Why Reward-Based Faith Backfires

I want to talk about the gamification of everything. You know what I mean by that, right? Streaks and badges, gathering fake internet points and likes. What is going on with our I'll call it addiction to basically a glorified version of the star chart. I don't mean astrology. I'm talking about, you know, when the kindergarten teacher puts the poster on the wall and if you color in the lines and do your assignment, then she puts a little star sticker there and when all the stars fill up, then uh you get a candy. Okay? But in this case, you don't even get a candy at the end. You just fill up the stars. I don't want to be that cranky old man who says in my day, but I do want to talk about what the gamification of everything may be doing to us on a spiritual level. I want to talk about it. I want to put it out there in the open so at least we can be aware of it and uh perhaps choose not to engage in it as much as we are doing. There's a story about the Balsham, the founder of theic movement. I won't tell the entire long story, but he was he lived in Poland and he was attempting a trip to the Holy Land and he did not make it there, but he ended up in what they called then Constantinople in Ottoman Turkey. And long story short, he was there for Passover. He had nothing to eat for Passover. He didn't have matzah. He didn't have wine. So there was a wealthy man who was also traveling through Constantinople. It's what they call Istanbul today. Um and this fellow provided the Balshmp with his holiday needs and afterwards the the man insisted on receiving a blessing from the Balshmp. So the BMP was known as a holy man and a miracle worker and certainly as one whose blessings were very powerful. So he said, "What blessing would you like?" And the guy says, "I want a blessing for children." And the bala said, "I can't give you that blessing." Now I'm going to pause the story for a second. Why couldn't the BMPv give that blessing? Just give the guy a blessing. What do you care? You know, just say it. God will decide whether or not to do it. Um, no. The way that a blessing works and this is what theic teachings explain a blessing the Hebrew word for blessing is actually which it's interesting if you know agriculture there's something called havraa which is a related word which is you take a grape vine let's say and you put the grape vine back in the ground to create another plant. when you pull the vine down and pull it into put it back into the the ground that's which is related to the word uh which is the word blessing because a a bra or a blessing is literally pulling something down. In other words, sometimes someone will have something in their spiritual bank account. I'm speaking metaphorically and they can't make a withdrawal. Imagine you have money in your account but you don't have an ATM card or you forgot your PIN or whatever the or you don't have ID and uh to to to make a withdrawal from the teller whatever it is. So a braha or a blessing especially from a righteous individual clears the pipeline and draws down whatever it was that was stuck in transit. Meaning it was there spiritually but it didn't manifest on the physical plane because it was stuck in the in the in the pipeline. In other words, a person can't be blessed with something that isn't already coming to him. It's an important concept here. Okay. So, some people have incredible riches waiting for them and they don't have access to it, but they'll get a blessing from, and I've seen this many, many, many times firsthand, they'll get a blessing from, it could be even from a regular person, but especially from a very holy person, and um that'll materialize it for them. At any rate, um the BMP told this guy, "I cannot give you a blessing for children." because he saw that for whatever reason spiritually and I don't know if it was this man or if it was his wife but or if it was both of them but they didn't have that blessing coming to them. So it would sort of be like if you go to the bank and want to make a withdrawal from your account and they tell you that you have no money in the account and then you tell the teller no I'm insisting and the teller would go take money out of the drawer that doesn't belong to you and give it to you. That's called stealing. Okay, if you're following the metaphor, basically if the BMP would give the blessing to this guy for children, he'd be stealing, so to speak, because it wasn't coming to him. The guy says, "Hey, I provided you with your holiday meal. You said you're going to pay me back. This is how I want payment. I want a I want a blessing for children. That's what I insist upon." So, the Balmp gave him the blessing. The balv heard a heavenly voice at that moment says Balshv has violated the the rules of heaven and has therefore forfeited his portion in the world to come. Now you're going to say, does that mean the BMP had no portion of the world to come? I'm sure it worked out in the end somehow, but [gasps] that's not the point. The point is at that moment, how did the BMPv react when it was revealed to him from heaven that he was being punished with no portion in the world to come? He danced and he said, "Now I can finally serve Hashem for its own sake." Meaning without any expectation of reward because the reward is now off the table. Now you're going to say, "Wow, that's incredible. Well, the Basham was able to be so altruistic that he was able to serve Hashem for zero reward. But the truth is this is not just the BMP. It's all of us. And it's not just all of us from an aspirational an aspirational standpoint, but really it's uh in some ways this is uh I don't want to say the bare minimum because it's not the bare minimum. Um if someone's going to say I'll serve God only for a reward or not serve him at all, I guess it's better to serve for a reward than to not serve at all. But the idea of serving God not for a reward is not just for special holy people that come around once in a generation. There's a Mishna the teaching of the Mishna in the Pure Oves in the ethics of our fathers. So the Mishna says in Pierovves which is the ethics of our fathers. I'll say it first in Hebrew and then I'll translate. Do not be like the servants who serve their master for the expectation of a reward. Be like the servants who serve their master without expectation of reward. This is a basic ethical teaching of uh our sages. And what it means is that of course there's reward and punishment. In fact, one of my monities 13 principles of faith is the belief in reward and punishment. And you know, it's interesting. It's so sad when you hear Jewish people who are not educated in Judaism and they'll say, "Oh, we're Jewish. We don't believe in an afterlife." Really? You don't? Really? Um, I don't know. I'm not a historian. I can't say for sure this is where it came from, but the possibility of where it came from is that we don't emphasize that the afterlife is the reason why we serve God. But to say there isn't one, God for of course there's an afterlife. Of course there's a reward. And not just there's reward and punishment in the next world. There's reward and punishment in this world. In fact, there's a