Economics in the Bible's "Free Will"

In Economics 101 we teach about the different kinds of markets, one being monopoly. Monopoly means basically one seller.

The monopolists usually cannot sell at any price he/she chooses. Most products and services are not valuable enough for a person to sell everything they own to buy only one item. Life saving drugs these days come close to that. But not electricity from one electrical company cannot charge whatever it wants.

If you are a retailer you try to have something going for the others do not. It might be location, engineering, style or ingredients.

Religions are not much different. Both religions of ancient history and more modern ones sold something others did not. From its earliest origins we can see the gears turning in the minds of wealthy Jews and Christians, "How can we structure this story so believers have to come to us and cannot buy some other religion's story?"

They started with a god that granted followers the opportunity to sin and called it "free will." Free will was necessary because there had to be sin. If there was neither free will nor sin there was no need for a god to grant forgiveness. By calling humans sinners resulting from free will and claiming there was but one way to get forgiveness they created a monopoly.

This monopoly was successful as long as consumers did could not easily shop for other versions of religion. I've read that there has been a relationship between religious belief and what we might call remoteness. Rural people tended to be more religious than urbanites. It was harder for them to shop around.

 Better highways made diving to other churches easier. The churches people grew up in did not hold people as adults.

The most powerful competition came with the internet. With it people came to learn they could forgo all religion.

All religions retain a bit of monopoly power, each being slightly different. Now, however, not believing has some monopoly power as well. It can market itself as the only way to avoid religion.