In this week’s Connected Kingdom, I take on the challenge of speaking about workaholism. Download the podcast or stream the audio to hear Tim and I discussing the subject further. Download here (right click) or click to play below.
Hello, my name’s David, and I’m a recovering workaholic. And I say that with no sense of pride, even though workaholism is one of our society’s most “respected”, even admirable sins. In fact, perhaps one of the places it is most admired is in the church, and especially in the Christian ministry.
Few Christians put this sin in the same category as homosexuality or murder. Yet, workaholism has probably destroyed more souls, especially in Christian homes, and maybe especially in pastors’ and missionaries’ homes, than either of these sins. Many pastors spend their days denouncing this -ism, that –ism, and every other -ism, while seeking and accepting plaudits for their workaholism.
Diagnosis
So how do you know if you are a workaholic? Workaholics Anonymous – yes, there is such an organization – provides 20 questions. They include:
- Do you get more excited about your work than about family or anything else?
- Do you take work with you to bed? On weekends? On vacation?
- Do you believe that it is okay to work long hours if you love what you are doing?
- Do you get irritated when people ask you to stop doing your work in order to do something else?
- Have your long hours hurt your family or other relationships?
Does that sound like someone you know? Your pastor? You?
Causes
Idolatry is at the root of a lot of workaholism. Many make “work” their functional god, and it can be a very satisfying one too. It doesn’t just take; it gives back too. It often rewards with money, position, power, prestige, and praise
Other workaholics are motivated by greed. The work may be unsatisfying but the money sure promises to make up for it.
For some it’s all about escaping less pleasant, less “glamorous” responsibilities. Far easier to be a frequent flier than change diapers; to speak at conferences than speak to your teenage son; to chair board meetings than comfort your lonely wife.
For some, work is a matter of identity; it’s what defines them. In the 18th century most obituaries focused on the character of the deceased and rarely mentioned occupation. 150 years later, most obituaries assess a person in connection with their occupation and achievements. Probably explains many early graves as well.
Many workaholics are unable to trust God with their jobs and finances, and end up relying on excessive hours rather than on their heavenly Father.
Effects
Like all –isms, this addiction is a destroyer. It destroys marriages, relationships with children, friendships, and usefulness in the church. It destroys happiness, it destroys bodies, and it destroys souls.
And yet this destroyer is so deceptive, so plausible: “I’m doing it for my family…I’m trying to get my kid through college…I’m serving God…”
And pastors, I know, there are unending stories in Christian literature about how many hours famous ministers and missionaries worked. What many of the biographies don’t tell you is that many of them died young or suffered long seasons of disease and burnout.
Cure
The cure begins with cold turkey; take a full week off work, yes a full week, in order to examine yourself in the light of God’s Word. Ask your family if they think you’ve got work in the right place. How is your relationship with God, your devotional time? Listen to your body; is it bearing up under the stress or is it beginning to break up as you wear out your machinery?
Confess workaholism to God, and He will forgive you. He forgives all addicts who repent and seek mercy in Christ. Trusting in the finished work of Christ will bring a new calm, peace, and perspective into your life.
Then, to prove that your repentance is genuine, plot a future containing these elements:
- Take every Sunday off work. If you are a pastor, designate any other day and stick to it. “Six days you shall labor” applies to pastors as well.
- Memorize Psalm 127v1-2, and believe it.
- Set a reasonable number of working hours per week (recent research shows a huge loss of productivity after 40 hours of work in a week).
- Do not answer email or make work-related phone calls on vacation.
- Schedule daily exercise and family time.
- Remember your created limits. So much of workaholism is a defiance of the physical limitations that God our creator has imposed upon us.
- Remember that the Lord has also put a curse on work. Knowing that fallen man would seek ultimate satisfaction in his work, rather than in Him, God built in “thorns and thistles and sweat” to drive man from work to Himself.
- Project yourself to your deathbed. A hospice nurse recently said that she has not yet cared for a man that did not regret how many hours he put into his work.
Conclusion
As for the rest of us, let’s not encourage workaholics by praising their addiction. Would you praise a drug addict or an alcoholic? Do them a favor, call them to repentance.
If it’s a pastor, remind him that not only is he sinning against God by harming himself and his family, he’s also providing a damaging role model for other men in the congregation.
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