“The art of pleasing is the art of deceiving.” – A French proverb
If that is mainly what you help the other for, it amounts to using them and trying to fool God.
The sense of self-approval and approval from God or another person can be built into the action; it doesn't have to come after.
While we know that wanting approval for x does not mean you did x for approval, we wonder how important that is. Instinct says the human race mostly seeks approval in doing good. Many like their bad deeds approved of too – often they may not ask for explicit approval but cheap forgiveness. The harm is made to count for nothing if forgiveness is too easy, so it is close to being approved of.
People like it when others witness their good deeds. They feel rewarded by the fact that the goodness is merely seen. They may not care about money or getting the others to praise them. Being seen is reward enough. Jesus hinted that is the case, for he mentioned how the Pharisees feel rewarded just by being observed when being charitable – though everybody knew they were hypocrites.
The universal quest for approval
The drive for approval is in everybody unless they suffer depression or something. Many pretend they don't want approval, but in saying that, they show themselves to be lying.
The drive for approval is behind vanity and greed. This drive is why power matters to so many. The drive is so powerful that you see people who are not ill campaigning for a right to assisted suicide because, rather than just kill themselves, they want enough people to approve of their date with death in a clinic or at the hands of a medical professional.
People embrace great suffering in order to feel approved. Though they would be better off just doing what they want without approval, they don't want to know. The huge sacrifices most people make for approval make it reasonable to suppose that all healthy people have the drive, and that those who don't show much of a sign have it subconsciously.
Psychologists state that many people who give their lives for strangers are mainly motivated by the thought that people will approve of them to such an extent that they become magnified and remembered as heroes. Nobody seriously considers such people to be true humanitarians.
People who are dying and who give their money away there and then still want the memorial plaque for what they did put up. Believers in God want God to remember their goodness. They feel that is better than any plaque, for God remembers for all eternity.
Disapproval – the dark side
You cannot disapprove of what someone has done without wanting to hurt them.
People fear being disapproved of, for they want to be liked, and they want the benefits of being approved of. For example, if nobody approves of you, you will be ostracised and will never get a good job.
Even if you think you feel nothing, when you choose to hurt someone for the sake of it, there is hate there. Hate means wanting to hurt somebody.
To look for approval, you imply that disapproval should be an option too, but you don't want it. Approval means you must sanction the possibility of disapproval as well. The coin has two sides.
Approval and disapproval matter – that is why any religion or whatever playing games with them is shameful.
Do believers do good for God's approval?
God supposedly sees and hears all.
Could it be that believers in God like doing good works because God sees them? You can do good works that no person knows about and not care because God sees it. That does not make you a better person than the person who does good better when there is an audience.
It makes you worse.
There is more humility in feeling approved by fallible, silly humanity than in feeling approved by God. God sees all and has tough standards, and who are you to think and feel you know God thinks you are great?
And at least you know other people exist, but what if there is no God? It is arrogant to seek the approval of a being who might only be in your head. It is like you are creating a God to approve of you. You can do this even if there is a God, for as far as you are concerned, there might be no God.
The person, then, who does good for God's approval is, in fact, worse than the person who merely seeks man's. That person is far more selfish or self-centred, despite her or his sweet sentiments.
People say they cannot be good, or take good seriously, or believe in good properly, unless they put their faith in God. They clearly wish to believe because they want to feel approved. They surely have had times of disbelief or even hate for God, and the good deeds were still happening. This lie exposes how they are motivated by wanting approval.
Should we judge that believers are looking for approval from God? What about innocent until proven guilty? The proof of possible innocence would be if they are making huge sacrifices of love for God. It is safe, knowing what we know about human nature and how it professes love for God that fails to be supported well by their lives, to assume that believers only want God for the sense of divine approval they get from belief in him. It is a placebo because they do not really deserve that approval. Their faith is a placebo for sins against God.
Christianity
Rewards have no meaning except as an expression of approval for us.
Christianity advocates serving God not because you want his approval, not because you want a reward, not because you want to feel good about being good, but merely because it is his will. Wanting God's approval or anything else would be selfish. It would be loving something God can give instead of God – or more than God. It would be about what you expect of God. Thus, it would not be about God.
For most people who believe, wanting divine approval or not wanting it is the fundamental choice – in terms of a relationship with God. This choice is what it is all about as far as they are concerned.
The irony is that acting with a view to getting approval in mind is seen as bad, but you want God to do this bad thing.
