"The Goddess wrote that it had been an error, not to eat food once magic sustained her -"

"Because when men share bread they share hospitality, and companionship, and a reminder that the same forces move all of us; and mortal magic can suspend each of these needs but not suspend the role that their fulfillment has in the heart, and in the bonds among men." They read Acts on the radio and Valia has most of it memorized by now. "But that is a practical argument from necessity; one imagines that if the nature of men were otherwise we would not be entreated to eat anyway for the joys of the taste of food. 

...and anyway Her takeaway was that She tried to eat at least once a month."

"I would have it on very thin authority, to claim the Goddess disagrees with you, but I think I might disagree with Her. Or if I am attempting to reconcile them, I would observe that 'in the current balance of concerns, this one is not neglected' is a very different claim from 'in a full articulation of the Good, this one is absent'."

"I have conceded already that you can have spices once you've emptied Hell! From a full conception of the Good, nothing is absent; but it is an insult to trillions enduring in torment, to choose it above them."

"Now, 'an insult' is a stronger claim than 'an error'."

"I think to ignore a man bleeding out in front of you in order to go water the flower gardens of another is an insult, not just an error, at least assuming you do it knowingly. You are not just mistakenly calculating in a situation of great triage; you are not confused about whether a man's life is worth more than a rosebush. You are choosing to value the man at very nearly nothing."

"Hmmm. I think - most people, if you watch only their behavior, are at all times conducting themselves like they care very nearly not at all, for those in desperate need. Most people, if you gave them a hundred of the old dollars, wouldn't turn them in for a soul; this is of course the mechanism by which the old dollars damned them." Luckily the Church of Abadar owes the Church of Iomedae an astonishing amount of money; there is still a fairly serious currency crisis but it could be a much worse one. "And if you'd like, you can draw the boundary around - what people want, what they care about - narrowly around how they act in this world, and declare that they value almost everything at almost nothing. 

But I think that's - not correct, not really. I think that the impulses to Good in a person are confused and contradictory. Really quite strong, in their own way, but pushing in a dozen different directions and half the time cancelling each other out. I expect that if a man walks past someone bleeding out on the street - part of him thinks 'a crime was just committed, and I don't want to involve myself, and perhaps be accused, or perhaps have the killers return to finish the job', and part of him thinks 'what could I really do anyway', and part of him has just developed the habit of not being steered around by human suffering as he witnesses too much of it, and I worry that it is actually a kind of injustice to him, to circle any particular part of him and declare it who he really is. 

But with all of that said I would indeed be judgmental, if someone told me that they could save a person from damnation by going without cinnamon for a year and chose the cinnamon. And I agree that many people make this choice without contemplating it."

"Not most people! Nobles do that. Kings do that. Normal people know the value of money, and they know the value of life, and - I'm not going to say they always do the right thing but this vice cannot be rightly attributed to them."

"I have nothing at all to say in defense of the continued existence of the nobility, much less kings, but if I were trying to attribute vices to them uniquely I wouldn't arrive at 'a taste for luxury'. I think that in fact most people who can afford for their food to be flavorful will want that very badly. Most people who can sleep on soft sheets will want that. And what of leisure, is that a matter of luxury or plenty?"

"Plenty, I think. If people are always tired and busy and scared they cannot seek out the Good. Anyone who calls the radio a luxury misunderstands it very badly."

"Mmmhmm. And of course we went for the radio first, rather than for cinnamon first, out of an assessment that the radio was essential for our purposes and the cinnamon much less so. But I think I reject the division entire; most things that people want because they make their lives easier and lighter and more pleasant, it's good for them to have, and reasonably often it is foundational for them to have, the way that leisure is foundational; it creates the space in which they can seek out the Good."

"If that were true, I guess I'd agree with you."

It is a rather confrontational thing to say to the most famous paladin on the planet. Iomedae likes Valia. "But you think it's false?"

"People don't seek out luxury because it makes space in their minds and their lives to be Good. They seek out luxury to fill the space that exists in their minds and lives, to let them avoid filling it with anything meaningful. They do not want silks because the experience of wearing silks strengthens them; they want silks because then others will be impressed they have them. They do not drink expensive wine because it tastes better, they drink it because it is expensive. They do not use their sobbing servants for archery practice because it is relaxing, they do it to show off how rich they are and how evil they are - if America does not have nobles you may be underestimating how terrible nobles are -"

"Oh, I probably am. I have read books but it's not the same thing, and also Asmodean nobles were presumably even worse than all of the nobles in other places. ...and my family was among the Chelish nobility, a very long time ago. I do not know precisely how that prejudices me, but I am sure it does."

"I do promise no one was using their servants for archery practice. I would remember that. We also had no cinnamon, and not much of what I think you'd call plenty let alone what you'd call luxury. Instead I would say that the injustices were mostly the injustices of - an excessively narrow conception of what it is to do right by someone, and no - routes of escape for those who were in fact being wronged."

"I do find it slightly surprising that the Goddess does not renounce someone for being the wealthiest person in Avistan."

"Hmmm. The argument being - that it cannot possibly be good prioritization of my funds, for me to sit on them in the fashion of an avaricious dragon, and that the Goddess ought to be as unlikely to pick rich men as She is to pick dragons? Or that it is an active Evil, to be rich, in a world like this one, and paladins are supposed to be incapable of persisting knowingly in Evil?"

"Both of those things, I guess. And just that - if I had a lot of money, I would spend it on the most important things I knew of. It is hard to imagine any reason not to do that, when we're talking about so much money that you wouldn't even notice it was missing."

"What should I spend it on?"

"The...Church? Their job is to figure that out!"

"Ah, but what if I think I am cleverer than the Church, and will do a better job?"

"I don't think that's a sin."

"A lot of people would absolutely say that that is a sin, though mostly not to me in particular, but if you have mostly gotten your theology education from the radio I suppose you wouldn't have heard from those people, because I don't agree with them, and because they tend to believe it for reasons that also inspire them not to argue with me on the radio."