Doing Good Privately

October 10, 2010
Matthew 6:1-4
When you give to the needy . . .

In the time of Jesus, righteous acts were seen as obligating God to give you a reward. This is similar to how many people view "being good" today. "With enough good actions, I'll be let into heaven." This isn't our understanding of God's promises, but it is a real mindset.

Responding to that mindset, Jesus said that many people were doing good things to enhance their reputations, not to glorify God. If the real reward we are seeking is praise from other people, then that's the only reward we'll get.

Immediately, the question came up about rewards in general. Does anybody ever do something without expecting some sort of reward? Is God, in fact, offering us heaven if we'll do good things?

There are rewards that are appropriate to a given action and those that aren't. If the goal of teaching is to pass information on to others, then it is legitimate to feel good when that informatin is transferred. That good feeling is an appropriate reward for teaching. If our real goal is a paycheck, and teaching is just a way to get someone to give us money, we will still get the money, but we won't have the same satisfaction in a job well done as we see the students learning.

The reward we want also affects how we do the job at hand. If the goal of a general is to win a battle in order to achieve security or to thwart attackers, that will involve a different strategy than if the goal is to set oneself up for later political office.

And God does offer us rewards, and they turn out to be very appropriate to what He wants from us.

Many of us can point to some amazing answers to prayer. Some observers believe that God does these things to help us learn to trust Him. But His goal is to get us to trust Him even without the amazing answers. That is why miracles seem more common when God is reaching new people, whether an individual or a nation. (Many reports of Christians raising the dead recently seem to come from Indonesia, for instance.)

An example was given of promising a child a bike if the child would just learn to read. The child couldn't see the value in acquiring a reading skill, but was very interested in a bicycle. The parent would have preferred seeing the child learn to read just because it was a good thing to do; but that wasn't happening. So, the reward was offered, the child got the bike, and now the grown child has a world of books for learning and enjoyment.

In that case, is God being tricky? Is this a classic case of "bait and switch"?

No, because the child in the example, or the new Christ-follower, learns to value the real rewards of the action, whether it is reading or doing good deeds. Until we've actually learned the correct behavior, we may not understand just how valuable it is in itself. Like a very good parent, God understands what we need and helps us to attain it.

A thought that came as I typed this up: I suppose the over-promises some TV preachers seem to make ("Follow God and you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams", "Real Christians never have to suffer") may be bait and switch.

The "trumpets" that Jesus mentioned may have been literal trumpets. However, the alms boxes also had a trumpet-like opening so that it was easy to put money in but difficult to get it out. If these "box trumpets" were what Jesus referred to, then it might have been equivalent to saying, "Don't jingle the offering plate so people can see how much you give."

If the trumpets were literal, the rationale was likely, "Let's make a noise so that the poor will know that they can get something from me." But Jesus looked beyond the rationale to true motives. Selflessness will involve a struggle between sharing and bragging. The example was given of folks who adopt a family at Christmas and then are disappointed because there is no "thank you" afterwards. (Of course, that doesn't justify an ungrateful attitude on the part of the recipient; but the giver's motive should not be gratitude.)

How do we reconcile these instructions with the earlier words of Jesus, "Let your light shine"? One possibility is, "Let your deeds speak, not your devotional acts." That is, your changed life should involve honesty, compassion, putting others first, and many other counter-cultural actions. These should be obvious. But "acting religious" isn't necessarily as persuasive, and our motives may be suspect. If the goal is to be admired by others, we have the wrong motivation. God knows our heart's intent, and He has given us the Holy Spirit to help us know as well.

John 3 says "I must decrease so that Jesus can increase." This implies that we have done something that raises us up a bit in the sight of others, as in letting our light shine. But the focus must then be put back on Jesus, not ourselves. But unless we are actually doing something, how can Jesus be given credit?

We even asked, "Why are rewards mentioned at all? Why not just surprise us at the end of life? That would make it easier to do things for the right reasons."

The Old Testament barely mentions an after-life at all. Knowing what we do about the Resurrection and the promises of Jesus, we often recognize hints about heaven in the Psalms or prophetic writings. But one major branch of Judaism didn't even think there was an afterlife at all, and most of the hints we see (only in the Old Testament; the New is very clear) can be interpreted as "good life here for my family, if not for me."

It was suggested that when Jesus walked on earth, being fully human, He recognized that humans need motivation, so that the rewards were made specific. The fact that Jesus is fully human would include that He understands our needs. But some promises were already there. "Taste and see that the Lord is good," "Eternal pleasures at His right hand," "I have never seen the righteous forsaken" are all from the Old Testament.

Another note: And the theologians would point out that the pre-Bethlehem Jesus already was fully human, if not yet visible. But that doesn't change the fact that the fully human Jesus, as part of the Trinity, would have known what we needed.

Finally, one person suggested that part of our reward in heaven is getting to see the influence we had on earth.