God gives me richly all things to enjoy! All at the same time? Is it even possible?

I came across an interesting video yesterday about Christ consciousness by Dr. Joseph Murphy (videolink). I was moved by a statement, and which kept me reflecting the whole day. I quote : ” God gave me richly all things to enjoy”.

My human understanding of things is that they are classified as either private or public. A good is public or private based on the level of rivalry and exclusivity.

If God gave me everything to enjoy, then why do I face obstacle when wanting seeking for a private good? I mean if everyone has the right over everything, then there must be no private good, right?

Vesica Picis H018, Daniel Holeman

This is exactly when my basic economic concepts help. The rivalrous consumption of a good means that what one person consumes cannot be consumed by another. For example, a bite of banana is characterized by complete rivalry in consumption. Once a person takes the bite, it cannot be consumed by another person.

Was the statement by Dr. Joseph Murphy incomplete? Did he meant to say: ” God gave me richly all things to enjoy, unless it is already taken by someone else”?.

Moral and Christianity teachings provides some guidelines. For instance through the quote “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” We ought not to confuse ourselves; it is important to always reflect as a human.

For my nonbeliever readers, probably the concept of indifference curve and budget constraint might provide some clarity.

An indifference curve connects points on a graph representing different quantities of two goods and points between which a consumer is indifferent. A Budget constraint is the total amount of items you can afford within a current budget.

I will replace in the next paragraphs budget by time and goods by the option to study or play (leisure) — to explain an anecdote I have this week.

So, on Monday, I had the opportunity to visit a school to share my professional and academic experience with some students. While I was giving the lecture, I observed two students at the very back of the class not listening. In fact, one was sleeping and the other was on his phone. I thought:” interesting! Either my speech is boring, or they are kind of genius”. But in case what I was telling was equally important to playing — then as they not paying attention, they would missed some valuable insights.

Using economic concepts, when deciding whether on the allocation of hours to studying and hours for leisure, the optimal choice of allocation occurs when an indifference curve is tangent to the feasibility set. This will represent the preferred combination of hours within the budget (hours) constraints. See diagram below.

Note that the slope of the indifference curve is equal to the slope of the feasibility set and represents the student’s maximum utility given the hours constraints.

The initial budget line (hours) is BL1. With a reduction in the hours spent on listening to my lecture, from HS1 to HS2, the budget line (hours or time) with pivot and shift towards more leisure hours (or sleeping).

This is because the student will find leisure hours cheaper as compared to hours to allocate to studying and substitute the demand towards leisure. The substitution effect is shown by HL3 and HL1. The difference between the two points is the substitution effect.

In fact, leisure and studying hours move in opposite direction : There is a trade off, one thing or the other.

Graph by me

Moving from the economic concepts to real life. As I write, the city is bustling, and my friend are having fun. I value writing and reading to gain knowledge. It is obvious that God has given me all things to enjoy; thus writing, reading, spending time with friends. But I also know that not only I have a different feasibility curve and indifference curve than my friends; but also, I must give to Cesar what belongs to Cesar and to God what belongs to God.