It can admittedly hard for us who grew up in a society or household that emphasizes performance, and I think those of us who are parents or leader figures in society should be careful on how we pass down the motivation or drive to do things to our children, students or other people in social media. In matters of justice and morality, fear is of course a valid motivator for people; the person who asks “why should I not do what is wrong?” does not deserve an explanation, but a beating. But what about matters of supererogation and specific skills? Should they be motivated by fear as well?

For a good proportion of people in the world, they are. Twenty years ago in Taiwan (and in many Asian countries), children were spanked in schools for not reaching a passing grade, and both the school and the parents would jointly approve of this. This kind of education through terror would even extend all the way up to high school, and I remember the teacher hitting my hands with an acrylic stick for each point in my score away from 100. On one hand (no pun intended), academic performance would be seen as a sort of moral or semi-moral concern. On the other, that kind of fear of punishment would be extended in our young minds to every other thing that had measurable and demandable levels of performance. How we studied would also be how we did everything else. Therefore, our whole lives would be driven by fear of punishment just by instilling fear into one single non-moral area of performance. This is, I think, not the Christian way to encourage excellence.

What about reward? We can see how God motivates people to do good works or manage things (as a response of faith to Him, of course). In Jesus’ parable about the talents (an ancient unit of weight for money), the reward is threefold:

“Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” (Both in Matt. 25:21 and 23)

The three rewards are: (1) The acknowledgement and compliment of the servant as “good and faithful”; (2) a promotion to a higher managerial role; and (3) the joy of the master, which is probably the more “tangible” and “communicated” rewards. We usually think about “things” as giving us joy: a cup of matcha, the embrace of your spouse, the new iPad, or whatever other things that “give” you joy, but imagine just receiving that joy directly from God without any medium in between! You just feel the end result—joy and happiness—every single moment of every day! You can forget about the “profound insight” in the Matrix Trilogy which states that the human psyche or body will reject a perfect, happy world without suffering, since by the time we enter heaven, our bodies and mind will likely be changed to accommodate the reality of an eternal, joyful world. God assures us that reward will be there when we do good works in faith and faithfully to Him. And that is a perfectly appropriate principle that all people understand instinctively, and that God Himself establishes:

1 Tim. 5:18 For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”

What about love? Love is of a different nature still. It is not an anticipation of reward, but a motivation that simply holds already. “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) This is probably the hardest thing to teach, yet it is the most untouchable and enduring motivation. Once someone has made up their mind to love, there is nothing that can take away from that motivation. It has already counted the losses against the rewards, and still it is willing to love. At first, it takes practice to do things out of love, and there will be that short transition period where we cannot do things as efficiently as when motivated by slavish fear—and that’s okay! But we want to get better at feeling God’s love towards us, and excelling out of love for God and man.

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