al-Raghib al-Isfahani #51 – Why Do People Do Good

About Sahana, he wants to talk about why do people do good, because there's multiple possible motivations for doing good. And whether that's good in this world or good in the next. And so he breaks it down into three levels. He says that the lowest motivation, or the least ideal motivation for doing good is just reward and punish carrot and stick a, you know, a few have a kid, for example, or a student and in school, you know, threatening them with some sort of punishment in the detention, or trying to bribe them with treats, right candy and stuff like that. That's the lowest sort of motivation that people kind of follow or are affected by the middle rung. A level above that

is somebody who's motivated by praise and blame, right. So if there is, let's go back to the school example, there's a student in class, and they don't want to be seen as stupid, they want to be prepared, they're reading in class, because they want other people to think that they're intelligent, they want other people to think that they are responsible and have read the material, maybe they're trying to impress somebody, or they don't want to look like a fool, right, they don't want people to make fun of them. So this is kind of the middle level of motivation. It's not quite as bad as as the material but it's still, you know, it's moved internally, but it's not necessarily

pure, it's not the best possible motivation that you could have. And the highest though the highest level of motivation you could have is seeking virtue is embodying good for the sake of the good, right? So imagine the student who's in class just to learn, right? They don't care about the grade, they don't care about the diploma or anything. And sometimes Subhanallah, we would see in Medina, sometimes, you know, our teachers would be absent quite a bit, at least more than what we're used to in the West. And, you know, there's two types of students when a teacher is 45 minutes late, or if a teacher doesn't show up at all, there's a type of student who's just like, goes and scrolls through

their phone or turns around and starts talking to somebody and you know, wasting their time. Or there's somebody who busts out the books and starts learning the lesson themselves or reviewing something else, or trying to review Koran or doing something else, right. So the highest possible motivation you can have is just for the sake of the thing, right? You're doing it for the knowledge, if the teacher doesn't show up, are you still going to be in class are you still going to come? If everybody gets hundreds Are you still going to do the work? Because you're you're seeking something that's much greater than just a grade, you actually want the transformation, you want the education,

you want the information, and you want the status and the virtue? So a lot a lot. So honey, he goes into this, and he's talking about worldly good, because this is a direct analog to motivations for why we would seek the eternal good, right? For every believer out there. And this is something that many people ask about all the time. There are different possible motivations for seeking eternal good, and they're not all equal, even if they're all acceptable. They're not all equal. So you have the lowest level, which corresponds to the sort of carrot and the stick. You have Jenna and Johanna. Right? You have the fire and paradise the fruits and the the bliss and the pleasures of paradise or

the torture of hellfire, right? That's kind of is it an acceptable motivation to do good to be a believer and to try to, you know, obtain to faith? Yes, yes, that's an acceptable motivation, but it's not the highest one, right? It's the very, very base level, minimum motivation that there is the next level up, is doing things for a loss, praise or allows blame. Okay, so again, it's moved internal, it's not external anymore, but it's still tied to some other sort of motivating factor, like, you know, like praise and blame. You want a lot to think good of you. You're afraid of the embarrassment or the humiliation on a day of judgment or having your sins exposed. All these sorts

of things valid, acceptable, yes, but still not the absolute best motivation that you could have. The highest motivation is simply seeking Allah's pleasure for the sake of it because of who Allah is not because of anything that you get in return or you get in a transactional way. Just knowing that Allah has blessed you with bounty and abundance and mercy and forgiveness and all of these things and just out of your pure love for Allah, not to get anything out of it, but just out of your pure love. You pursue the good you wake up early for February you try your hardest you try to earn halal and you stay away from the Haram and you try your whole life as best you can. Because you feel that

you're that attached to Allah spawns on that's the best possible motivation that anybody could have for doing good