The Reward Motive

A 16th century German monk discovered the power of religious bribery. The

children showed great reluctance in learning their prayers. Scolding and punishing them

did not improve things, and so he tried offering them a reward. Tradition has it that he

took thin strips of dough and twisted them into a knot. This was suggestive of the folded

arms of a person at prayer. He would bake these little cakes and give them to the

children who learned their prayers. Spurred on by this reward, his students learned so

much more rapidly that other monks followed his example. The novel little tidbits came

to be called pretzels from a medieval Latin term that some feel was pretiola, which means

a little reward. They became popular in England, and in the 19th century they became

popular in the United States the pretzel is good symbol of the subject we are looking at,

for it is the complex and often twisted subject of rewards.

We know rewards are the key to animal training and scientific experiments. No

self-respecting rat is going to bother to figure out how to get through a maze just for the

sake of pure knowledge. It doesn't care a fig about scientific progress, and couldn't care

less if there is a way through the thing or not, unless there is a reward in it, and namely

something to eat.

Truffles are a great delicacy in Europe. They are an underground mushroom that

grow by several species of trees in the forest. They bring a high price as gourmet food,

and so hunting them is very profitable. Hogs love the odor of them, and they will root

them out of the ground. Hogs became the main tool for finding and digging up this

delicacy. They owners would muzzle the swine to keep them from eating up all the

profits. They soon learned, however, that unless the hogs got a chance to eat some of

them they lost all interest in the pursuit, and they quit rooting for them. They didn't

carry signs, but it was clear that they were on strike, and they were saying, no reward-no

rooting.

We could conclude that rats and hogs need rewards to function, but this would not be

so for humans. This would be to hasty a conclusion, however, for Jesus clearly appeals to

our love of reward to get us to go God's way in the practice of our faith. Love of reward

is also that which is motivating the Pharisees to go their self-centered way, and so we

have another paradox of life. Reward can be good or bad, and it can be ratty or

righteous, and hoggish or heavenly. The evil man out of God's will, and the righteous in

center of God's will may both be motivated by the love of reward. It is obviously a

subject then that needs to be seen from both the vicious and the virtuous side.

I. THE VICIOUS SIDE OF REWARD.

There is a double paradox here in the case of the Pharisees because their deviate,

defective, and depraved love of reward was evil precisely because they were satisfied with

too little. They did not want a great enough reward. They were content to have the

praise of men, and so they stopped short of seeking the praise of God. Wanting reward is

bad when you do not want enough, but if you want God's best, then it is good.

You can miss the mark by aiming too low as well as by aiming too high, and that is

what they did. This is the major folly of man that he strives to attain rewards that are so

puny and passing, and they give up the rewards that are so powerful and permanent.

They aim for the passing pleasure of a sexual encounter, and give up the permanent joy

of a lifetime commitment. They aim for the temporary escape of guilt through alcohol,

and they give up the permanent joy of sin forgiven. There is absolutely nothing wrong

with the desire of men for peace, joy, contentment, and happiness. These are worthy

rewards every man should seek, but when these rewards are pushed aside, and cheap

substitutes and shoddy counterfeits are put in their place, the reward motive becomes a

vice. Anything that motivate a man to aim too low is a vice.

The man who marries a woman for her money is considered evil. The man who

marries her for love is considered good. Both are motivated by reward, but one seeks a

reward that is too low, but the other seeks the highest reward, which is love. The reason

bounty hunters were despised, even though all they did was shoot outlaws who were

wanted, just the same as the sheriff would do, is because they did it for the reward of