How Did God Create Economics? (EconThinking #3)

July 24, 2012 By 1 Comment

One of the challenges to understanding economics is that you can’t reach out and touch it.

Ok, sure, you can touch money. But money isn’t economics, even though lots of people think it’s all economics is about. (Let’s clear that up here and now: money is just an economic tool and nothing more. Economics exists without money: think barter.)

So what is economics? A lot of universities with tenured economics professors say economics is a science. Yet calling it a science is a recent development – Adam Smith considered it part of moral philosophy. Is it possible that calling economics a science that employs the same methods as physics, chemistry or biology creates some confusion as to what economics really is?

The fact is, economics isn’t a science in the modern experimental sense of the word, and here’s a simple way to prove it: if God had never created man, would physics, chemistry, and biology still exist? Yes. How about economics? Well… No. After all, if God never created man, there would be no people to make choices and steward the world.

And this is our first clue as to what economics really is. [Read more...]

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Does God Like Economics? (EconThinking #2)

July 17, 2012 By 3 Comments

When it comes to economics, one of the first missteps we make is not seeing God as someone who works.

Instead, we have this image of God as a King who just sits on His throne giving orders. Work seems a bit below the royal dignity, doesn’t it? Our view of work is someone with a sweat-stained back cutting down a tree or digging a ditch: now that’s work. Work requires some serious effort. Work is about action.

But isn’t that exactly what God did at creation? Judging by the impressiveness of the universe, He put forth some serious effort. In fact, notice what the Bible says He did after six days of creation: He rested. This doesn’t mean He was tired in the same sense that we get tired after working, but it does mean that He made a clear distinction between work and rest.

Jesus often talks about work, and provides an interesting insight when He says that: “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

Work is important to God. It’s so important that He put Adam in the garden “to work it and keep it.” God took His creation and assigned it to Adam “to fill and subdue.” That sounds like work to me.

So, what does this have to do with economics?

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Why is Economics so Confusing? (EconThinking #1)

July 9, 2012 By 1 Comment

For over a decade, every time I tried to figure out economics, I got confused.

It was like entering that huge traffic circle in Paris around the Arc de Triomphe. As a foreigner, it’s crazy – the signs are in another language, hundreds of cars are chaotically speeding about, you have no idea where you are so you keep driving around, and around, and around trying to figure out what to do, eventually ending up someplace completely different from where you wanted to be.

Why is this the experience so many people have with economics?
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