The Workaholic in the Pew

I want to talk today about the addiction that gets a standing ovation in church.

We have no trouble identifying the person who shows up to the weekend service smelling of alcohol or visibly strung out. We recognize the behavioral addictions that carry social stigma. But there is an addiction that sits in the front row, leads the men’s Bible study, gives generously to the building fund, and receives nothing but admiration from everyone around it. And it is destroying families at the same rate as any substance.

It is workaholism. And it is a chain just like any other.

The Applauded Addiction

The definition we established at the beginning of this series applies here as well: addiction is “being controlled or consumed with a substance, thought process, emotion, or activity to an unhealthy degree.” Work is not a substance. But it can absolutely consume a person to an unhealthy degree. And when it does, the damage is real and the chains are just as binding.

Consider the man who has not had a genuine conversation with his children in months because every moment of energy goes to the office. The woman whose marriage is dying in the slow drought of neglect while her career flourishes. The person who has not taken a real day off in years, who checks email during church, who answers calls during dinner, who has made work the lens through which every relationship and obligation is evaluated.

These people are not lazy. They are not morally reckless in the obvious ways. But they have allowed something other than God to sit on the throne of their lives. And Jesus asked the most searching question on this subject in Mark 8:36: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” The workaholic is gaining the world, or trying to, and losing everything that actually matters in the process.

What Work Addiction Is Really About

At its root, workaholism is rarely about the work itself. It is usually about what the work is being used to avoid or to provide. Some workaholics are running from something, a difficult marriage, unresolved grief, a home environment that feels painful or uncomfortable. The office is safer than the living room. The work is predictable in ways that relationships are not.

Others are chasing something, significance, approval, control, the feeling of being needed and indispensable. These are the people for whom no achievement is ever quite enough. The promotion that was supposed to satisfy only reveals the next rung that needs to be climbed. The bonus that was going to prove their worth only raises the question of whether next year’s will be bigger.

In both cases, the work is doing something it was never designed to do. It is trying to fill a need that only God can meet. And like every other addiction, it demands more and more while delivering less and less of what the soul actually needs.

The Rest You Were Made For

God built rest into the fabric of creation. He commanded it in the fourth commandment. Jesus modeled it, pulling away from the crowds to pray, sleeping in the boat during the storm, taking the disciples away to quiet places. The writer of Hebrews says that there “remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9-10).

Rest is not laziness. It is an act of faith. It is declaring, with your schedule, that you are not holding the world together. God is. It is trusting that the work will still be there, that the outcome is in His hands, that your value is not determined by your productivity. The workaholic cannot rest because somewhere, in the deepest part of their heart, they do not believe those things are true.

But they are true. You are not more valuable to God when you are productive than when you are still. He does not love you more when you are achieving. He loves you as His child, which is the most stable and permanent identity available to a human being. You can put the phone down. You can close the laptop. You can be present with the people who love you. The world will not collapse. And your soul will thank you.