The problem with 3rd world countries is that they were not founded on Judeo-Christian values. This is important because our culture is unique in that we uphold honest and decent behavior as the key to mutual prosperity.
In every other culture prosperity is either a means to greater power or it is obtained by dishonest means.
This is part of why so many people in the world hate the USA is that they assume that we are wealthy because we *MUST* have stolen it. They just can’t conceive of some of the things we do - like when you see an old lady drop a $100 bill you pick it up and give it back to her. In most of the world you’d take it away from her and chide her for being so foolish with her money.
We have a Somali family who have left islam as neighbors and they marvel that Americans don’t have walls around their homes. They marvel that they were total strangers in the community and they were still invited to a BBQ. They marvel that they are measured by what they do for everyone else and not by what they do or do not have. It just doesn’t work that way where they are from.
People who have Christ in their hearts don’t need to worry about things like prosperity because prosperity is a natural side effect for a community of Christians.
There's something to be said for that, but I think this is over-simplifying it. Neither China nor Japan was founded on Judaeo-Christian values, but for much of human history these were very modern societies. The same could be said about ancient Rome, which dominated the civilized world for hundreds of years but was far from Judaeo-Christian in any way.
A better indicator for modern development is that modern societies almost always have a written language. A society isn't going to advance very much when it can't even publish an instruction manual for something as simple as a horse-drawn cart. There's an enormous societal distinction between people who paint on cave walls and pass their knowledge down through folk tales, and people who write things down for posterity so all of their descendants can build on their prior knowledge.
great points
Yes, and the OT is full of good things to keep people healthy.
“The problem with 3rd world countries is that they were not founded on Judeo-Christian values. This is important because our culture is unique in that we uphold honest and decent behavior as the key to mutual prosperity.”
This is true even with ostensibly “Catholic” Mexico. One of my latino coworkers with close family in Mexico once described the prevailing attitude of his homeland as “do unto others before they do unto you”. And he wasn’t trying to insult Mexico he simply was making a comment about how it operates.
Not that there isn’t a generous side to Mexican culture as well because there is. But the habit of taking advantage of others is deeply embedded in their civic culture and that’s a big reason why Mexico is corrupt and poor.