Spiritual Misfits Podcast · Meeting Ground

A Hidden Life in the Attention Economy (Justine Toh)

·58 min·3 clips

Rowan Williams’s line is that “I am held by more than myself.”

Will Small opens by placing Justine To within the theme of Spiritual Misfits. She says she did not intend to have a faith crisis, but it just happened. It came through the damage of purity culture, and she does not minimize how much it affected her. Once she knew that was not true and not good, she felt she had no other options but to face it. From there, the episode broadens into a conversation about attention. Will calls it a very real challenge in our time, and Justine treats that as more than a talking point. She connects attention to the way digital life trains both body and mind. That leads into why she moved on from the iPhone after thirteen years. The light phone became a practical boundary because it cannot access the internet or social media. It still handles podcasts, a camera, and maps, so the change stays workable rather than performative. The point is not to make technology feel morally clean. It is to know herself well enough to avoid a pattern she cannot keep up. Will shares his own experience with a simpler phone, and the exchange feels rooted in lived practice instead of abstraction. Justine adds another small shift with an analog alarm clock. That keeps her from reaching for the phone in the dark and sliding into a 3 a.m. spiral. She has also returned to a physical watch, another way of nudging herself away from carrying the phone everywhere like a pacifier. She jokes that she probably should get a torch too, because even small routines still need ordinary tools. Those everyday details give the conversation its shape. The bigger theological themes stay close to the ground. She talks about decolonizing church structures with honesty and kindness, not with a drive to win. She also names the lack of biblical support for eternal conscious torment. That sits alongside her critique of purity culture and shows how inherited teaching can wound people while claiming to protect them. Will and Justine keep making space for complexity. They are interested in what it means to go deeper without pretending everything is settled. Near the end, they ask what it would mean to welcome a little more friction instead of letting digital life smooth over every edge. The answer is not dramatic. It is small steps, taken seriously. That is the episode's final mood: gentle, searching, and committed to the idea that ordinary habits can open a wider path.

As heard by us

A conversation about faith, attention, and the habits that shape desire.

Spiritual Misfits centers attention, faith, and the ordinary routines that quietly shape both. Justine To fits the conversation well, moving from purity culture and a faith crisis into small, concrete shifts: an analog alarm clock, a physical watch, and a lighter phone that…

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Why you'd press play

If your phone keeps winning your mornings, this gives you a gentler way back.

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