The finale of a three part series on faith with just a hint of economic insight added for seasoning.

It’s a beautiful October day in the neighbourhood, and what better way to spend it than by cuddling up next to the window, watching the leaves change before your very eyes, and pondering the interrelatedness of the Christian faith and market process economic reasoning. Beg pardon? That last part sounds worse than a triple crown dental implant? Well…I’m crushed. Mortified, actually. But fortunately for the faithful remnant, I am also stubborn and obligated to finish this series. So fear not, and for the rest of you, the sooner I write this, the sooner it’ll all be over. Shall we then?

My fellow Berean and much better economist, Dr. Haymond, will be tickled pink to see this, but I think we have to start this piece with James Buchanan (the economist, not the President). Buchanan made many lasting contributions to the field of economics, but he is best known for his work on public choice.* Yet today, I want to direct your attention to one of his most famous lines, which came not in an article or a book, but in a humble note he made while reading a piece on spontaneous order. Observe the relevant excerpt:

Norman Barry states, at one point in his essay, that the patterns of spontaneous order “appear to be a product of some omniscient designing mind” (p. 8). Almost everyone who has tried to explain the central principle of elementary economics has, at one time or another, made some similar statement. In making such statements, however, even the proponents-advocates of spontaneous order may have, inadvertently, “given the game away,” and, at the same time, made their didactic task more difficult. I want to argue that the “order” of the market emerges only from the process of voluntary exchange among the participating individuals. The “order” is, itself, defined as the outcome of the process that generates it. The “it,” the allocation-distribution result, does not, and cannot, exist independently of the trading process. Absent this process, there is and can be no “order.”

Buchanan is making a simple, yet easily-forgotten insight: Economies don’t just fall out of the sky; they are the result of human interaction and innovation. Examples abound, take the market for iPhones as one. It may be easy to forget in our modern age that up until 2007, there was no market for iPhones in the world. More pertinently to Buchanan’s point, no one had an independently existing utility function (a measure for welfare or satisfaction) for iPhones waiting to be satisfied. It wasn’t until Steve Jobs walked his Levi jeans-clad keister on stage to revolutionize the phone industry that people began to develop wants for iPhones. Moreover, it wasn’t until the various teams at Apple engaged in the process of making the iPhones that this potential market was then actualized. Absent that process of innovation and human interaction, we would not have the market order of iPhone sales and purchases.

Of course, we have an operating principle for this series (say it with me, folks): The Creator is Consistent. And as such, Buchanan’s point applies elsewhere. A musician may discover a particular arrangement in the process of composing that would not have existed outside of his tooling about with the charts. A cook discovers new flavors untasted but for his experimentation. And, yes, a hapless and lowly columnist may discover some grand insight so far unpenned as he mentally stutters through a bad case of writer’s block. Ideas require a process of creation from innovators and producers to become actualities. iPhones don’t fall from the heavens.

I want you to consider then how we conceptualize spiritual growth as an extension of this insight. We are all called to follow Christ in a daily walk with him, yet somehow it seems to me that we often forget the actual walking involved (i.e. – that process). When we pray for a virtue, or give of our time to ministry work, or fellowship with brethren — it should not come as a shock to us that we are not instantaneously transformed into the perfect mold of Christ. He has designated us as His imagers and desires to rule His good creation through those imagers. To abrogate that process would be to abrogate not just humanity but the divine prerogative, leaving us bereft of Screwtape’s grand insight:

For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve.

The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

iPhones do not fall from the heavens, and neither do fully formed Christians. If the “order” of a life conformed to Christ is our goal, then we must be prepared to go through the “process” with all the ups, downs, successes, frustrations, and gradual change included. Call it sanctification.

A few points to consider then. First, we must not forget that God’s natural decrees carry the full and equal weight of His Word. We may ask why He has called us to carry our crosses and to walk along the narrow road with Him. The question seems natural enough. But I am not so sure that we really desire answers as they are, so much as we desire particular answers as we want them to be. Do not misunderstand me, I think Christians are welcome to question and ask; God invites our lament and our inquiry. But we may not realize quite what we are asking for. At best, we would run a very real risk of temporal dismay; at worst, we would stare down every implicating answer in horrid, unmistakable clarity. I’m not convinced we could truly bear to know the consequences of all our actions. Don’t ascribe to obfuscation what may be an extension of mercy. We will do just fine without answers; we will certainly perish without His presence.

Second, I think it’s prudent to recall that aiming directly for a virtue itself is likely to end in failure. To clarify, I am certainly not saying we should stop praying or reading or serving or following. But we should see that virtue is the result of these things and is not merely an object we can capture in and of itself. It is through the process of praying, the process of engaging with God’s Word, the process of acting out the sacraments, and the process of living holy lives by the Spirit’s help that virtue is cultivated. Physical fruit must be tended to for its yield to come; it’s no great leap to say the same of spiritual fruit.**

Finally, we may do well here to invite the Lutheran insight of Coram Deo et Coram Mundo—righteousness before God vs. righteousness before man. In the presence of God (Coram Deo) our insights on process have mercifully no bearing. He has declared us His children, an instantaneous adoption as sons and daughters and full heirs in His kingdom. If you ever wonder why it is that our good works merit no favor with God, wonder no more. It is not that God thumbs his nose at us or is perpetually unamused with and scarcely cognizant of our existence. It is simply that no more favor remains to be given. To be in Christ is to have the full and total favor of the Father without caveat. We need not bring our cups of water to Him when He has given us the spring itself. Yet as Luther pointed out, God may not need our good works, but our neighbours do (Coram Mundo), and here we enter once more into that process of sanctification. Why God has called us to be His instruments remains a mystery; that He has done so is our prime directive.

* In a nutshell, do not presume that politicians are immune from incentives and don’t face the same knowledge problems you and I do.

** Paul’s image in I Cor. 3 is extremely helpful here. Paul and Apollos tended to the work of their ministries, but God gave the increase. Trying to will the fruit to grow on our own (e.g. – aiming directly at virtue itself) is a miserable task, but we can cultivate favorable conditions for its fruition. Tend your spiritual gardens and receive with open hands the bounty that God grants to you.