Kierkegaard has already listed worldly goals – pleasure, honor, riches, power – as barriers to willing the Good. Getting caught up in the pursuit of these ambitions leads one off the authentic spiritual path.
In Chapter 4 Kierkegaard begins to talk about more subtle traps that keep one from willing the Good in simplicity. Here he addresses “the Reward-Disease”:
“In the first place a statement must be made which is easy to grasp: that the man who desires the Good for the sake of the reward does not will one thing, but is double-minded. The Good is one thing; the reward is another that may be present and may be absent for the time being, or until the very last. When he, then, wills the Good for the sake of the reward, he does not will one thing but two. It is now certain that he will not in this way make much progress along the pathway of the Good.”
“To will the Good for the sake of reward is double-mindedness. To will one thing is, therefore, to will the Good without considering the reward.”
He goes on to give an example of a man who loves a girl for her money:
“If a man loves a girl for the sake of her money, who will call him a lover? He does not love the girl, but the money. He is not a lover but a money-seeker. But if a man said ‘It is the girl I love and she has money’ and he should ask us for our judgment, for we have no particular call to judge, then a good answer would be, ‘It is a difficult matter with this money. Money may have a great influence, one can easily be deceived, and it is very difficult to know oneself.’ If he were really very intent on this matter he could even wish that the money were not there, just to test his love. For a true lover would say, ‘The girl has only one fault, she has money.’”
What Kierkegaard critiques in this chapter, interestingly, is seeking external rewards in the world for doing the Good. He seems to be ok with the experience of natural interior rewards (i.e. “feeling good” because one “does the Good”) and also with seeking one’s eternal reward (the Christian idea of Salvation or Heaven).
“This reward, that we are talking about here, is the world’s reward. For the reward which God for eternity has joined with the Good has nothing bad in it.”
“Now, that the Good has its own reward is indeed forever certain. There is nothing so certain. It is not even more certain that God exists, for that is one and the same thing. But here on earth, Good is often temporarily rewarded by ingratitude, by lack of appreciation, by poverty, by contempt, by many sufferings, and now and then by death. It is not this reward to which we refer when we say that the Good has its reward. Yet this is the reward that comes in the external world and that comes first of all. And it is precisely this reward which the man is anxious about, who wills the Good for the sake of the reward.”
Other contemplative authors have much to say about rejecting, or at least being indifferent to, even interior rewards (“spiritual consolations,” or good feelings) that come from prayer or doing the Good. For instance, here is what St. John of the Cross has to say about those who seek God only for how it makes them feel:
"...they still feed and clothe their natural selves with spiritual feelings and consolations instead of divesting and denying themselves of these for God's sake. They think denial of self in worldly matters is sufficient without annihilation and purification in the spiritual domain. It happens that, when some of this solid, perfect food (the annihilation of all sweetness in God – the pure spiritual cross and nakedness of Christ's poverty of spirit) is offered them in dryness, distaste, and trial, they run from it as from death and wander about in search only of sweetness and delightful communications from God. Such an attitude is not the hallmark of self-denial and nakedness of spirit but the indication of a spiritual sweet tooth."
In my own mind, when considering the natural interior goods that come from doing the Good (or, in St. John’s case, seeking God), the key is your intention. If, while doing the Good, you’re constantly thinking about how you are going to feel or what kind of a person you are for doing it, if your attention is on the good feeling that comes, then in Kierkegaard’s terms you are double-minded. In St. John’s terms, you are doing something because you have a sweet tooth; you just want to feel good. The Good does have its own reward. It’s “built in.” But if one loses focus on the Good, longing instead for that built in reward, then one is not willing the Good in simplicity.
A Viktor Frankl quote comes to mind:
"...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 and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence."
The natural reward for doing the Good needs to come as a side-effect, not as an aim.
Regardless of how one breaks down exterior or interior, present or future, rewards, willing the Good in simplicity means willing the Good without considering the reward.