Bring It On!

Deception

When I was at the end of a contract a few years ago and I was looking for my next job I met a man who told me that he had a very lucrative offer. He told me that I should meet him at a coffee house and talk to him about this opportunity. I was young and naïve at the time, so I wasn’t tipped off by his vagueness. Today I would certainly ask more questions before I would agree to meet with him.

Well, the day came and I went to the coffee shop and met with him. Some of you may have guessed already - he wanted me to sell Amway for him. So, this man’s idea was to get a perfect stranger’s hopes up to find some very nice job, but in reality he was hoping to find someone who would settle for selling Amway in a pyramid scheme. I am sure that there are some people who believe that this man was being resourceful in his approach. Telling the truth or being straight forward certainly were not productive approaches, or he would have used them. So, instead he wasted my time telling me how I could make millions selling products I wouldn’t use myself.

It seems that Americans take for granted the fact that people will use deception as a “creative” marketing technique. This is being resourceful or clever. Americans believe resourcefulness and cleverness should be held in high esteem and should be praised. People who are not wise to these deceptions are “suckers.” The “good” person is the one who is deceptive and the “bad” person is the one who falls for the deception. We should identify with the “wise” deceiver and shun the “sucker.” In fact, marketing is evaluated on the number of people who are persuaded to buy a product based on a marketing campaign. The number of people persuaded per number of dollars spent adds to the company’s bottom line.

One should understand that no one considers the needs of the customers in the marketing discussion, only the customer’s motivation to buy the product. If you can get people who don’t need your product to buy it then you still get the cash added to your bottom line. In the real world there are people who buy books and never read them because the marketing campaign made people want to buy the books. There are people who buy exercise equipment with the hopes of getting in shape, but they rarely if ever use it. There are people who buy diet food with the hopes of loosing weight, but they supplement their diet with potato chips, soda and beer that are also cleverly marketed.

Some questions we should ask are: Does the deception of marketing benefit society? Should potential customers be made aware of the truth? And, from the moral perspective we should ask, is this deception sinful?

Just because Americans except marketing deception as a part of life in America should we say that deceptive marketing is moral?

We all know that Americans believe that morals are relative to religion you belong to. Some religions are more strict than other religions. However, most religions that accept the Ten Commandments or similar teachings as major moral imperatives should conclude that deception falls under the “Thou shall not bare false witness commandment.” Of course our secular society does not demand that everyone obey the letter of the Ten Commandments, because not every person is compelled to hold these laws in high esteem.

But Saturday I read an article in the San Jose Mercury News that tells us that Christian churches across America now condone the practice of deception. They have begun the practice of renaming their churches with clever names like “New Life,” "HighWay Community," "Harbor Light" and "Great Exchange" Some of these churches were traditional Baptist or Assembly of God churches that have chosen to name themselves something else, because the Baptist and Assembly of God names have taken on a negative connotation.

Where I come from the effort to conceal the truth would be considered deception. So, instead of fixing the problem of emphasizing Paul’s teachings over Jesus’ teachings these preachers have decided to deceive potential members of the church. How could a member feel that the truth has been taught to them once they discover this deception? How could they trust the preacher to tell them the truth if they can’t even be honest about the flavor of Christianity they intend to teach?

The preachers will never be called on the carpet for these deceptions. This is because Americans accept marketing as a part of American Life. Members of the church want their church attendance to grow. Growth in their church validates their decision to join the church in the first place. What’s the harm in deceptive marketing, when the followers will eventually be convinced in the truth of Jesus? A potential follower may question the church who professes the truth, but once they get past that first hurdle they won’t question it again. The church is only interested in those who will accept everything as truth anyway. Doubters will only weaken the community and they should come back only after they accept the truth.

The whole idea and acceptance of deception should be troubling to the entire American society. But sadly these things are not troubling to enough of us. When people are raised in this environment where deception is encouraged to produce a desired result our leaders will use this technique on us.

This must be why the deception of George W Bush and his administration to take us into an illegal and unjust war in Iraq was accepted by more than half the American people. It was good marketing - these people must be thinking. There isn’t any reason why marketing is bad, is there? After all, this is the US President and if he wants us to believe something it must for our own good even if it isn’t true. Churches do this all the time to get us on the right track. George W Bush just lied to us to get us on the right track. After all, if he told us the truth how many of us would support the Iraq War. He did that to get us into the war. He knew that once we were in the war we couldn’t leave. So, if we learned the truth afterward, then we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. The truth would be known and the deception would no longer be a sin, right?

I truly believe that there are people who rationalize this way. But, the difference is that most people don’t put these things all in one place where they can see that the rationalization doesn’t make a lot of sense. There are also people who refuse to believe that the president could stoop to the level of deception, but with Ronald Reagan’s Iran Contra deception, and Richard Nixon’s Watergate deception and even Bill Clinton’s Monica deception only the most naïve person would think that a president would not try to deceive the public.

At one time US Presidents would rarely deceive the public, and they certainly feared being caught in the deception. And, once they were caught the public would become outraged and vote the president out of office. Today however, a president can deceive the public and deny the deception and the public will naïvely accept the deception as a clever and resourceful way to market their ideas to the people. And the American people like it that way.

politics and religion