Have you ever shared with a loved one how much you “saved” and omitted how much you spent? Have you ever “invested” in yourself by buying a shirt or a haircut? Do cash purchases not really count against your budget?
You may have fallen prey to girl math.[i] A viral TikTok trend, girl math is meant to poke fun at illogical reasoning to justify purchases and make financial decisions seem less costly. Girl math playfully rationalizes purchases by minimizing the actual price of something or emphasizing the perceived value.
Meanwhile, the world is a bluster over tariffs. Tariffs are taxes levied on goods imported into a country from abroad. Trump believes that the United States is getting the raw end of international deals and is seeking to balance the scales through tariffs. China and the US have escalated a tariff war that will more than double the cost of items coming into the US from China.
Whatever your political persuasion, few want the escalation of tariffs to continue. An invisible tax (to most of us) is now visible and worse. No one wants to pay twice as much for their next cell phone as they paid for their last one. You can’t girl math your way out of that one.
And yet most of us have massive tariffs levied against our spiritual lives and yet consistently “girl math” our way out of our disordered priorities, justifying our decisions to ourselves.
You accept the promotion. You’ll take home $10,000 more a year and it opens up more opportunities in the future. But it will require you to uproot your family from a church and community that they are thriving in.
You sign your child up for a club soccer team. It’s going to cost $1,500. But what about the cost of travel? What about the impact of losing two nights a week around the dinner table? Two weekends away from your church a month?
You scroll Facebook every night on the couch and then again before you go to bed to catch up with friends. But you know studies tell you it negatively impacts your sleep and it lessens your engagement with your family.
You watch a couple of hours of nightly news to stay up to date on current events. But your opinion of those on the other side of the aisle has grown increasingly negative. And you fear not being in the know.
Every one of those decisions comes with a spiritual tariff. Are you willing to pay it? Many of us learned the hard way that those freebies credit card companies offer aren’t so free after all. To get those points, those miles, that tote bag, cost us a pretty penny in late fees and interest. Many of us have been slower to learn that we aren’t just chum for credit card sharks, we are chum for the modern economy. Our world is not neutral.
As many have pointed out, the most important currency in our economy is our attention. There is a reason TikTok and Instagram don’t charge a membership fee. You’re not the customer, you’re the product. And their sole objective is to keep you on their platform so they can sell more and more of you.
Are you living the spiritual life you want to live? Are your spiritual rhythms where you want them to be? If not, why not? Have you done a time audit on a week? Just as wise financial advisers encourage those figuring out a budget for the first time to do an audit of where every penny goes, so too it would be wise for us to consider where every minute is going.
Are you being overtaxed by your job? By your kids’ activities? By social media? By your streaming service? Make choices (often painful) to invest your time in the only relationship that time can be multiplied: your relationship with Christ.
For years I held onto Facebook. Despite the growing evidence of the corrosive impact of social media, I chose to stay on Facebook because it felt like pastoral malfeasance to ignore information my congregation was sharing about themselves. The past two years I’ve gotten off Facebook for Lent and this year I’ve extended that departure indefinitely. Perhaps I’ll be persuaded to return, but for now I believe Facebook took a toll on my spiritual life.
Right after Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to the cross and Peter rebukes him, Jesus clarifies that he isn’t headed to the cross alone, the path of the Christian life is a path directed by the cross.
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.25 For whoever would save his life[g] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? (Matt. 16:24-26)
What are you unintentionally giving in return for your soul? Where do you need to take note of the spiritual tariffs in your life? Where are you dodging the reality of your choices with spiritual “girl math”?
May our lives reflect Christ’s spiritual math in our lives. May we lose our lives that we might be saved.
[i] There is a level of cringe that it is called “girl math”—but my point is to explore the phenomenon of the way we do psychological tricks with our spending, not to explore any potential sexism in the label.
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Photo by Dan Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash