God and Economics and Apologia

While reading my morning devotional (Spurgeon's Morning and Evening) today, I couldnt help but contemplate the art of economics as it applies to Jehosaphat's failed entreprenurial voyage for gold in II Kings 22:48.





It reminded me of a lesson I learned from my highschool chemistry teacher:

Someone's fortune is not necessarily your misfortune.

Funny thing to learn in chemistry, but this phrase has stuck with me for years and proved to be a valuable adage in my outlook on life. If you happen to know a source for it, please leave me a comment.

But back to the lesson at hand and seeing the unseen when evaluating economic policies. Spurgeon seems to understand this when he states

Providence prospers one, and frustrates the desires of another, in the same business and at the same spot, yet the Great Ruler is as good and wise at one time as another.

All this to say that I acknowledge and understand that Henry Hazlitt is not necessarily promoting *Christian Economics* when he wrote his valuable book, Economics in One Lesson. His outlook is, however, more readily accepted by a Mises (or a Rothbard) because of his espousal of solid monetary theory (remember that gold that the ships Solomon and Jehosaphat were carrying). This is the Austrian position and mine, since Valerie asked.

My goal in reading and reviewing this book with online friends is to achieve a *basic deductive understanding* so that the fallacies inherent in our current Keynesian system are more obvious to the homemaker. We were trying to improve our score on an online quiz.

Soooo, I'm not specifically promoting Christian economics, which would be my ideal, but I certainly cannot dismiss learning about the humanistic policies which affect my everyday living.

God has cursed the earth (Gen 3:17-19). This is the starting point for all economic analysis to quote a living Christian economist. BUT because I'm reading Hazlitt, I'm going to try and stick to his essays, summarizing and commenting on those (telling how understanding a fallacy has changed my thinking), in order to stay focused and not run down too many rabbit trails.

Mr. Hazlitt's life spanned an entire century (1894 - 1993.) His writing is easy to follow, I think, precisely because he was a journalist: much like C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963) whose fantastic Mere Christianity started out as radio broadcasts.

Hazlitt lost many jobs, but never let that deter his quest. Let us not be thwarted either.

This *journalist of the century* has a lot to offer.



PS While my Hillsdale career vastly improved my economic knowledge, I was not an econ major. I took one class my first semester. It was taught by John Sparks, who spent most of his career at Grove City College. His mentor was Hans Sennholz. Over the course of the semester in addition to our reading, we had to write six essays. The professor supplied the title and that was it! I remember locking myself in a library closet in order to get them written. If I can find them, I will post their titles. It was a fantastic learning experience.


PPS Furthermore, while I did sit next to a Nobel Peace Prize winner at dinner one evening at the President's home in Hillsdale, I did not discuss economics with him. I was barely nineteen years old and very nervous. Do you want to know what I remember most about Mr. Hayek.... that he was gentleman enough to ask me if I minded if he *dipped* after dinner :)