No Free Lunch: Economics for a Fallen World: Third Edition, Revised

Chapter One: Introduction to Economics 6 GENESIS 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. God is outside time, He created time and everything that is. A God that could create all reality out of nothing, ex nihilo, is an omnipotent God. The book of Job shows the difficulty of comprehending this incomprehensible God. Responding to Job’s complaints, God spends four chapters elaborating on a small portion of His omnipotence. Consider just this initial portion: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? “Now gird up your loins like a man, And I will ask you, and you instruct Me! “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding, who set its measurements? Since you know. Or who stretched the line on it? “On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstone, When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who enclosed the sea with doors When, bursting forth, it went out from the womb; When I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, And I placed boundaries on it and set a bolt and doors, and I said, ‘Thus far you shall come, but no farther; And here shall your proud waves stop’?” With this brief introduction, we can pause to consider economic implications. Economics is a social science, since its subject matter is humanity. In a broad sense, economics is concerned with how human beings choose. Why do we choose one thing instead of another? Why are we even forced to choose at all? Why can’t we have our cake and eat it too? More narrowly, economics is concerned with how individuals choose in market settings. Some economists define economics as the study of how to allocate scarce resources among competing ends. But all of these ideas—that we choose, that there are limited resources, that we have desires which can’t all be satisfied, flow out of the material reality created by God. We must understand the idea of scarcity (which we’ll define later) and choice in the context of the sovereign plans of a Holy God. Further, we see the creative God is independent—there is no causal force that can act on him. Material reality only affects God to the extent He allows it according to His own plans and purposes. The corollary is that all of creation, including all humans, are necessarily dependent beings. As the Apostle Paul says, “in Him we live and move and have our being.” God’s independence is complemented by His infiniteness, and the parallel is that our dependence is complemented by our finiteness. God is everywhere; as the Psalmist says, Where shall I go fromyour Spirit?Or where shall I flee fromyour presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If Imakemy bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall leadme, and your right hand shall holdme.