an exchange rate. It's much better by the way to have hardships in this world than in the next world. Uh when when a person undergoes any type of suffering in this world, it it sort of absolves him of much more suffering, God forbid, that would take place in the spiritual realms where the suffering is magnified. So at any rate, reward and punishment is a real thing. But that's not the motivation or at least it shouldn't be the motivation. In other words, what we're talking about is the difference between exttrinsic and intrinsic motivators. Exttrinsic motivators means that the job itself is not interesting enough. So we have to create some type of artificial incentive. Intrinsic motivators means the the job is valuable. You want to do the job for the sake of the job. The way our sages describe this, they call this mitzvah. Mitzvah. That's three words, but really only two words because one of them gets repeated. Mitzvah mitzvah. Feel like Dora the Explorer. Say it with me. Mitzvah. Mitzvah. And that means means the reward. Mitzvah means a mitzvah, a commandment, doing a good deed that was commanded by God. So the the reward of a good deed is the good deed itself mitzvah. Now I want to explain what that does not mean because I once heard a guy in a park saying the the the the reward for a good deed is the good deed itself. And I got so excited I was going to go over to him. This is in Brooklyn. I heard a guy in a park saying this and I was going to go over to him and say, "Wow, that's that's true." And then the next sentence he said that means that the good feeling you get from doing a good deed is the reward itself. No, no, that's not what it means. The good feeling you get is also an extrinsic motivator. Okay. Maybe it's a little bit more refined than saying the reward is some type of um [clears throat] you're going to have chocolate cake or something. So this is a little bit more refined. You'll have a good feeling. But it's still an exttrinsic motivator. An intrinsic motivator is more like this. Um, you tell a bunch of little kids, "Clean up the classroom and I'll give you all a lollipop. That's an exttrinsic motivator. They clearly don't care about cleaning the classroom." And the proof of that is that you have to introduce this very arbitrary artificial reward in order to incentivize it. But you say to a bunch of adults, "Let's clean up this conference room." And you know what the reward will be? We'll have a clean conference room. We'll be able to sit here and enjoy an uncluttered environment and we'll have we'll have we'll we'll have done the task and we'll be able to appreciate the accomplishment of it. That's an intrinsic motivator. In other words, the reward of the mitzvah is the mitzvah itself means that the mitzvah has inherent value that doing it is worthwhile. >> [sighs] >> So our motivation for doing the will of God should not be because good things will happen to us if we do it or god forbid bad things will happen to us if we don't do it which is all true. It's true that there is reward and punishment and God is a just God and there is divine justice even if sometimes it's on a very protracted timeline where we don't necessarily see the justice but there's always justice but that's not the motivation or at least it shouldn't be the motivation that would be an exttrinsic motivator for serving God the motivation should be that Doing God's will has value unto itself. I would do it for free. I would do it if you didn't pay me. I get a job you love. You'll never work a day in your life. Right? I'd keep showing up here even if I won the lottery. Would you pay to show up here? You know what? I probably would. All right. I'll pay to show up here. All right. So, that's how we're supposed to serve God. And you're going to say to yourself, well, how do I wrap my head around that? So, I want to share with you one more important concept that is [clears throat] intrinsic to intrinsic motivation. In other words, you have to understand this concept in order almost per se to understand the other concept. We believe that creation is for a purpose. The world wasn't just created created as a waiting room. Uh many religious people believe the world only exists as a stepping stone to get to the spiritual world. In other words, there's no intrinsic value to the world, the physical world. We believe actually there's intrinsic value to the world because we believe that ultimately God wants to establish not only a kingdom because that can sound sort of uh cold but a home. He wants to establish a home here on earth. He wants to be revealed here on earth like he was revealed in the holy temple like the divine presence the sha was revealed in the holy temple in Jerusalem. So he wants to be revealed in the entire world like the prophets say that when Msiah will come in the messianic era and the perfected uh state of the physical world all flesh will see that God is speaking the world into being. In other words, God's presence in his creation will become revealed instead of hidden. Why is this an important concept? Because we have to understand that our mitzvah when we do a good deed is making this world a home for God. So the intrinsic value that's in every good deed that we do is we are building something. We're making something and it's not for us. Although we'll certainly get to enjoy it and all the people in the world will get to enjoy it. By the way, the Jewish vision of the perfected world isn't just for Jews. It's a very important concept. The Jewish vision of the perfected world that the prophets, the Hebrew prophets described is really for all nations, for all peoples. And we get to be part of that project. Yes, we will benefit from it. Everyone will benefit from it. But the real value is that God himself has chosen that this is what he wants and this is gratifying to him and that's why it has intrinsic value. In other words, the ultimate intrinsic value is giving God what he wants. Cuz think about it like this. something that its very existence is conditional or tenuous then its goals are also by extension conditional and tenuous. Only God whose existence is absolute. In other words, God is the only existence that can't not exist. If your God concept is something that even in theory could not exist, you're not thinking of God. You're thinking of something else. The world doesn't have to exist, but it does. God, it's an imperative that he exists. That is that's in fact the closest we can approximate a definition of God because God is indescribable would be absolute existence. That which just exists because because everything else exists because it was brought into being. God exists. He was never brought into being just because he exists. So just like his existence is absolute, his agenda and his goals and his desires are absolute. And when we get to be part of fulfilling his desire, then we are building something that has value that is absolute and entirely intrinsic. So think about that next time that you uh are looking for motivation to do the right thing. It's not for the reward. It's not even for the good feeling that you'll get. It's to create something of true enduring eternal absolute objective intrinsic value.