Christianity Has the Best ROI

I am not a very moral person. I mostly care about myself and what’s best for me. Paul at least had the decency to agonise over this — “I do not do the good I want to do” (Romans 7:19) — whereas I mostly just do what I want.

I would like to say I saw the beauty and holiness of Christianity, and ran toward it. The truth is less flattering: I looked at my life, at the habits that make me anxious and divided, and I noticed that following Christ was better for me than ignoring him.

That sounds crass because ROI is a business word, and Christianity is supposed to be sacred. I understand the objection. I am not trying to turn Jesus into a wellness app or reduce God to a productivity system. My point is, some people seem to begin with love, while I am often moved by self-interest. The mysterious mercy of Christianity is that it can meet a person where they are, and still help them grow into something more.

The Bible itself is not embarrassed to speak in terms of gain and loss. Paul writes that godliness has promise for “the life that now is” and the life to come (1 Timothy 4:8). Jesus asks what it profits a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul (Mark 8:36). He also tells people to count the cost before they follow Him (Luke 14:28).

Counting what disobedience costs

A lot of sin sells itself as freedom. Do what you want. Say what you feel. Sleep with whoever. Buy the thing. Nurse the grudge. Keep the second life alive. Take the edge off. The pitch is always some version of relief now, consequence later, and when I am in the wrong mood that pitch works on me.

Christianity interrupts that bargain. It tells me no before I have finished building the excuse. That feels restrictive when I want the thing, but it also simplifies life. A commandment is much less tiring than a negotiation with your worst appetite. If I have already decided that certain doors are closed, I do not have to stand in front of them every week pretending to be open-minded.

This is one reason the line about serving two masters hits me so hard. Double-mindedness is exhausting. You can try to be faithful and impressive, pure and secretly indulgent, generous and greedy, peaceful and addicted to status, but the human mind does not split cleanly. Eventually one master starts sending invoices to the other.

The financial version is almost too obvious. I do not mean that Christians automatically become rich, or that poverty is a moral failure. That would be a stupid and cruel reading of the world. I mean something simpler: appetite costs money. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the average American consumer unit spent $643 on alcoholic beverages and $352 on tobacco products and smoking supplies in 2024. Those numbers are not an argument for self-righteousness. They are a reminder that even ordinary indulgence has a receipt.

For me, the savings are not only in alcohol or tobacco. They are in fewer impulse purchases to soothe a mood, fewer nights trying to turn boredom into pleasure, fewer expensive attempts to become a more interesting version of myself. Obedience does not remove every foolish desire, but it puts a fence around some of the most expensive ones.

Getting back peace and attention

The bigger return is not money. It is peace.

When I drift from God, I do not usually become some glamorous sinner. I become anxious, scattered, defensive, and tired. I start running small internal campaigns for every questionable decision. I explain myself to myself. I keep tabs open in my head. I worry about being exposed, misunderstood, left behind, or judged by people whose opinions I claim not to care about.

Following Christ reduces some of that noise because it gives my life a center outside my mood. I still feel fear. I still overthink. I still care too much about how I am perceived. But the decision tree gets smaller: tell the truth, forgive, repent, work, pray, give, resist temptation, try again tomorrow. That may sound basic. Basic is the point. A simple rule followed seriously can do more for a life than a thousand clever exceptions.

There is data around this, though I would not want the data to carry the whole argument. Pew Research Center found in a 2019 analysis of the United States and more than two dozen other countries that actively religious people tend to report more happiness; in the U.S., 36 percent of actively religious adults described themselves as “very happy,” compared with 25 percent of both inactive religious adults and the unaffiliated. I do not read that as proof that faith makes every person cheerful. I read it as confirmation of something that seems plausible from the inside: worship, community, discipline, gratitude, and hope change the weather in a person.

Pew’s newer Religious Landscape Study also found that 49 percent of Christians report feeling a deep sense of spiritual peace and well-being at least weekly. That does not mean every Christian is calm. Churches are full of anxious people, and sometimes I am one of them. Still, I pay attention to any way of life that can make peace a repeated experience instead of a rare accident.

Prayer also lowers the burden of having to be my own final authority. In Pew’s 2016 study of religion in everyday life, 86 percent of highly religious Americans said they rely a lot on prayer and personal religious reflection when making major life decisions. I understand why. If I only consult my ambition, fear, lust, resentment, and Google search results, I can justify almost anything. Prayer does not make every decision easy, but it makes it harder to pretend that I am the wisest person in the room.

Taking hope seriously

The coldest part of my calculation is also the most serious: if Christianity is true, the upside is not only a cleaner life now. It is eternal life. I cannot prove that in a spreadsheet, and I am not going to pretend that the promise of heaven works like a savings account. But I also cannot ignore it. If Christ is who he says he is, then the practical question is not whether Christianity is useful. The practical question is why I would gamble my life against him.

Even short of that final claim, hope matters. A 2020 JAMA Psychiatry cohort study of more than 100,000 U.S. health care professionals found that attending religious services at least once a week was associated with a lower subsequent risk of deaths from despair: 68 percent lower hazard among women in the Nurses’ Health Study II and 33 percent lower hazard among men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, compared with never attending. The study was about association, not a magic shield. But it points toward something important: a life with worship, moral structure, and people expecting you to show up can be harder to abandon.

That may be the part I respect most now. Christianity does not only tell me to stop doing things. It gives me something to look forward to, someone to become, and a reason to keep going when my own desires become thin. It gives suffering a frame. It gives guilt somewhere to go. It gives ordinary work a witness. It gives me a way to interpret my life that is larger than whether today felt good.

So yes, Christianity has the best ROI. I do not mean that as the highest statement of faith. I mean it as a confession from someone who sometimes has to approach the truth from the lowest floor. If I follow myself, I get some pleasure, some control, some applause, and a lot of cleanup. If I follow Christ, I give up things that were already making me worse, and in return I get discipline, peace, purpose, hope, and a chance at heaven.

For a selfish man, that is not a bad deal. It may even be the beginning of becoming less selfish.