This will be quick. I wanted to write something up quickly to generate a discussion.
This past Sunday, during a Bishopric meeting, we discussed the financial ability—and possible obligation—of families whose children are attending FSY. The total cost is $150. In some years, the ward covers half for all registrants and, in cases of financial hardship, the remaining $75 as well. One suggestion was that youth should actively participate by earning some or all of the money themselves, on the reasoning that people place higher value on things in which they have “skin in the game.” I had no immediate objection to that idea. In fact, I largely agree with it.
And yet, I walked away unsettled—not by the practicality of the suggestion, but by the deeper assumptions underneath it.
It’s easy to say that work increases appreciation, and there’s plenty of evidence that effort does heighten perceived value. But this also exposes something uncomfortable about us: we are remarkably bad at receiving gifts. When something is unearned, our gratitude often thins out, becomes abstract, or disappears altogether. That raises an important question—not about whether work has value, but about how we actually construct gratitude in the first place.
Scripture seems to press directly against this weakness. In the parable of the ten lepers, all ten are healed, yet only one returns to give thanks. That ratio—90% healed, 10% grateful—feels painfully familiar. It also feels deeply problematic. Jesus doesn’t explain it away; He highlights it. He seems less interested in the miracle itself than in the human inability to respond to grace with recognition and gratitude.
Which makes me wonder: if those ten had been required to do something—perform a task, contribute effort, “earn” their healing—would more of them have returned? Would five or six have come back instead of one? Possibly. But if that’s true, what does it say about us? That gratitude is more reliable when we can point to ourselves as partial cause? That we respond better to transactions than to grace?
This is where the tension sharpens. On one hand, valuing work matters. Effort disciplines us, forms responsibility, and roots experiences more deeply in memory and meaning. On the other hand, the gospel repeatedly insists that the most important gifts—life, mercy, forgiveness, healing—are not wages. They are given. Freely. Often uncomfortably so. Grace, by its very nature, refuses to let us claim it as an extension of our own effort.
So when our doctrinal instincts drift toward framing blessings as something God renders but we claim by virtue of our work, we may be revealing less about divine justice and more about human insecurity. We seem to need contribution not just to appreciate a gift, but to feel entitled to receive it at all. Perhaps requiring “skin in the game” is less about increasing gratitude and more about protecting us from the vulnerability of pure dependence.
Jesus, it seems, is constantly challenging this reflex. He heals first. He forgives first. He gives first. And then He waits—to see who can bear the weight of an unearned gift and still return in gratitude.
The question, then, isn’t whether work has value—it clearly does. The deeper question is whether we are forming people who know how to work, or people who know how to receive grace. Ideally, the gospel asks us to become both—but it refuses to let one substitute for the other.
Discussion Questions
1. Do we value work because it forms us—or because it allows us to feel less indebted?
2. Is gratitude deeper when a gift is costly to receive, or when it is impossible to repay?
Wheat & Tares 
I think there is something between work and grace, and that’s pride. Work is valuable in forming character and building oneself up. But what do you do with the rewards of work, meaning the wages, blessings, money, or praise, etc? Do you buy the huge truck or house because you earned it, or do you get something more modest and use your extra money to help others? Right now, we live in a world with lots of big trucks, fancy cars, and huge houses justified because of hard work. There’s also an attitude sometimes portrayed that if I had to work so hard, you do to get what I have.
Grace, on the other hand, requires a certain amount of humility to accept. Maybe we don’t want it because we won’t give something for nothing to others, and feel guilty if it’s given to us. Still, there is virtually nothing we can do on our own or by ourselves that doesn’t depend on someone else. Even something as simple as making breakfast requires hundreds, if not thousands of people to have had a part in what you are cooking. Maybe they did because of work and wages, but could we do it without them? Accepting their work, even if we buy the ingredients, means we need to accept the grace of it being available.
Money complicates the relationship between work and grace. People work for money, and we buy with it, and we think all things are equal. They’re not. My good wages allow me to buy produce and goods made or harvested by people who make a fraction of what I make. We could call it the economic system but looking at it as individuals buying or selling, there’s grace in their actions because of the inequity in our distant relationship that only money bridges.
So I think being grateful is something we should all strive for because not being that way reeks of privilege.