Beyond duty: the rewards of obedience

Is being good worth it?
I have recently had an experience that brought home to me very powerfully one of the main points of a college course I took last year in ethics. Broadly speaking, there are two ways of thinking about ethics: duty ethics and reward ethics (technically, these are called deontological ethics and teleological ethics).* Duty ethics says "I do it because it's right." Reward ethics says "I do it because I will be rewarded." Christians often think that the former is a better way of thinking than the latter. However, I want to suggest that while duty ethics can be useful when you are in a tight spot and don't have time to think (e.g. in the pressure of the moment, you remember that it is wrong to lie and so you tell the truth, even though you didn't have time to think about the consequences), that Christian ethics is actually closer to reward ethics.
*I realise that some thinkers distinguish between teleogical ethics and consequentialism and that what I have called reward ethics is closer to the latter. I'm going to skate right over that for now.

If God made the world, and made the world good, and if sin has not detroyed that goodness, though it might have scrambled it and hidden it somewhat, then obeying God is not simply a matter of "God said it, I believe it". It will also work. The 'reward' of obedience is to not be fighting against the good world, but 'going with the flow'. There is no need to justify obedience, you are simply lining up with reality, doing what is in one sense 'easiest' and 'normal'. Of course, our grasp on these concepts can be more than a little shaky at times because of the confusion that sin brings. Nonetheless, to obey is to work with the grain of the universe, not against it. Therefore, I don't simply obey because it is right (though that is also true), but because it is good, very good.

This may seem somewhat counterintuitive, but the important thing is to grasp the nature of the rewards I'm talking about. In the experience I mentioned earlier, a friend was struggling with two problems. The first was how to deal with someone who had repeatedly lied to him. The second was whether (in an unrelated context) to be honest. I tried to highlight the connections between these two situations. My friend knew what the right thing to do was, but knew that honesty would be very costly financially and possibly relationally (at least in the short term).

As I spoke to him, it came home powerfully to me that one of the blessings you get from being honest is being the kind of person who can tell the truth. A reward of faithfulness is becoming a trustworthy person. These are great blessings, rich rewards. No amount of money can buy them.
Ten points for naming the artist (correctly).