Faith Healed Us Economically: How Job is Responsible for the Wealth of Nations

Even in the times when humanity first began recording its musings, our ancestors sensed a descent into decline. There was once a paradise, a golden age, illo tempore (as renowned anthropologist Mircea Eliade calls it). We might call it the harmony of Body, Soul, and Spirit.

Yet, we were exiled from that paradise, and from then on, things have only worsened. The world, with time, grows worse—or in fortunate years, at best, remains stagnant. It rushes toward perdition all the faster, the further it moves from Creation, from the beginning. The world, in short, hurtles inexorably toward Armageddon. In other words, the notion of progress and the betterment of the world was non-existent. The future was destined to be darker than the present.

Then, something changed within us during the eighteenth century: we began to believe in the future. We began to believe that the future would be better than the present, that the world could indeed improve over time. We felt we were riding a wave of progress. Enlightened by knowledge and science, the world's curve swung from pessimism to optimism. The inclination of belief acquired a positive direction. And this belief began to heal us. This insight I owe to Harari.

This healing began to manifest economically. This reversal of an abstract trend in belief had a highly practical outcome: only now could banks emerge, banks that could invest in the future. Why, after all, would anyone invest if the world were destined to worsen in the future? Who would invest in a sinking ship? And how could one expect an investment to yield returns if the world were growing poorer?

But in an environment where everyone believes the future will be brighter and brighter, investments flourish. Companies could suddenly be founded under different auspices.

And since banks, too, believed the future economy would prosper, they were willing to lend even to individuals without capital. This became another superpower humanity acquired: the new system of investment banking enabled market democratization and expanded it dramatically. Now, even those without means could realize their projects and ideas—given a sufficiently good idea. And if the bank believed in it, if it covered his story with faith, it would lend him the money.

But investing in the future happens only when there is collective belief in it. Thus, our newfound faith (in the future) unleashed cascades of unforeseen events that subsequently had extraordinarily positive impacts on our wealth.

Jesus once said, "Your faith will heal you," a saying that was difficult to understand. What exactly was meant by this? Some kind of psycho-magic? Not at all. Perhaps this phrase doesn’t operate on an individual level, but only at a societal one. Once you believe that things have meaning, that history is led by a good spirit, that history moves (like GDP) upward... it becomes true.

But faith alone is not enough. The spirit of Europe lies not merely in belief in the future. The spirit of Europe—if I may say so—is especially the spirit of openness to criticism. "Loving" your competitors, protecting competition, nurturing political opposition, and safeguarding freedom of speech, which is in fact the freedom of critical speech, the freedom of open, searing criticism even against the most powerful by the weakest. This is the philosophical combination that made Europe—and the entire West—a wealthy and free society. We unlocked a wealth of spirit previously unimaginable.

This combination of faith and criticism was the small key that granted us such strength, freedom, and wealth. And not merely bodily wealth (we live twice as long as in the seventeenth century, have better nourishment, and the healthcare provided to the poorest today surpasses that available to medieval kings). Our society is so wealthy that 70 percent of the economy can be sustained not by physical labor but by words and the organization of one another, or knowledge (banks, insurance companies, capital markets, entire classes of managers, marketers, accountants, lawyers, etc.). Through this blend of faith and criticism, we have become profoundly enriched in spirit as well. In the Middle Ages, literacy was the privilege of few; today, virtually everyone can read, to say nothing of the freedom of religion and the arts.

And all of this was unlocked long ago by Job. It was he who stood at the outset of this journey to the wealth of nations, though for centuries, we failed to understand the message of his book. He taught us to combine extraordinary faith with relentless criticism.

You see, faith indeed moved mountains, bringing unexpected gifts.

#history #economy #development #investment #banking