Get right, get rich: books preaching the theology of prosperity grow in popularity.

You wake up, get dressed, have breakfast and go to work. In the evening, the routine is reversed: go home, eat dinner, relax and go to sleep. The monotony of everyday life can drag a person down, leaving them at a crossroads in life, not knowing which way to turn.

Society plays an intense role in everyone's life, dictating at times that our physical selves be model perfect, instead of encouraging the development of who we are inside. As a result, people find themselves directionless and looking for a guide or road map to help them find the success they deserve. That success could be raising a family, enhancing one's career or achieving personal wealth.

"How will you know you've reached success if you don't even know what it is?" asks award-winning author Emma S. Etuk, Ph.D. "Defining success--determining how you'd like to be remembered--is the critical first step in planning how to achieve it."

Empowering or inspiring oneself can be difficult at times. Turning to family and friends for advice or even calling or visiting a psychic may help for a while, but over time people need more than advice to help them. Browsing bookstore shelves, consumers find a bewildering selection of self-help and prosperity-conscious books. Many are written by life coaches, psychiatrists, ministers or other successful people who want to share how they did it.

These books have grown in popularity over the past few decades. Americans have embraced the self-help movement, attempting to heal themselves before seeking professional help. Others turn to the Bible seeking inspiration and direction from God. In the late 1990s, Americans began renewing their relationships with God, embracing a more nondenominational approach to worshiping and gaining spiritual insight.

Seizing upon this renewed faith, many authors and ministers have published (or self-published) books guiding people to use their relationship with God to gain the personal wealth they deserve. Several self-published authors urge people to pray in a way that will make God work for them to gain personal wealth. A number of self-published authors are addressing the need of the African American community to seek ways to achieve personal wealth.

Prosperity-conscious books are extremely popular within the African American community because blacks do not have their fair share of the wealth in America and face tremendous challenges, says Dr. Julianne Malveaux, author, economist and radio personality who has observed the trend.

"We also tend to be vulnerable to the American disease of overspending and from that perspective people are in need of health-tip like guidelines on ways to handle and manage their money," she says.

"Consumers are barraged by the amount of information that is published and people respond to it out of their need and people want to know how to do better," she notes. In the African American community, this need is complicated because many families (first generation middle class) are making more money than their parents did at the same age, but the majority of African American families have not been sitting around talking about the stock market or home-equity loans.

The Love of Money

Many consumers are looking for quick ways to be materially successful. Because there is a lot of information published, people take advantage of the ever-growing need, at times slapping together books of little quality and providing incomplete information. To avoid misdirection, Malveaux recommends that people go to a bookstore and check out an author before purchasing a book. (She has written several economics and business books and is working on one in the religion and prosperity genre.)

The African American community continues to struggle to gain personal wealth, unlike other races and cultures in the United States that have found ways to thrive financially.

To feed this need, the Bible is horribly misused. The Bible teaches us to love thy neighbor and advocates social responsibility. A lot of prosperity-conscious books ignore that. "The Bible speaks that wealth is important, but it also tells us to put it into perspective," Malveaux says. "The Bible says the root of all evil is the love of money. The Bible says everything we own belongs to God and our purpose in life is to do her will."

Dr. Etuk, author of Recipe for Success: The 21 Indispensable Things That Can Help You Succeed in Life (Emida International Publishers, 2004) and a staunch Christian, believes prosperity gospel has taken root in this country, feeding the trend in which speakers say God is obligated to do as we demand.

"God should not be manipulated" Etuk says. "God is not nonsense. We have to understand the mystery of life one can not explain."

Many people are going after success because they don't want to live a life of defeat or failure. In his book, Etuk shares his life story of struggling to achieve when he came to America 25 years ago from Nigeria with only $1,000 in his pocket and a determination to go to college. Now he has written eight books and returns to Nigeria several times a year to encourage people to visualize their goals to find success.

Etuk adheres to a mission statement found in his latest book, saying it is a general blessing to mankind. "It is a simple statement emphasizing sharing wherever you go and not being interested in making money or being filthy rich, but interested in making a difference.

Valorie Burton, a life coach and author, understands that people are seeking to find a purpose in their lives. In her latest book, What's Really Holding You Back? (WaterBrook Press, May 2005), Burton says the question is one that she could not answer when it was posed to her one day.

"People can get caught up in the expectations and dreams of other people; they haven't decided what they want to give to the world," Burton says. "You have to move out of your comfort zone, admit your fears and pursue success by your standards, not by society's standards."

Using the teachings of the Bible as a guide, Burton says she helps people tackle emotional, philosophical and societal issues to find the true direction in which their talents are meant to be used and to eventually find success. "What it is about for me is serving God and what I know he created me to do" she says. "We all serve God in some way through our gifts and talents and living in that purpose, the world should work in perfect unison."

Andria Y. Carter is the business editor for the Trentonian newspaper in Trenton, New Jersey. She is a veteran journalist of 16 years.