We All Know Better

4 May 2026  Acts 14:5-18

Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter

“Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul, because he was the chief speaker, they called Hermes.” Acts 14:12

A teacher says to his class, “All you students with brown eyes, raise your hands.” Brown-eyed students raise their hands. “You all fail for the year. Get out.” The students say (all together now), “That’s not fair!”

Teacher: I don’t care. Get out.

Students: We’ll get you fired for this!

Teacher: Wow, you went straight there, didn’t you. Didn’t stop at the law, the Constitution, philosophy, even right and wrong. It’s not about right and wrong for you, though, is it? It’s just about what you can take away. It’s just about power, who has it and who has the will to use it.

Students: Uh…

Teacher: But it should have been about right and wrong, shouldn’t it ? It should have been about the rights and wrongs we all already know. You couldn’t bring yourselves to say that, though, could you? And you all know better.

A lot of people can’t bring themselves to say that, though, because deep down they already know that the existence of such a Natural Law, a law we all know as soon as we learn what the word “moral” means, is a really powerful argument that God exists, and that God decided to make this Law known by embodying it Himself in the person of Jesus.

That’s the point that Paul was trying to make to the pagans in Lystra. There were rights and wrongs they all already knew, even though he was a Jew and they were pagans.

Even though they wanted to sacrifice a cow to Paul and Barnabas because a cripple was healed (Acts 4:10-11), they all already knew there were rights and wrongs far bigger than their idols, rights and wrongs beyond the reach of any sacrifice. Plato and Aristotle had said so centuries before. So did Parmenides and Heraclitus, Zeno and Cicero. Plenty of pagan writers had said that Truth was just one thing, that it implied a kind of ethical monotheism, and it was superior to the morally corrupt polytheism of the Greeks and Romans. Not only that, but this Natural Law was evident to everyone who paid attention.

They all knew better.

Professor J. Budziszewski makes it clear that the Natural Law is still obvious to anyone paying attention:

The common moral truths are no less plain to us today than they ever were. Our problem is not that there isn’t a common moral ground, but that we would rather stand somewhere else. We are not in Dante’s inferno, where even the sinners acknowledge the law which they have violated. We are in some other hell. The denizens of our hell say that they don’t know the law – or that there is no law – or that each makes the law for himself.

And they all know better.

A lot of people can’t bring themselves to say that, though, because deep down they already know that the existence of such a Natural Law, a law we all know as soon as we learn what the word “moral” means, is a really powerful argument that God exists, and that God decided to make this Law known by embodying it Himself in the person of Jesus. If we ever use the words, “That’s just plain wrong,” which we all do and want to do, we are admitting that we know God in Christ at least a little. And if we do that, we acknowledge that there are some things we can’t think anymore, some places we can’t go anymore, some friends we can’t have anymore. A lot of people are afraid of where trust in Jesus might take them. They don’t want to go there, so they resort to power instead: “If you do this, I will take something you want from you!”

There are some who would rather be tyrants than admit they know anything about Jesus.

But you already knew that.