Yet when this issue is discussed, we tend to ignore scriptures like Luke 10:7 (oft quoted in the D&C) where there appears to be a strong sense of “deserving” reward for ones labors. Our theology of works also seems to move in that direction.

Perhaps the difference is that our work is relative to those around us or the task at hand? i.e. the issue is what we are comparing things to?

I admit that the approach some take (often more socialist views of Catholicism) makes me nervous. The idea that we are all equally unworthy suggests that somehow the laggard and lazy *deserve* from *us* exactly the same as those who work hard to. I just have a very hard time accepting that. It just seems that rewards ought in some sense to be tied to production. Now what we *do* with those rewards is certainly up from grabs, as our STQ topic dealt with. But the reward bit just seems hard to swallow.

Some endorse the popular “the rich won’t get to heaven” doctrine. Conversely, others feel strongly that God wants everyone, but especially them, to get rich, or that riches are somehow a greater test that God bestows on the truly righteous. Paradoxically, many embrace both doctrines, feeling riches are morally tainted but seeking riches nonetheless. I don’t believe the Church has any “official” pronouncement either praising or proscribing wealth or the rich beyond general platitudes. Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

More seriously, I’m not sure it is productive to speculate on who “deserves” riches, anymore than who deserves the other arbitrary favors life bestows in a rather fickle fashion: good health, good looks, good parents, or talents of any description. Any discussion along that path either invokes fallacious appeals to a preexistent fund of merit (“I was born to rich parents because I was especially righteous in the Preexistence”) or becomes an exercise in self-justification and pride (“I’m rich because I deserve it–let me count the ways”). I don’t think any explanation invoking merit or the term “deserves” gets us very far.

Anyway, here’s a heartfelt little essay from the Columbia Law Review on how (as Nate puts it) we are all implicated in the moral decisions others make, and how that idea might apply to tort doctrine: http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Matsuda.htm

Of course, one might unify one’s theories of happiness and argue that the man hiring the prostitute is simply ignorant about his true interests and true happiness. I think that undoubtedly true. Perhaps he is simply improperly discounting the eternal consquences of his act.

BTW, in my law review note (“Wagering on Religious Liberty,” 116 Harv. L. Rev. 946), I made the somewhat quixotic argument that religious freedom reflected a constrained and proper discounting of the value of hellfire. My fellow editors thought that the article was fun but bizarre. Which is about right…

if these items meet the expressed needs/preferences of other…isnt’ there inherent value in providing moral agents with opportunities to exercise their agency?