Love, Choice & Opportunity Cost

How is love connected to opportunity cost?

I imagine that's what you're thinking. Don't worry, by the time you're done reading, it will be clearer, God willing.

                     "God can do innumerable things, but those things don’t define who He is.

He can work with our faith, yet He is not faith itself.

He can bless us with prosperity, yet He is not prosperity.

He can grant us favor, but He is not favor itself.

The list of what God can accomplish is inexhaustible, as He is All-powerful.

However, while God can do all these things and more, they don’t capture His true essence.

At His core, God is Love. Love is His nature." (1 John 4:8)

Origin of Choice

God expressed His absolute love for humans from creation when He gave us dominion and authority- the ability to choose (Genesis 1:26).

Job 38-41 gives us a glimpse of God's might and power, and a deep study of it will show us that God's decision to give us authority was an act of love.

As Warren (2020) points out, God could have made us puppets, but He didn’t. Instead, He gave us the freedom to choose, while also making it clear that our decisions have trade-offs -what we refer to in economics as opportunity cost.

What is Opportunity Cost?

God first developed the concept of opportunity cost in Genesis 2:17, not Professor Friedrich von Wieser in 1914 (Riera-Prunera, 2014).

“According to Wieser, the opportunity cost of a particular choice is the value of the next best alternative that must be given up to pursue that choice” (Chris Drew (PhD, 2023)).

God, however, had already developed the concept from the beginning. As seen in Genesis 2:17, where God explained to Adam that once he ate the forbidden fruit, he would surely die.

The First (Spiritual) Tradeoff 

Yet, as we know, they did not physically die immediately after eating it. Could it be possible that God lied?

NO. Numbers 23:19, Titus 1:2, and Hebrews 6:18 tell us that God cannot lie. So, what did He mean by death?

In Genesis 1:26, God declared “Let us make mankind in Our Image.” The image of God in Hebrew is Tzelem, which is derived from the root word Tsal, meaning shadow (Hebrewversity, 2018). This implies that we are the shadow (or reflection, 2 Corinthians 3:18), and God is the image. A shadow cannot exist without the image that casts it, indicating that we are nothing without God. In this context, “death” refers to separation -spiritual separation from our very image.

Therefore, by choosing disobedience to gain knowledge, they sacrificed the benefits of harmony, life in the Garden, and supreme dominion, even though they/we still can make choices. God conveyed this opportunity cost to them when He said, “You will surely die”.

Hope in True Love

This story isn’t all grim- thank God for Jesus who came to save and redeem us to God. However, I always wondered: Even though God knew they could choose disobedience, He still allowed them to decide. 

Why?

As I cited earlier, it's because He is Love, and Love lets you choose. 1 Corinthians 13:5 says that love ‘does not insist on its way’, and that is exactly what God is and how He feels towards all His creation, especially towards man, who is an extension of Him.

That’s why, even when He sent his son to save us, He still didn’t force us or qualify us all saved although He came to die for us ALL. Instead, He said in John 3:16, ‘whoever believes in him’, because although He knows we desperately need Jesus, He still lets us choose because He is Love. 

We can make choices, but there are opportunity costs.

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Bibliography: 

Bible Gateway (2024) Bible Gateway. Available at: https://www.biblegateway.com/.

Chris Drew (PhD (2023)’10 Opportunity Cost Examples’, Helpful Professor. Available at: https://helpfulprofessor.com/opportunity-cost-examples/#:~:text=The%20concept%20of%20opportunity%20cost%20was%20developed%20Friedrich  (Accessed: 7 September 2024).

Hebrewversity. (2018) In the Image of God – Hebrew Etymology of the Word ‘Tzelem’. Available at: https://www.hebrewversity.com/image-god-hebrew-etymology-word-tzelem/(Accessed: 7 September 2024).

Riera-Prunera, C. (2014) ‘Opportunity Cost’, Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, pp.4497–4500. doi https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_2016.

Warren, R. (2020) ‘God Doesn’t Force Us; He Gives Us a Choice - Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope’, Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. Available at: https://pastorrick.com/god-doesnt-force-us-he-gives-us-a-choice/#:~:text=But%20before%20they%20went%20into%20the%20Promised%20Land%2C (Accessed: 7 September 2024).