Western Prosperity and The Working God

This essay explains how the phenomenon of “Western Prosperity” can be explained – at least in part – by the unimpeded and profound acquaintance of Protestant society from the 16th to the 19th centuries with the entire text of the Bible, particularly Old Testament. Diligent readers of the Old Testament learned that a man filled with the spirit of God is a man getting work done in this world. The main message discovered by those who started to read the Bible by themselves, without the intermediary of theological interpreters, was heartening and motivating. They discovered that God himself likes work and craft. The implementation of these ideas brought prosperity to those who acted accordingly. A society following these rules – drawn from both the overt and concealed messages included principally in the Old Testament – achieved much greater prosperity than human societies that behaved contrary to those rules, as proven by the surprising economic growth in areas of the world that adopted this Protestant ethos.