The Forgotten Keys to National Success

What makes a nation great? Many books have been devoted to the subject. Why did European powers conquer the Americas and not the other way around? Why did Europe colonize Africa and not Africa Europe?

Part of the answer lies in geography: America and Europe have a wealth of geographic blessings. Africa has many resources, but its climate and geography make travel and trade uniquely difficult. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. North American Indians had the same geographic advantages as the people who arrived later in the United States yet never became as powerful. Why?

Another answer could be as simple as the Ten Commandments. As a general rule, nations that adhere closer to biblical law tend to be more successful.

Consider just two commandments: the Seventh, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and Eighth, “Thou shalt not steal.”

For most of history in the Western world, these have been regarded as good laws. They certainly have not always been obeyed, but they are the foundation of the social and commercial life of Western nations, and their violators were, in theory, punished.

Yet other societies, geographically disparate, have had a very different relationship with these laws—and have all been similarly unsuccessful in material prosperity, arts and sciences.

Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery

Think of the Indians encountered by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and the Polynesians who killed Cpt. James Cook 40 years before. These two peoples were on opposite sides of the world and never met—yet they had remarkable similarities.

Lewis, Clark and Cook all noted that the accepted morals of the natives were shockingly different from those practiced by the Americans and the British. Polygamy was common. Men had multiple wives, and in some cases women had multiple husbands. The family structure detailed by the Fifth Commandment—of children brought up by a father and mother—was not always the norm. Fathers in particular had a much smaller role in the family than explained in the Bible and taught in American and British churches.

The Indian Health Service website states that most Indian tribes had people “considered neither men nor women; they occupied a distinct, alternative gender status.” Though this description likely exaggerates this trend to comport with the transgender movement, seeking historical precedent for their modern perversions, it is true that many Indian tribes were far from the Bible’s instruction on marriage and family.

After visiting Tahiti and Society Islands, English missionary John Muggridge Orsmond wrote, “She is the filthy Sodom of the South Seas. On her shores, chastity and virtue find no place.” Historian and Ancient Tahitian Society author Douglas Oliver wrote that graphic sex “appeared prominently and unequivocally in their everyday talk, their dance, their graphic art, their secular oral ‘literature,’ and in their religious beliefs and rituals.”

Dr. Milton Diamond wrote, “In traditional Hawaii, prior to the arrival of the missionaries, the Hawaiian people had no institution of marriage whatsoever; neither monogamy nor polygamy. … Specific words for husband and wife did not even exist; he was simply called a kane (man) and she wahine (woman). There was no marriage of any sort as people from the West understand the term.

“Individuals stayed together or not by choice rather than by commitment or obligation. One member of a pair could be associated with only a single partner while the other could have many. And there was no value attached to either relationships or which type was better. … [A]ny and all sorts of sexual and social arrangements were accepted and enjoyed. These could be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual. There was no stigma to these relationships and often the multiple relationships involved siblings.”

Other primitive cultures held similar views. In Africa, polygamy was common. Instead of being brought up by a father and mother, in some African and American Indian tribes, children were raised by the mother and her brother.

Some information about these family structures is now easily accessible since such arrangements are now viewed as acceptable or even progressive. But the darker sides of these “family” structures remain concealed.

Some cultures not only broke the Fifth and Seventh Commandments, but also the Sixth: “Thou shalt not murder.”

“Infanticide—the deliberate murder of newborn infants and young children—was practiced widely, and perhaps ubiquitously, among Australian Aborigines before the coming of Europeans and the imposition of Western values, which, unlike the values of pre-contact Aborigines, regarded the deliberate killing of babies and small children as murder,” wrote William D. Rubinstein in the journal Quadrant.

University of Michigan professor of anthropology Aram Yengoyan wrote, “Infanticide was the primary means of population control” and “probably ranged from 15 percent to 30 percent of all births.”

Western explorers witnessed little of this type of commandment-breaking personally. But theft was very common.

Thou Shalt Not Steal

The record of Lewis and Clark’s journey is filled with frustration over this. Describing the expedition’s time among the Chinook tribe, historian Stephan Ambrose wrote, “Any object laid aside for a moment vanished.”

Captain Cook’s journals give almost identical accounts, as he complained about natives “robbing us with impunity.”

While exploring the heart of Africa, Dr. David Livingstone found himself a victim of similar thefts. Modern scholarly excuses for this behavior are almost identical: These are cultures that valued hospitality and gift giving, so people helping themselves to gifts was not considered theft.

It would go too far to say these societies had no concept of private property or theft. But the prohibitions were not as strong as in the Ten Commandments and within Western culture.

For many Indian tribes, stealing horses was an important rite of passage. Livingstone described similar attitudes among Africans: “In tribes which have been accustomed to cattle-stealing, the act is not considered immoral in the way that theft is.”

The Cause of All Suffering

“God’s law is, simply, love!” wrote Herbert W. Armstrong. “It is the perfect way of life. Every particle of human suffering, unhappiness, misery and death has come solely from its transgression!” (The Plain Truth About Healing).

Even in the West, so much of God’s law is routinely violated. Rampant suffering is the result. Yet it is no coincidence that nations with more stable governments and more widespread prosperity gave more honor to God’s commandments. And it’s no coincidence that those commandments are foundational to a stable and prosperous society.

None of this is to say that the nations that possess economic, military and cultural dominance earned it. Unlike other nations, their ancestors received these golden principles literally from the Creator of humanity for the benefit of humanity. And they—and we—have utterly failed to obey and spread them as we should. Still, the power of the principles themselves and the God behind them has profoundly affected world history.

Britain in particular exported this thinking to the world. “The British colonial empire has done more to fight poverty than all postwar development aid combined,” writes Bruce Gilley in his book The Case for Colonialism. This was achieved not by bringing material goods but by teaching and enforcing laws—laws that work because they are based on a right understanding of what human beings are—and applying them to everyone.

Like the Israelites before them, the British and the Americans have largely failed to keep God’s laws. Today we overtly reject these principles and emulate the principles of societies that produced no art, culture, prosperity or science of any significance.

Embracing unbiblical, primitive principles is foundational to the woke movement. Karl Marx’s collaborator Friedrich Engels observed in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State that primitive societies lack both biblical family morals and private property. Yet rather than believing the Bible or even judging by the obvious, tragic fruits on display worldwide for generations, he pointed to primitive societies to argue that doing away with biblical law is more natural and therefore better. Engels set up communism as the enemy of both private property and the family. Now the free-loving or property-free ways of some primitive groups are held up by leftists as examples of innate superiority over Western principles.

The lack of accomplishments from these societies is proof that God’s law works. The Israelites, the British and the Americans didn’t build the greatest civilizations ever to exist. God’s laws built the greatest civilizations ever to exist—in spite of the stiff-necked Israelites, British and Americans! Breaking that law produces only degradation, defeat and squalor. Yet the modern Israelites are actively, intentionally rejecting the principles of the Bible and their Creator, embracing principles that people who have no history with God have repeatedly proved do not work.

The time is coming when the laws of God will be the constitution of nations around the world. They will be taught and enforced all over the world. Obeying the Ten Commandments will unlock vast amounts of prosperity, social progress and culture, leaving modern America looking like the primitive Aboriginals or Indians in comparison. Basic respect for just some of God’s laws is responsible for so much of the wealth in the world. How much more prosperous will the entire planet be when it embraces all ten?