Volume 32

At one time, Beech-Nut Nutrition Corporation was one of America’s most reputable brands. But by the late 1970s, the company was struggling and had to sell off everything except its baby food line. When Beech-Nut was bought out by Nestle in 1979, it was the second largest baby food maker in the country.

To reduce the cost of making its apple products, Beech-Nut started buying concentrate from Universal Juice, a wholesaler whose price was 20 per cent less than the industry average. But almost immediately, Beech-Nut employees were suspicious of the new supplier.

That suspicion grew when company inspectors touring Universal Juice were denied access to the apple-processing area. By 1981, Beech-Nut’s Director of Research, Jerome LiCari, was so worried the apple juice might be unsafe that he quit when his bosses ignored his concerns. The controversy only got worse when the federal government’s Food and Drug Administration got involved.

According to the FDA, tests in 1982 revealed that Beech-Nut’s “100 per cent apple juice” actually contained “beet sugar, malic acid, apple flavor, carmel color, corn syrup and sugar cane — but no apple juice.” Essentially, the mixture was sugar water and a blend of chemicals designed to look and taste like apple juice.

Beech-Nut executives first claimed they didn’t know their supplier’s juice was not genuine. But instead of recalling the product, they stalled the FDA and scrambled to move as much “apple juice” as possible to the Caribbean where they sold it off, fast. By the time the government forced a recall, Beech-Nut only had to destroy 20,000was no big deal if the apple juice wasn’t apple juice, “Who were we hurting?” he asked.

The feds answered by laying 800 charges against Beech-Nut, two suppliers and top executives for “conspiring to defraud the public by willingly distributing phoney apple juice.” Beech-Nut pleaded guilty to 215 charges, paid $2.5 million in fines, and lost 20 per cent of its business, almost overnight.

In the spiritual sphere, the penalties for false advertising are even worse. Ask those critical of the church what offends them most and they’ll tell you it’s hypocrisy. Derived from a Greek word meaning “to play a part or pretend,” hypocrisy is when people don’t practise what they preach. But by that definition, all of us are hypocrites because no one, Christian or not, always lives up to everything he or she believes. To stay away from church, because of the hypocrites there, is — well, hypocritical.

That’s because, despite the stereotype, few churches pretend to be perfect. In fact, a key message of Christianity is that all of us need God’s mercy and forgiveness because “No one is good — not even one... All have turned away from God.” (Rom. 3:10,12) Even when we have our sins taken away by embracing Jesus as Saviour and committing to following him, we’re in constant need of grace — forgiveness we don’t deserve. “If we say we have no sin,” the apostle John writes to Christians, “we’re only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from every wrong.” (1 John 1:8,9) We’re not perfect. We’re just forgiven; cause for appreciation, not pride.

As a wise man once said, the church is a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints. Nobody’s too bad to come in, and nobody’s too good to stay out. So let’s save ourselves a lot of grief by labelling our lives honestly: “This heart is not 100 per cent pure.” Where there’s sin in our lives, we need to confront it, confess it and confine it until Jesus can take it out of the way.

The good news is, the One who turned water into wine can make sugar water into genuine juice. We just need to make sure that, in the press between truth and hypocrisy, we don’t allow ourselves to get caught in the squeeze.

By Rick Gamble. Published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the followers of Christ congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications. To subscribe to this free weekly article, send a note to Rick at sgamble@bfree.on.ca