The economics of joy.

Recently, I attended the biannual conference of the American Society of Health Economists at Cornell. I am neither an economist nor a health policy expert, but I have one of those weird, inside-the-Beltway jobs that required me to be there, anyway. Needless to say, I had a lot to learn--and learn I did.

Economists are a special breed of thinkers, and hanging out with them forces my brain to stretch and twist in awkward ways. To be honest, looking at equations makes me panic a little bit inside. But I cope by reminding myself that economists are just storytellers who like to use numbers instead of letters. They just ask a question, gather some relevant data points, look for trends, and then use pretty graphs to explain their findings.

So just for fun, here's my (entirely scientific and credible) attempt to think like an economist.

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of joy lately, so let's stick with that for now. As we're told in Galatians 5:22, joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit. That means that as we live out our faith and follow the Spirit's leading, our joy should increase (see the pink line).

One of the big problems I have with understanding joy, though, is that it's so easy to mistake with happiness. As you can see from the jagged blue line, happiness is elusive and circumstantial. Let's go hiking! (+1 point) Oh wait, it's raining outside. (-2) I'm in love! (+10) Alas, my heart is broken. (-15) How are we supposed to be joyful when our emotions are all over the place? If being joyful means we're exhibiting the fruits of the Spirit, is it a sin to be unhappy? And shouldn't being a Christian cause my happiness to trend steadily upward?

Nope. They're not even correlated.

Whereas the degree of our happiness can be influenced by any number of internal or external factors, joy comes from the Spirit. When we experience blessings, these naturally cause us to experience both happiness and joy simultaneously. Suffering, conversely, leads to unhappiness. But if we can trust God to carry us through our sufferings and learn how to interpret them rightly (in light of God's larger plan), then these should actually increase our joy.

	HAPPINESS	JOY
Blessing	+	+
Suffering	-	+
Sin	+/-	-

Additionally, you'll notice that the pink line is not just a straight line. There's not a strict age-to-joy ratio (as if every year of your life begets 5 additional points of joy). It's actually way better than that! Because all of the fruits of the Spirit work together (love enables joy, which begets peace, etc.), the future value of the joy you have now will increase exponentially down the road. Ah, the miracle of compound interest.