Bill and I just finished watching The Good Place, all four seasons. It is a comedy about four humans who die and go to the good place, or so they are told when they arrive. One of them, Eleanor Shellstrop, immediately realizes that she did not deserve to be there, and the plot develops from there! I could write about multiple themes of the series – the morality system, the hope that humans have more opportunity to improve after death, whether or not humans are worth saving at all – but I want to write in this post just about two ideas. One is the ingrained belief that for a deed to qualify as good, it can not be motivated by knowing there is a reward. The other is the fear that heaven will be boring. I will write about the first one in this post.
I can’t fully reconstruct how the four main characters come to decide that any good they did on earth was nullified by their desire for reward, but they do. I don’t want to spoil the plot of the four-season narrative arc. The show is a comedy, and lacks ideological coherence. There is a good place, a bad place, demons and a judge, but the strand that runs throughout the zany plot twists is doing good with no anticipation of personal reward. Subsequently to noting that, in this story, reward is frowned on as a motivation, I realized that many real-life people, including Christians, think that being motivated by reward is a base and essentially selfish motivation. It negates any merit of their actions, if it is even motivated in part by knowledge of benefit to the doer of the action. One must do good simply because it is the right thing to do, and for the benefit of others and the satisfaction derived from treating others with kindness. I would also say that to do good out of fear of punishment for wrongdoing is even more widely disparaged.
However, God’s word to us repeatedly warns of punishment and promises reward for those who seek him. God seems to want us to be fully informed that our choices are consequential. God seems to want us to make a choice that is ultimately beneficial to us! Romans 2:2-11, in the midst of an epistle which teaches us very clearly that we can never earn salvation, states that “there will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil…but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good.” Jesus teaches his disciples not to fear humans, but to “fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell.” (Luke 12:4-5) Jesus counsels his followers to store up treasures in heaven and he teaches us how to do that. Reward and punishment are not motivations that God despises. I think they are motivations which are especially useful for children and youth, or for beginners in the faith. God set before the Israelites blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience in Deuteronomy 28, and like a parent teaching a young child to obey, he followed through on the consequences of their actions. (They were not children, but they also had less experience and history of God than we Christians have, so they are somewhat analogous to children or youth.) I just heard Randy Alcorn, who has written much about heaven, speak frankly about wanting to finish his earthly life well and finding the prospect of rewards and punishment part of his arsenal against temptation. When questioned about that, he said reward and punishment are biblical and helpful motivations to do good, but in a healthy believer’s life they are not the only or the highest motivations.
Paul tells the Corinthians that we no longer live for ourselves. We live for Christ. It happens that to live for Christ is rewarding and beneficial for us in the long term. But in the interim, we are likely to suffer in this life for our witness, obedience and love of Christ. But having the light of Christ’s work for us, in contrast to the lesser knowledge of God possessed by the Israelites, we can endure temporal suffering out of love for the one who gave himself for us. “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died, and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15) But notice that this love for Christ is the result of what he has already done for us. John concurs and says “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) Even with this “higher” motivation, we don’t advance far beyond following Christ because He is the only source of life! The writer to the Hebrews says, “without faith it is impossible to please God, because whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him”. (Hebrews 11:6) That sounds like a “beginner’s” motivation for seeking God. But then Paul writes the following at the end of his life: “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:6-8) The mature Christian can wait for his or her reward, yet the promise of it is a significant help to endure the difficulties in the interim.
I do want to mention two big caveats on the topic of rewards. First, there is a vast difference between doing good works to please God and doing good to be “seen by men.” Jesus warns about this in Matthew 6. “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:1) When we seek to impress people, when they are our audience, we are no longer worshipping God. Second, even though God does promise reward to those who seek him, we must come to God by the blood of Jesus, not our own works. Our good works are a product of his work for us, which we must receive by humble faith. Even though there will be rewards in God’s Good Place, we only get there by grace through faith in Jesus. ”For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)
As I have grown and undergone transformation at the hands of our loving Holy Spirit, I truly have found an ever increasing number of motivations for loving God and others and for living a holy life. I am deeply motivated by a desire to bring glory and never shame to God. It is marvelous to pray for other believers and suddenly to realize that God has answered those prayers. Likewise, it is wonderful to see how kind and encouraging words can help someone else to feel less alone and to be assured of the Father’s love for them. It is amazing when my actions and example can enable another to have the strength to continue fighting the good fight of faith in Jesus. And it has been especially sweet to bless someone else materially who has no idea who their benefactor is.
We needn’t be ashamed of doing the right thing to gain a heavenly reward. What makes an action good is its conformity to God’s will. No, we cannot add up enough good works ever to earn entry into The Good Place. Nevertheless, our desire to spend eternal life with God who has freely given us the offer of salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection for us, will motivate us to do the good works for which He has made us. (Ephesians 2:10)