How Christians Can Handle Mixed Motives

Self-interest and Self-Transcendence

Human beings pursue self-interest from infancy. Many of the developmental stages of life are motivated by self-interest: autonomy, curiosity, industry, and choices concerning education and vocation. God, too, possesses self-interest: a passion to share the truth, beauty, and goodness that indwell his core.

While self-interest motivates people to pursue behaviors that they believe will fulfill them, God seeks to help them balance self-interest with the complementary truth of self-transcendence. A divine example of self-transcendence is revealed in Christ, who though he was fully God, chose to humble himself for the well-being of the human race, even to the extent of becoming both sin and an atonement for sin, so that through his death, billions of people could receive everlasting communion with the Trinity (Phil 2: 5-8).

While Christ moved graciously within the rhythm of self-interest (acting in ways that fulfilled his identity) and self-transcendence (reaching beyond himself to do the Father’s will), human beings need help from the Lord to cultivate this rhythm.

It helps to begin by understanding the ambivalent attitude a person can feel in many situations, the fact that a person normally and frequently experiences mixed motives. 

Mixed Motives

The parent with the screaming toddler can intervene with two motives in mind: 

1. Be quiet so that you quit irritating me (self-interest).
2. Learn to mind me so that you can be a more socially successful child (self-transcendence). 

Both these motives occur simultaneously, often unconsciously, but persons can bring them into actualizing awareness by recognizing self-interest alongside self-transcendence. 

When interacting with God, say in the offering of a tithe during a worship service, people can admit to mixed motives: 

1. Lord, I offer you this portion of income because I trust that you in turn will bless and take care of me
2. I offer you this as a gift for the work of your kingdom, whether it helps me out or not.

At a purely human level, too much self-interest leads to:

• insensitivity to the needs of others
• dominating conversations by talking and not listening
• holding grudges
• not seeing the need for becoming more humble and altruistic

Too much self-transcendence leads to: 

• excusing others' behavior without ever confronting them
• letting a spouse or child run one’s life
• caring too much about what others think 
• living by the dictates of outside influences to the exclusion of inner guidance

Either extreme arrests personality growth and stultifies spiritual transformation. However, the beauty of owning up to self-interest lies in the fact that it takes a person off the fast track to glory, the self-aggrandizing highway to holiness, where one acts benevolently, like the Pharisees often did, yet in fact is motivated by personal gain. Jesus noted: “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ in front of others, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven” (Mt 6:1).

The beauty of owning self-transcendence is that one can sacrifice self-interest to meet others' needs without making a show of it. “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Mt 6:3-4).

No human being gets very far with God with unchecked self-interest or exaggerated self-transcendence.

Overblown self-interest says to God, “Look how unselfish I AM. Look at how I do good things in your name. Look at ME.” When confronted by such persons on the Day of Judgment, Christ says, “I never knew you; depart from me” (Mt 7:23).

Exaggerated self-transcendence says, “Look God, there is no me left. I’ve given everything for you. I don’t even care if I live or die, as long as you get the glory.” This self-negation denies the very self, the “i am,” that Christ came to redeem and affirm. So God is left with an empty hull of a non-person, and how can he relate to that?

In Relationship with God

The point is that God delights in a self-honesty that allows us to admit into consciousness a full range of motivations, freeing us to strike a balance between loving ourselves and reaching out to serve God and others.

For more, read: 

TRUSTING IN THE TRINITY: 

Compass Psychotheology Applied