During a sabbatical in Germany, our good friend Petra invited my wife and me to make cookies at her home. As we waited for the Vanillekipferl to cool, I noticed a sign on her wall, a “gift” from her grown children. It read, “Be nice to your kids so they will choose a good nursing home for you.”

The message made me smile, but warily. Do we change diapers, chauffeur teens to dance practice, and pay for college-aged children to study Baroque art so that they will treat us nicely when we start putting our keys in the freezer?

For those who have actually reached this period of life, how is this approach working out? Did you make wise investments? Should you have invested more? Does the smell of urine on the floor make you regret the time you told your son to find his own ride to football practice?

Along this same line, when we place “investment and return” thinking into a gospel context, we usually start talking about “blessings.” Why do we pay tithing? Blessings. Why do teens get up in the wee hours of a Saturday morning to perform proxy baptisms? Blessings. Why do priests deliver the sacrament to the sick and infirm? Blessings. Why do we help move our neighbor’s piano? Blessings. Why come to church? Blessings.

And discussions of punishments are not far behind.

But I wonder about all this talk about blessings. I don’t doubt that God may “bless” us when we do well, but the Gospel of Matthew (among other sacred texts) reminds us that God blesses us even when we behave poorly: “for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45).

This idea gnaws at the foundation of cause-and-effect relationships. We are awash in blessings. God is irrationally generous with us. He is liberal, not stingy. And we are supposed to follow his lead.

However, the way we often talk about blessings sounds more like “cost-benefit analysis” or “rate of return.” Or, to put it more bluntly, when we talk about blessings, what we’re really asking is, “What’s in it for me? And what are you going to do if I don’t?”

This ROI language is an appalling way to talk about the gospel and a misguided way to motivate people. If you doubt that, then I suggest an experiment. For one week, whenever anyone asks you to do something, please answer, “What’s in it for me? And what are you going to do if I don’t?” Let me know how that works out for you. And yet that seems to be the way we motivate each other at church.

Will you serve a mission? Will you clean Brother Brown’s gutters? Will you pass the sacrament to Sister Smith at the nursing home? Will you wipe down the sinks when it’s your turn to clean the church? Will you spend a night at the homeless shelter? Will you help a refugee?

If we encourage each other to think in terms of blessings, it’s too easy to say, “You know, I hate dirty gutters. I’ll pass on that blessing. Missions are hard. I’ll do something else. Nursing homes give me the creeps. I’ll let someone else do it. Homeless people frighten me. I feel blessed enough.”

When I got married and moved away from home, I would periodically call my mom. She would talk a bit too much, but I could get over it. As she grew older, though, her mind began to fail, and with that came a stream of negativity, from dissing my siblings to racist paranoia. Who knew that St. George was more like Gotham than a community where seniors bake in the sun? I didn’t look forward to calling my mom. I would delay it for months. In terms of cost-benefit analysis, it was a choice between guilt for not calling or enduring a fire hose blast of negativity. I confess that I opted for guilt more often than not because it was easier and more pleasant. When I answered the questions, “What’s in it for me? And what are you going to do if I don’t?” my answers led me down the wrong path. Instead, I should have asked, “Is my mom lonely? How can I help?”

“What’s in it for me? And what are you going to do if I don’t?” are the wrong questions. Blessings may arrive or they may not, but it’s the wrong motive.

Perhaps we might be tempted to say, “I am just a ‘natural man,’ a mere donkey. I need a stick or a carrot to motivate me to turn the carousel.”

But consider this thought experiment, borrowed from the writer and astrophysicist Adam Frank: “Would your belief in God be any different if there was no promise of immortal life? If God created a world where death was just the end of consciousness, would that change anything for you?”¹

Imagine that our Heavenly Father asks us to love him and love each other, and then die, never to rise again. Sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of others, and then return to dust forever.

Would that change how we treat each other? Would we turn into monsters? Would we cheat on our spouse? Whip our kids with a garden hose? Poach our neighbor’s Wi-Fi? Would we stop delivering potatoes and gravy to a new mother? Would we refuse when someone asks us to pick up Sally because her car has a flat tire? Would we say “no” to a hungry child?

How would we respond, how would we react, if God’s answer to “What’s in it for me?” and “What are you going to do if I don’t?” is “Nothing. You get nothing, but others will benefit.”

We should feed the hungry, comfort the needy, visit the lonely, shelter the refugee, change the diaper, and say “thank you” and “please” because someone is hungry, someone needs comfort, someone is lonely, a refugee needs housing, the baby’s bum is dirty, and people need to feel appreciated and valued. Period. Full stop. We need no other reason or reward.

