“Worth It” In a Culture that Defines our Worth

“It’s a little bit expensive, but it’s worth it!”

How many times have you heard this phrase?

Maybe it’s coming from your best friend, your brother, an acquaintance or your favorite blogger on the internet.

Or maybe it’s coming at you in quiet, subtle ways. It’s not exactly worded like that, but it’s the same message.

From the ad on TV, the billboard on the highway, the woman you pass in Target with the cute purse.

Worth it.

It amps up this season as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday crowd our social media news feeds and Christmas approaches. We are bombarded with messages from everywhere that tell us whether or not something is “worth it”. Worth the money. Worth the time. Worth the investment. Worth it.

In fact, we often begin to believe that if we don’t have the ___(insert product here)____, we aren’t “worth it”. We aren’t worth anything if we don’t have it all figured out- a nicely decorated home, a well-plated (and nutritionally balanced) dinner, a perfect homeschool curriculum and a drug-free birth.

LIES. ALL LIES.

Friends, our “worth it” is not in the possessions we own, the amount of followers were have on social media, the beauty of our homeschool curriculum, or the access we have to the newest robot vacuum. Our “worth it” is not defined by our beauty, our possessions or the behavior of our children.

Instead, I’ve come up with several helpful ways for me to fight the constant barrage of “worth it” this holiday season.

1. Know that advertisers are paid to tell you that things are “worth it”. 

Remember that adds on TV, in stores and on social media are paying big money to get right up in your face about their product. They have teams of people who have gone to college to learn how to make us want to buy things. They have teams of people who design adds and they usually have large budgets to get those adds out to us. Every single add has one mission in mind: inform the viewers that this product is “worth it” and that the viewer needs to buy it. 

A note here about bloggers speaking this message. Many bloggers this time of year amp up the amount of products that they share. This is hard work, and something that most bloggers are truly passionate about.  Most bloggers I know are very genuine about the products that they share. They are making a living from sharing products and companies, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. Most bloggers will only work with companies who go along with their brand, and most are often honest with their followers about the products that they share. But it’s always important to remember that they have most likely either received the product for free or they are being compensated for it. Again, this is not bad…but it’s something that we need to remember in our minds as we take in the information that they are sharing.

2. Make your own list- what is worth it for you? For your family? For your budget? 

Now, I realize that by now I’ve come across as a total grinch and anti buying ANYTHING. This is not true! There are things out there that you may very well find to be “worth it”. That fancy baby bed that costs $300 but gives you a full nights sleep? You may very well find that 100% worth it. The house cleaning service or the meal delivery service? You may determine that for your family, the price is absolutely worth it. That’s great! The key here is to determine what exactly is worth it for you and your family. What are your values and the non-negotiables (sleep? Family time? convenience? Saving money in order to pay off debt?)? If we know what is worthwhile before we are bombarded with ads, then we are less likely to buy a lot of stuff that is in the end not worth it for us.

3. Understand where you find your worth. 

If you are a Christian, your worth is in Christ. Listen, I know that is an over-used Christian mumbo-jumbo statement, so what does it actually mean? It means that apart from Christ, we aren’t anything at all. We may gain some social media followers, have a hefty bank account and well-behaved children, but in the grand scheme of eternity, none of that will be going anywhere with us. Instead, once we put our hope and faith in Christ, we have everything! We have eternal hope and joy and even so much to live for here on earth. That is how our worth is in Christ. I hope that this season you and I are able to spend more time than ever understanding more about Christ and his birth and death and resurrection so that we can understand even better how much we are worth through the life and death of Jesus Christ. There is nothing more needed.