Righteous for the Reward

I keep seeing these ads for Biolife, a company that pays people to "donate" plasma. I put "donate" in quotation marks because is it really a "donation" if you're getting paid? But the main message of the ad prompts a similar question from me. The ad says that "Generosity is rewarding," but I wonder, is it really "generosity" if you're doing it for the reward?

I'd say that it's still Good to "be generous" and "donate" plasma, even if you're doing it for the money, and apparently I'm not alone in that opinion. God offers blessings for the righteous, but is it really "righteousness" if we're "being righteous" just for the blessings. Arguably not, but the good still gets done anyway. Those who donate plasma for payment still save lives, and that life-saving work should be rewarded. Hence the payment, the rewards, and perhaps even the blessings.

Naturally, God wants us to be good out of the goodness of our hearts, but some of us occasionally need more motivation than that. That may be partly why heaven exists, and it's almost certainly why God told us about it. He knew that we would additional motivation from time to time, so He offers us great blessings, and He tells us how we can earn them, perhaps trusting that that which we initially did for rewards, we would eventually do out of habit, and that which we do out of habit, we would eventually do because doing so is part of who we are. So, God offers us blessings in exchange for righteous actions, trusting that we would form righteous habits and develop righteous hearts.

We can do something similar. Apparently, Biolife does. We can offer rewards in exchange for the behavior we want to see. Is it manipulative? It doesn't have to be. It can be no more than an offer, a promise, and an option - take it or leave it. Is it shallow? At first. Those who do good for the rewards start out doing good only for the rewards. Their heart isn't really in it. At this stage, it is crucial that the good behavior is rewarded with good outcomes. If someone does good solely for the blessings, and then the blessings don't come, or at least don't seem to, then they may be tempted to wonder whether there's any point to doing good. Yet, if the good behavior is rewarded, it may be repeated and rewarded again, leading to a self-reinforcing cycle that can ultimately become a habit and even a part of a person's personality.

God offers blessings to people in reward for righteous behavior, so I doubt that many would consider it wrong to do so. And if it's not wrong to make the offer, I doubt it's wrong to accept it. It's okay, and even Good, to do Good, even if only for the blessings. The good gets done either way. I personally don't see any problem with the idea of being righteous for the sake of the rewards.