That’s the question asked at the “Economics for Everybody” blog. The answer? A resounding yes:

Work is important to God. It’s so important that He put Adam in the garden “to work it and keep it.” God took His creation and assigned it to Adam “to fill and subdue.” That sounds like work to me.

So, what does this have to do with economics?

The Bible shows us economics begins with work. God demonstrated this with His own creative action, then told Adam to follow His example. But it’s not work for work’s sake, or even work for Adam’s sake. It’s work for God’s sake.

This is the point of manding Adam to do specific things. Theologians often refer to these mands as the “creation mandate.” They are binding for everyone in the world. You could say the creation mandate is pressed into our DNA. We were designed to follow mands. It’s our purpose in life.

Now when you follow mands, it means you’re ultimately working for them. In other words, with the creation mandate, God made us stewards of the creation. According to Genesis 1 and 2, our primary job as stewards is to have families and manage God’s property for their provision, all the while enjoying a close relationship with Him.

The article goes on to note that stewardship necessitates choices, and choices are foundational to economic thinking. Be it naming animals, investing, farming, or leading a family, daily tasks of stewardship are marked by the choices they demand. These choices require a broadened sense of economic thinking and force us to reckon with economics as a serious field of thought and study in the created world.

The article concludes:

This means economics starts with work, is driven by choices, and is guided by mands. We could sum it all up by saying ‘economics is the study of the choices we make while using our limited resources in order to be good stewards before God.’

Complete article here.