Alex Richey

One of the most fascinating things about natural law is how intuitively we live according to it, even when we cannot explain why. Think about your ordinary day. You exercise, eat well, and avoid unnecessary harm because you recognize that life and health are goods worth preserving. You care for your children and want to see them flourish because you recognize that family life is inherently good. You remain faithful to your spouse, guard your words, and nurture your marriage because you recognize that love and friendship are goods worth pursuing. You meet a friend for coffee to talk about shared interests (like I did this morning)—not because the friend can necessarily do something for you, but because sharing your life with someone feels intrinsically valuable and life-giving. You go for a run on a Saturday morning (like I did this morning) and find yourself captivated by the changing colors of autumn because beauty is worth appreciating for its own sake. You pick up a book (like I’m about to), even when no one requires you to, because knowing the truth is inherently satisfying. You pray and gather with the church because you recognize that knowing God is not merely useful but is itself a profound good. Notice something: In each of these cases, you’re not simply pursuing something because it gets you something else. You’re pursuing goods that you recognize as worthwhile in themselves. You don’t need a philosophy degree to recognize these goods. You already organize your life around them. You begin to see that questions of natural law do not first engage questions of speculation about human nature and theology (though those conversations will ensue); you begin with practical questions: Why do I organize my life around practical choices that enhance my flourishing? That’s the remarkable thing about natural law. Practical reason apprehends certain basic human goods as self-evidently worth pursuing, even when we struggle to articulate why. Now, someone might object: “If natural law is so self-evident, why doesn’t everyone agree about what it requires?” But this objection confuses the self-evidence of basic human goods with disagreements about their moral implications. At the level of first principles, we find a remarkable universality in the human recognition of goods like life, knowledge, friendship, family, and beauty. Disagreements emerge when we reason about how those goods ought to be pursued, protected, prioritized, and expressed in particular circumstances. In other words, disagreement about the secondary or tertiary entailments of natural law does not negate the self-evidence of its foundational principles. We can disagree profoundly about what constitutes a good life while still recognizing that life itself is good. We can disagree about the obligations of family life while still recognizing that family is a good worth pursuing. The existence of moral disagreement does not mean there is no common moral knowledge. It often means we are reasoning, sometimes badly, from goods we already recognize. And that should provoke a deeper question: Why are we the kinds of creatures who recognize these goods in the first place? Where do these goods come from? What do they reveal about our nature? And might it tell us something about the One who made us? Christianity offers a profound answer: We are made in the image of God, created with a nature ordered toward genuine human flourishing. These goods are not arbitrary preferences. They belong to the kind of creatures God made us to be. And from the fullness of Christian revelation, we discover that our deepest flourishing is found in knowing God through Jesus Christ, in whom our lives find their ultimate meaning and end, and through whom we learn the original intention behind our design and are better enabled to achieve the fullness of that design. The natural law is not some obscure philosophical theory imposed upon ordinary life—though it can certainly take shape that way. But if natural law is what it is, it ought to be simple and reasonable, and it is: a way of making coherent sense of the goods you already recognize and pursue every day.