OPINION:
Why are some nations rich while others remain poor? Economic inequality is a pressing global issue. How can we bring freedom and prosperity to societies where the poor are often forced to leave their homes and lands?
This challenge isn’t new: early European settlers faced it in the Americas.
In North America, the Puritans turned to Moses to learn how to transform their own mentality from slaves into a nation who would manage land flowing with milk and honey. God gave those Hebrew slaves the Ten Commandments, a written law, to a people who did not know how to read. In order to flourish they needed to learn to read, copy and think about God’s law. Slaves had to become teachers, at least in their own homes.
Material flourishing began with internalizing God’s law.
The Puritans arrived in Massachusetts in 1620. In 1636, just 16 years after arriving in North America, they founded Harvard University to teach God’s word and apply it across life. Harvard Law School still bears the motto: “Non sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege,” meaning “Not under man, but under God and law.”
By contrast, the Portuguese arrived in Brazil in 1500, but they waited over four centuries until 1920 to establish their first university. Their sights were set on the land’s riches: timber, territory and gold. To them, prosperity came not from shaping the soul but from plundering the soil. They failed to see that true wealth begins with the cultivation of the mind and the formation of character.
The difference was that the Puritans believed that inner wealth, such as wisdom, discipline and reverence for God, was the inner source of outward prosperity. They educated their children not merely to make a living but to learn how to live. They took Isaiah’s words to heart, that the Spirit of God imparts wisdom, understanding, counsel, and the fear of the Lord. (Isaiah 11:19)
The Tenth Commandment thunders: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” (Exodus 20:17) But how can one become rich without wanting what others have?
Post-Christian capitalism answers, “Greed is good.” It believes the lie that progress is born of envy, that coveting is not a sin but a strategy. It dreams of replacing America’s national motto with “In Greed We Trust.”
Yet the biblical worldview that enabled the USA to flourish teaches otherwise.
Wealth is not mined from other men’s treasures it is made. It is the fruit of minds applied to work and community, hands trained, plans forged and trust earned. And trust, whether in a marketplace or a family, is built on integrity, which in turn is built on moral law.
Creativity flourishes when it is protected. Greed may corrupt the heart, but theft erodes society. That’s why God commanded: “You shall not covet” and “You shall not steal.” (Exodus 20:17,15)
These weren’t private rules, they were a national ethic. In the 1770s, the 13 American colonies interpreted that law to mean that the British crown could not turn taxation into robbery. “No taxation without representation” was not just a political slogan; it was a theological stance. It sparked the American Revolution that birthed a powerful nation.
And when God said, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,” he was not merely protecting households; he was securing civilizations. Nations crumble when men treat women as possessions. They flourish when men love their wives and raise sons to do the same.
In 1832, French magistrate Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at American women. In his classic “Democracy in America,” he observed that no nation honored marriage more deeply than the United States. He wrote: “Certainly, of all countries in the world, America is one in which the marriage tie is most respected and where the highest and truest conception of conjugal happiness has been conceived.”
Most conquistadors came to Latin America without their wives. They took native women, fathered children and abandoned both. They wanted to take gold but not invest in the roots of economic prosperity.
The Puritans, on the other hand, came to New England with their wives. They understood that true prosperity is not achieved by theft. It is cultivated. They knew true wealth flows from virtuous and industrious people.
As we confront today’s global poverty, the path to flourishing remains the same: teaching God’s Word, honoring marriage, respecting property and building trust.
• Vishal Mangalwadi is the author of 27 books, including “The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization.”
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