Let’s make this concept even more tangible.

If I ask my daughter to take out the trash, and she replies with “What’s in it for me? And what are you going to do if I don’t?” I hope I reply with, “Nothing. You get nothing. In fact, you will lose time and smell last night’s fish. But the reason you need to take out the trash is because the garbage can is full.”

Or when the elders quorum president asks a fellow elder to shovel the walks for Brother Jones, and the elder asks, “What’s in it for me? And what are you going to do if I don’t?” I hope the president says, “Nothing. But Brother Jones can’t shovel the sidewalk himself, and it’s dangerous for him. You may spare him some pain.”

Sure, my daughter can answer, “But that’s not true. The trash can is only half full and smells like lavender,” and the elder can say, “But my neighbor already shoveled the walks.” In other words, it’s reasonable to discuss authentic needs, but discussing needs is far from “What’s in it for me? And what are you going to do if I don’t?”

Maybe we’re tempted to say, “But we need to work up to that kind of morality. Most of us are immature, so we need to begin with incentives and then move to altruism. We need our carrots and sticks.” But that’s not true. A child can understand “Because Brother or Sister Smith are lonely” just as well as she can understand “I’ll give you a cookie if you help,” or “You’ll spend ten minutes in time-out if you don’t.”

In April 2016, I heard the word “blessing” more than seventy-eight times during general conference, but guess which talk did not mention it once? Elder Kearon’s talk “Refuge from the Storm,” which addresses the need to help refuges. Instead, he offers a litany of needs. He does not even give us a chance to ask, “What’s in it for me? And what are you going to do if I don’t?”

But that principle applies across the board, not just to refugees. From being kind to a friendless classmate in the hallway to working at the homeless shelter, the point is to address a need, to fill a gap, to help.

How might this influence the way we approach missionary work? We often encourage our friends to join the Church by pointing out all the benefits: a sense of community, more truth, salvation, a way to return to God, and on and on. You benefit if you join us. I can hear the excited sales pitch from the back row.

Instead, perhaps we should say this: You’ll have less money, less time, more commitment, more stress, and more opportunities to be misunderstood and hurt. On the other hand, you’ll have many opportunities to practice “pure religion.” You’ll have opportunities “to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27) and to “look to the poor and the needy, and administer to their relief that they shall not suffer” (D&C 38:35).

New converts should not ground their decision to be baptized on a “rate of return.” Choosing to embrace a new faith community should not be an economic decision, spiritual or material. Instead, we should ask, “What can I do for others?”

If we motivate each other to behave well by appealing to blessings, then we’re little better than other animals who jump through hoops for some kibble. Viktor Frankl, an Austrian doctor who survived the Holocaust, reminds us of another option:

Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill, or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is.²

So, are we donkeys or humans? Do we need a carrot or stick to entice us? Or can we just give of ourselves?

I was reminded of my own motives when a new grandson was on the way. Before Niko was born, people asked if I was excited. I disappointed, maybe even annoyed them when I said, “Not so much. I’m not looking forward to more worries. I have vivid memories of parental angst. Even today, worries about my own children gnaw at my heart and mind.” And when little Niko ended up in intensive care two weeks after he was born, with half a dozen tubes poking from his tiny body, I declared, “I told you so. See, life is now more stressful, more anxious, more scary. I don’t need another reminder that life is fragile and precious.” And all that is from the safe distance of being a grandparent. My son and daughter-in-law obviously experienced those raw emotions more intensely. The ROI, in terms of the anxiety children cause us, tips toward fewer children.

But what this little bundle of potential trauma offers is an opportunity to look beyond myself, a chance to encounter something bigger than myself. And Niko is just a grand metaphor for all the people in our lives. In other words, our relationships with people in the here and now don’t necessarily bring happiness. In fact, people—family, friends, neighbors, workmates, classmates, strangers—often bring pain, disappointment, and heartbreak. But they also offer us a chance to look beyond our own needs. They invite us to stop asking, “What’s in it for me? And what are you going to do if I don’t?” and ask instead, “What’s in it for others? And what happens to them if I don’t?”

NOTES

1. Adam Frank, “A Question for You About Evolution, God, and Death,” NPR, 15 Sep. 2015, npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/09/15/440501945/a-question-for-you-about-evolution-god-and-death, accessed 30 Mar. 2023.

2. Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (New York: Beacon Press, 2006).