends on it. I learned that the appeal of money is enormously powerful in my life. I learned that I need to listen to the counsel of those around me, namely Rhoda, when there are questions. Indeed, it was her idea that we should at least try to provide photos for a living and see if it could work.

For the past 5 or 6 years I thought often about this experience with American Farmer as I watched the attraction of similar promises of a pot of gold. One day I met a Dad in Virginia whose daughter was involved in a particular business. He knew I knew some people involved in the same business. He came up to me and wondered if someone I knew had his bills paid. Oh come on I said I can’t tell you that. He laughed and said, I know the answer to that. And then laughter turned to tears as he said, Jonathan, I feel like I lost my daughter. I can’t talk to her. It’s all a lie. Nobody involved with this business is buying houses or starting families. I had to agree.

I went to a meeting once. It was full when I got there so I sat down in the hallway beside someone I never met before. He told me they were having a special speaker from Pittsburgh talking. He told me this speaker made $10,000 a month the past 3 months. Feeling a bit skeptical I asked him if he believed him. He told me that he saw the checks. That may sound a bit unusual but then maybe they photocopy their checks as evidence. The speaker went over the percentages program where one receives a percentage of everyone else’s sales in your organization underneath you. He made the “conservative” prediction in 3 years most people should be making in the neighborhood of $75,000. He went on to describe all the fun everyone has at the rallies and then there is Disneyland. The business rents out the entire Park for a million dollars an hour and everyone has the full run of the place. In addition to high income, friends, fun times one can also benefit from wholesale discounts on all the merchandise the business sells off the Internet.

I asked the young man beside me how often he comes to these meetings and he said every Tuesday night and sometimes also on Thursday night. I asked if the speakers went over the same material at each meeting and he said “pretty much so”. I asked if the audience from week to week is pretty much the same and he said "yes, some bring guests with them”. I wondered why they come if they know the speeches by heart and he told me that, “It touches them where they are hurting”.

I got a feeling that this meeting is a lot like Church. It seemed like this meeting was evening out with friends. Everyone was dressed to impress. Income is mutually supportive and money is god. The goal is more and more of it even though when a TV network did their review they claimed that with all the talk about money the average income disbursement to their members is about 140 dollars per person per month. They claimed the only people who really make out are the speakers who are paid honorariums and by selling motivational tapes. The other characteristic at these meetings is a critical spirit condemning other vocations as meaningful employment. My son, hoping to be a teacher, listened to a speaker criticize teaching as a most poorly paid profession and now that his wife has retired from the profession they were really living the life. Another characteristic is cult-like defensive spirit; “us against them” which is built like a protective shield around the band of devotees. It seems like people who were friends before, after they get involved in this business they are no longer close friends. I was told devotees are told to dismiss their parental council as they take on this business plan because they will not understand. An investment broker as a parent gives testimony that they feel their council is not regarded with any respect so business talk is off limits to save a relationship. A third characteristic is the Pep rally motivational atmosphere of the rallies. Devotion is drummed up with chants or slogans with lots of excitement making money kind of a sporting event. One is given achievement banners along the way which symbolizes ones status in the group.

I asked the young man by my side what he does for his day job. Interestingly, he works at a large church as the video guy. I wondered how he can do that and attend all the rallies on weekends. People involved in this business aren’t usually in church on weekends are they? I asked. It depends on your definition of church, he responded. Church is where two or three are gathered together. You can do that anywhere.

I wonder if a business like this could actually be like a church for some; a critical, divisive, separatist, self serving community of peers promising a great hope without reality, excessive expectation with illusive fulfillment. Could an organization like this represent the exact opposite of everything Jesus stands for? I wonder if God would be pleased with a simple honest confession, faith, worship, following Christ where we serve those in need, sit with those rejected, walk in harmony, repentance means we fix what we have broken, money is a tool to bless people for God’s pleasure as we live for others and not ourselves.

Then I remember my own blindness as I was drawn into my American Farmer experience. Lord have mercy on us all.