...economics.of.God

The paradigm of diminishing marginal utilities states that for every additional unit consumed, marginal utility, or pleasure, decreases at a increasing rate.

For example, you’re wandering through the desert for two weeks without any food to eat, starving, and emaciated when there, on the horizon, is a glorious pizza hut. The manager notices your emaciation and quickly changes the prices, one slice of pizza = $25. You’re starving, you don’t care, $25 is nothing to pay for pizza… so you eat your slice and still you are hungry… but you're not hungry enough to pay $25... for the next piece you'll pay $20... the next maybe $10... after three pieces you're not really hungry enough to pay $10 a slice, but maybe $3. after another three slices you're actually getting tired of pizza, but he lowers the price to $1, so another two slices are consumed... at some point, the margin of utitlity becomes so small that the manager could offer you free pizza, and you would not oblige.

The pleasure received from one incrimental unit diminishes increasingly as more unites are consumed... Other obvious practical examples include drug addictions (it takes more and more to get you high), roller coaster rides (it's not worth waiting three hours in line after the second time through), and even your favorite song (if placed on repeat for six hours, it will diminish from being joy-inducing to torture--which btw is why the radio sucks ;) ).

Every experience in life is subject to diminishing marginal utilities. We get bored. It takes more and more to please us until we no longer even notice the pleasure or beauty within. This is what allows us to walk to our cars in the spring ignoring all of the blooming and budding flowers and trees, drive to work without noticing the sunrise painting the sky with indescribable beauty, and without being fascinated by the concept of driving (remember the first time you were behind the wheel?), or speaking, or music, or nature, or anything. We've experienced it before. It no longer adds any pleasure to our lives. I believe spiritually there is a plethora of caveats to this understanding... but one particularly has stuck in my mind intriguingly.

God does not change.

ever. eternally.

therefore, God does not experience diminishing marginal utility.

God experiences all of the initial joy and passion and pleasure and excitement of seeing a sunrise unceasingly, every time, without end, without diminishing returns, eternally... This God is actively involved in creation, He opens a flower in the morning and receives such joy and gladness that He races to the next flower in pure exhileration to experience the pleasure and joy and beauty again, and then to the next flower, and the next, and the next, experiencing the same joy, the same gladness, the same sense of pleasure and satisfaction continuously and infinitely, everyday. Every experience is essentially "new" to God. God’s heart does not harden, His senses do not dull, His mercy is new every morning. If you think about the implications, it is quite beautiful really.

I’ve heard skeptics question our enjoyment of heaven if we live eternally, and all we ever do is praise the Father for the Glory of His Grace, world without end... And yet, if the experience of diminishing marginal utilities did not exist, it would be absurd to question this. It's like receiving an ice cream cone every day, without the possibility of it getting old. Without getting "burnt out." The question I pose is this: do we experience diminishing marginal utility as a result of the Fall? or the result of our intrinsic make-up?

Further thoughts (though I'm more interested in yours):

For the case of it being a result of the Fall:
Many of our greatest problems present themselves because we grow weary of doing good.

Creation does not share in this flaw. Animals perform their daily tasks each day without ceasing and without question, almost robotic… Angels do as well, eternally proclaiming "Holy, Holy, Holy," and falling in response to the One who sits on the Throne.

Perhaps our description of “robotic” is a better description of our flaw then their monotony.

If a creature—such as a bee—is created with the sole task of pollinating a flower… and it performs that same rudimentary task day in and day out without experiencing diminishing marginal utility--content and satisfied every time--perhaps it is not a "lesser," robotic creature, but a creature content with fulfilling the purpose God endowed it with...

Trees grow. Birds sing. Angels sing "Holy Holy," eternally with no loss of satisfaction...

Nature is far more obedient than we are.

I would speculate—purely conjecturally—that before the Fall, we humans did not experience such diminishing marginal utility. I think it not dissatisfaction that led Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit, but rather deception.

Perhaps it is this "disunion with God"--as Deitrich Bonhoeffer refers to our knowledge of good and evil--that planted this "boredom" within us.

I’m more inclined to think it an affect of the curse as we see that children do not experience it to the magnitude of adults. A baby will likely play peek-a-boo well beyond the tolerance of an adult, still giggling and screaming “again!” at each time the game is played.

Paul warns against it, "do not grow weary in doing good."

Oh, and we are created Imago Dei, in the image of our Creator, who does not grow weary, or tired, or bored (Isaiah 40) and who is immutable... which is perhaps the strongest evidence I can contrive for it being an effect of the curse.


For the case of it being endowed by God in our make up

Alternatively, perhaps the dissatisfaction with all that the world has to offer leads us to desire the more filling, everlasting, insatiable satisfaction of God Himself?

In this, it would be an innate a defense mechanism against idolatry. A sort of fingerprint of God--perhaps similar or part of "eternity in our hearts"--that keeps us longing for something better, something more until we find God.

This could be the experience of Solomon, who--after trying all the world has to offer and experiencing dissatisfaction--concluded “everything is meaningless.”
"everything" being all that is under the sun--that is to say, everything apart from God.

Thoughts?