What would you think if I told you that worshiping God is a fundamentally economic decision? If you don’t understand the purpose of economics, you might think that such a statement cheapens worship; but in reality viewing our worship through an economic lens lets us see how important worship is to us. To see how, we need to first understand what economics actually is, and why it applies to every facet of human life.
In his book Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell said “There are no non-economic values.” The reason he says this is because economics is fundamentally a study of trade-offs between the different uses of scarce resources. Anything we value has a cost of one sort or another, whether in the form of time, money, or another resource. The more you value something, the more you will give up to have it. Someone who really values quality in their meat will pay more for a high-quality steak than someone who doesn’t. Why? Because he values good meat more than a few extra dollars. This is as true of worship as it is of groceries. A Christian ought to be willing to wake up early on Sunday to get to church, because they value worshiping God more than sleeping in. Jesus Himself admonished those who would be His disciples to count the cost of following Him (Luke 14:25-33). Following Jesus isn’t free, and it is seldom cheap either.
In the West, we’re used to the cost of discipleship being fairly modest: waking up earlier to get to church on time, the cost of gas to drive to church, and the constant struggle with our own sin. The odds of losing your job for practicing your faith were pretty small, and social ostracism was pretty uncommon. That has been changing for some time now, and Christians need to be thinking now of what we are willing to give up to worship God. Are we willing to lose relationships because we didn’t go to a gay ‘wedding’? Are we willing to lose jobs because we didn’t affirm someone’s delusions? Are we willing to lose the respect of our peers because we don’t engage in the same sins as them? Anything we would not give up for Christ, we value more than Him.
This was Jesus’ point in telling the rich young ruler to sell his stuff and follow Him (Matthew 19:16-26). He wasn’t saying that riches are bad, but He knew that the rich young ruler valued his property more than he did following God, even though he was otherwise very pious. The rich young ruler was all for obeying God, right until it came to giving up his stuff. The disciples picked up on His point right away. They realized that, in our natural state, everybody has something they love more than God. That’s why people sin. That’s why even the most outwardly virtuous person can never earn salvation: they love their own righteousness more than God, which is idolatry. Only God can change us so that we love Him more than anything else. That’s what He does when He saves us, yet too often we value other things more than Him.
Acknowledging the trade-offs inherent in life shouldn’t make us legalistic moralists who look down on fellow believers who fall short, but rather should help us to judge ourselves to see where our priorities really lie. This will help us in finding and removing the metaphorical logs in our own eyes, before we go about trying to help others. We should all take a good long look at ourselves and ask ‘what am I willing to give up to worship God?’.
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Applied Christianity 