It's kind of sad how it's framed in those passages - Give in secret, or God will notice and hold back some of those heavenly rewards.
As if the whole thing is just a karmic ponzi scheme.
As if the whole thing is just a karmic ponzi scheme.
A gift given in secret is seeking the rewards truly worth having: the praise that comes from God. Those who seek that find it, because they loved what was truly worthy of love. But gifts given for others to see are seeking a reward on earth, not heaven—and that’s what they get. Either way, they’re not penalized if, say, the word gets out against their wishes. That’s not the point: God knows and judges the heart and rewards them based on what they were actually seeking.
So seeking rewards is not only categorically OK, it’s actually encouraged, but with the caveat that the seeker set their heart on what is eternally worthy of their love and desire.
The result is a lot of joy, knowing one has brought blessing and joy both to God and to other people.
This passage teaches people not to do things for show which is what many of us do in order to gain esteem and puff up our egos, often with still further gains in mind. This leads to enslavement to our egos, the approval of others, to things, and generally our constant grasping and our desires. Such false charity is pointless; it only leads to spiritual death. Allow your good deeds to remain a secret between you and the omniscient God. Charity is not loss. True charity produces spiritual "reward" by starving the monstrous, tyrannical ego that enslaves us to death. I would go so far as to say that it is even better for the giver than the receiver. The ego is Man's idolatry, and we cannot serve two masters. Thus killing the ego frees us to worship God and to live. The ego blinds us. It is like sitting in a bus at night with the lights on. All you see in the windows is yourself. Shatter the mirror and you will be freed.
This passage presents altruism as a tit-for-tat deal with God. Do good, and you'll get some of that back...later. I promise! It's almost tacky.
Only by an extremely shallow reading.
God is more loving that any good parent: God IS Love, 1 John 4:8. I trust God's goodness and follow Him, I therefore don't have any reason to go into a tit-for-tat deal with God.
Correction: the passage makes no mention of "heaven."
I don't think you mean to say "tit-for-tat" as that means something else, but I do get the gist: it seems that there's some kind of contractual obligation on the part of God. The logical argument being: if you do [GIVE], then He does [REWARD]. This is a subtle argument, but flawed for a number of reasons (and why texts should never be taken out of context).
First, God isn't beholden to anyone. He does as He pleases, and the only "laws" He is bound by is His own nature (good, omniscient, eternal, etc.). There's many examples where Pharisees try to play these logical gotcha games with Christ, and they're always repudiated.
Secondly, the point of the passage itself is twofold: (1) avoid religious hypocrisy, and (2) avoid materialistic vainglory. Reading into the text deeper than that, brings us to my last point...
Finally, given that Christianity is a theist moral system, it makes sense that the ultimate arbiter of "goodness" is God -- in my opinion, that's why Chist brings up the "reward" -- which, for all intents and purposes, might just be God's approval (who knows what that entails).