Ramming Our Heads Against the Law

"For breaking the foundational moral principles that we can't not know, one penalty is guilty knowledge, because deep down we can't help but know the truth. For breaking any precepts of the natural law..there are other penalties, too. Those who cut themselves bleed. Those who give offense to others are hated. Those who live by knives die by them. Those who betray their friends have none left. Those who abandon their children have none to stroke their brows when they are old. Those who travel from bed to bed lose the capacity for trust. Those who torture their consciences are tortured by them in return. Those who suppress their moral knowledge become stupider than they intended. Those who refuse the one in whose image they are made live as strangers to themselves. We see that the principle that God is not mocked, that whatever one sows he reaps, is woven into the fabric of our nature. Not all our disobedience can unravel a single stitch. Some penalties show up within the lifetime of the individual; others may tarry until several generations have perished in the same wrongdoing. But the penalties for defiance are cumulative, and eventually they can no longer be ignored."

-J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know (2011 A.D.)