You want God to reward himself for what you do.
If that makes no sense, what if it did? You could still hold, "Even if God cannot reward himself, I would will him to if he could."
The contradiction suggests that God is some kind of mental and psychological projection.
Religion makes your crave for approval worse...
Religion increases the desire and need for approval. It conditions you so that you cannot help but need it. Thus, what a religious person does for us is probably self-interested.
Religion makes you feel like you cannot be independent of God. If he is creator, then you cannot be free. Even when you sin, you only sin because of him, not against him, for he creates your free will. So he feels so big to you that you have to keep wanting his approval. You will naturally need the approval of the person you are so intimately along with.
Religion threatens you by saying sin can lead you to sin that forces you into Hell as punishment. This makes you crave approval from God, as it keeps you from suffering forever.
Religion exaggerates how bad some "sins" are and invents sins. This guilt needs to be relieved by getting approval.
Forgiveness is about God starting to approve of you now so that you have a fresh start.
Religions that teach these things are after a reward, and that reward is approval.
When you lie about your love of divine approval
The ego likes to be told it is good and likes to feel approved of. It is about feeling safe.
To disguise your self-centred quest for approval as goodness means that the deception will get worse over time. It will lead to anger and arrogance – maybe addiction to the quest for approval. You will be like that even as you act the part of the humble. You will fear that people will see through you. You will be defensive. Stress will come.
Is the love of divine approval the reason godly people do good?
Belief in God is said to motivate people to do good works. Saying that is unacceptable, for if you want to do good, you will do it whether you believe or not.
You cannot extract belief in God from the faithful doing good and send them back in a time machine to see if they will still do it. So it is judgemental. It is best to assume that with the removal of faith, they will not do or even might not do it. If people seem to like this kind of judgment, that shows how harmful belief in God can be.
There is another problem with saying it too. Given what we have learned about human nature and its desire for approval, it is safe to say that if religious people really do good works better, they do them better because they want God's approval. Thus, they are best described as helpful works, but the people are not really that good inside. If you save a baby's life and you let any part of your action be about winning anybody's approval – or God's approval – then that is an insult to the baby, for you could make it more or all about the baby.
When you look for God's approval, you mean you approve of you and want God to agree with you. You expect him to. It is really about you. You only want faith in God because you want approval. You are as wise as God and think you know he should approve. In reality, you think you are better than God! So your prayers and "sacrifices" are patronising God!
Finally
Looking for God's approval and thinking you may have got it is bad for the following reasons:
The good person does good for its own sake and does not care who approves.
Looking for approval gives in to your natural desire for approval.
It feeds it.
Seeking approval from others helps you blend in – but if you care more about the approval of some being such as God, that defeats the purpose.
Because people act as if they know what is in the mind of God, their feeling approved by God is pride. It is arrogant to imagine that a perfectly good and infinite God approves of you. Arrogance is defensive – trying to stop something perceived as harmful happening to you. It makes you feel better to imagine that you know what in fact you do not know. It is not up to you to decide what is in anybody else's mind, especially God's.
It seems humble if you think you do good and it is really God who is doing it, not you. That could indicate a desire to degrade the good done by others. Even if God is doing the good through you, you are doing good others are not doing. You have a role. You know that. You are, in fact, trying to glorify your own goodness as being entirely that of God. It is not hard to be humble if that is humility!
Arrogance avoids taking responsibility. The believer is happy to say that God lets evil happen but refuses to admit responsibility for condoning what cannot be condoned – which would be the case if there is no God.
Christians say that all we do is tainted by sin, and sin is an offence against God. There is at least a little bit of sin in everything we do. If that is true, then even if our goodness is good on the human level, it is not as good as far as God is concerned. Your attitude is, "I do this good because it suits me, for I sin even as I do it." Looking for God's approval is delusional even if there is a God. It is arrogant and calling on God to glorify your sin.
God-pleasing is problematic if you are only doing your good deeds for you are attached to avoiding him being negative towards you – or to get him to like you and look good or great in his eyes. It is about you and not the good or him. You are hiding your true self and thus averting the goodness that comes from helping another with no hidden feel-good agenda. If you think it is a bad thing to do good only for approval or chiefly for approval, then abandon belief in God. The belief makes your love for approval far worse. It makes your secret good works suspect. You don't want to encourage any belief that makes the tendency to make doing good about approval any worse.