Driving down the road last week, I (Mark) heard a radio journalist interview Hispanic immigrant voters (legal ones, for all you who worry about this) about how they’ll vote in this fall’s presidential election. One made the case that he would vote for Donald Trump because “he knows how business works.”
We know he’s not alone in that view. Look at the polling and interviews and you’ll find a lot of voters — immigrant and natural-born — who are leaning toward Trump because they believe he’s a “successful businessman.”
David Jordan
Mark Wingfield
We see two problems with this line of thinking: First, Trump is a fraudulent businessman. And second, “business experience” isn’t the end-all qualification for governing the nation.
Trump as a businessman
The business model practiced by Trump and his family is based on deception, lying, not paying vendors, filing bankruptcy six times, cooking the books and putting a fake gold veneer over failure. That is not the business model anyone should aspire to follow.
His net worth is listed currently at $4.1 billion. That sounds pretty impressive. And he’s certainly developed a lot of properties in a lot of places. However, we also know that over the course of Trump’s early career, his father passed along, through a series of “loans,” gifts and grants, a total of $413 million (from an exhaustive 2019 New York Times investigative report). That’s a lot of money.
If you had been offered that kind of money 30 years ago as Trump was, what could you have done with that amount?
“If you had been offered that kind of money 30 years ago as Trump was, what could you have done with that amount?”
Like many Americans, Donald Trump could have invested his money, safely and wisely. With no hard work or risky decisions, that $413 million quietly invested in a few decently performing mutual funds would have returned a huge dividend over time.
Over the last 30 years, the stock market has given an average 10.26% return each year. Of course, there have been ups and downs. We had a major recession in 2008. But even with those financial bumps and bruises factored in, the last 30 years have offered regular people like you and me (and Trump if he had chosen) to accrue terrific results.
However, Trump instead invested in numerous risky ventures (Trump Shuttle airline, Trump Steaks, Trump University, the New Jersey Generals, Trump Taj Mahal Casino) and predictably endured a series of significant business failures from 1991 to 2009. Poor decisions and wild overleveraging created cascading corporate bankruptcies in this period.
Instead, if Trump had done nothing but just let his money sit in a few mutual funds for the 30 years he was playing development games and going bankrupt, he would be worth almost $7.5 billion. In other words, what Trump actually has done with his money is worse than simply letting it sit in mutual funds. He not only made far less than the stock market overall, he went bankrupt six times, failed to pay countless workers, stiffed regular people, and gave very little to charitable causes.
Now, his legacy is more thoroughly explored in the book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success. Here we find that Trump might well have been given and ultimately lost an amount far exceeding the $413 million we thought he had.
Is that the story of a successful businessman?
Business of the church
Among those who find Trump desirable as a candidate because of his perceived business success are a whole lot of churchgoers and even pastors. We find this troubling because we’ve seen the same attitude wreak havoc in churches.
Anyone who’s been around church governance for a few years — or anyone who’s worked with a nonprofit agency — knows this argument all too well. “The church should operate more like a business,” we are told.
But the church is not a business. Yes, church leaders need to understand and respect accounting principles (something Trump ignores) and know how to adhere to relevant codes and laws (something Trump ignores). But the underlying mission of the church is not to be a successful business.
“The underlying mission of the church is not to be a successful business.”
Neither should government be a business. A business, in the model of American capitalism, has the goal of making money, of maximizing profits. Neither the church nor government should be driven by profit.
Business is transactional: You get something if you can pay for it, you supply something with a view toward profiting from it. Business treats people like consumers.
Government, on the other hand, treats people like citizens and neighbors. Human value is not something we commodify; it is inherent in our created nature and governments are supposed to protect that.
Neither churches nor governments should operate with this transactional mindset.
While business necessarily is binary — assets offset by debits; profit vs. loss — the gospel does not keep books that way. For example, Jesus said our ultimate “audit” will be conducted according to how we serve, how we enrich the most vulnerable, not how we gather financial resources for our business or church, or our own lives. Gospel “gain” looks a lot like business “loss.”
Further, even the most profitable business ultimately focuses on scarcity rather than abundance. It assumes finite resources, and so to accrue the most for itself, it must gather resources from others. But looking to God as Creator, we see God provides all the resources we need. Abundance is not necessarily measured empirically, but it is sufficient nonetheless.
Which kingdom will we admire?
In American politics and church life, we too often hear people prioritize “business experience” over social experience, practical experience, effectiveness, compassion, lifting people up and other virtues. The unstated expectation is that living the life modeled by Jesus won’t produce a profit. Or that it is too costly to be compassionate.
To which Jesus the prophet replied, “What will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his soul?”
Many a church has lost its soul by caving in to “business practices” rather than Jesus practices.
If you’re tempted to vote for Donald Trump because you think he knows how to run a business, you might want to think again. His history with money and math says otherwise. And if you think your church ought to operate by Trump’s business principles, it’s time to listen anew to Jesus’ admonition: The love of money is the root of all evil.
David Jordan serves as pastor of First Baptist Decatur of Decatur, Ga. Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global.