Relaxing in God’s Goodness

The average American today gets two hours less sleep per night than people did 50 years ago. We are, as Pastor Rick Warren puts it, "addicted to adrenaline." And the irony is that this pattern of overwork often masquerades as virtue—especially in Southern California, where the laid-back reputation actually masks a culture of workaholism. Surveys show residents there would rather work than pray or play. But the deeper problem, Warren argues, is not just exhaustion. It is a misunderstanding of God's goodness.

Why We Cannot Rest

Warren identifies five biblical reasons people struggle to relax, each rooted in a deeper spiritual distortion.

The first is misplaced identity: basing your worth on your work. In Western culture, people routinely confuse their net worth with their self-worth, their value with their valuables. "If I achieve a lot, then I must be worth a lot," Warren says. But he points to Ecclesiastes 10:15, which bluntly states that "only someone too stupid to find his way home would wear himself out with work." The point is not that work is bad, but that it cannot bear the weight of defining who you are.