In a new video from TED Ed, Akshita Agarwal provides a quick lesson on Adam Smith’s “paradox of value” and the differences between “value in use” and “value in exchange.”

For Christians, there’s a crucial lesson here about the best way to meet humanneeds in the economic order,whether throughtrade policy, reducing price controls,orany number of other areas.Discerning “economic value” is a tricky thing, andfree economies are a handy tools for working through these thingsinpeaceful and productive ways.

But as Agarwal concludes, it also has implications forour everyday stewardship:

Utility applies not just to buying things, but to all our decisions, and the intuitive way to maximize it and avoid diminishing returns is to vary the way we spend our time and resources. After our basic needs are met, we’d theoretically decide to invest in choices only to the point they’re useful or enjoyable.

Of course, how effectively any of us manage to maximize utility in real life is another matter. But it helps to remember that the ultimate source of es from us: the needs we share, the things we enjoy, and the choices we make.

On this,the “ultimate source of value” is not so humanistic as Agarwal frames ithere, but in a Christian context,such a statementdoes illuminate the capacity God has given us as image bearers and co-creators. The important thing is that we don’t forget the actual beginning and end of that service.

Again, there is much we can learn from earthboundapproaches to maximizing “utility” and “happiness,” but our economic imaginations aremeant tostretch muchwider and higher than this, resistingidols of hedonism and utility and pressing on toward truth and goodness and beauty.

Ours is an economic witness that meets material needs and lifts up the “least of these” through work and trade and innovation, but our origins and ends arenot made of stuff of the earth.

Ourapproach to “value” and the pursuit thereof is bound to fall short if it fails toharmonize the material and the transcendent.At its core, our economic witness is only as powerful as its foundationin faithfulness to a decision-maker of a different sort —propelled by the power of the Spirit and oriented toward the glory of God in all things.