Lock Repair and Unchanging Principles

This week I remembered the time I helped fix a lock. That got me thinking about natural law and free will, among other things.

A Lock, a Broken Key, and Frustration

I spent two decades of my life working for a small publishing house here in Sauk Centre, Vocational Biographies.

One of these days I may talk about the 175 “career biographies” they published each year. But today I’ll talk about the time their back door lock needed repair.

The company operated in a mansion that’d been converted first to a funeral home and then office space. When I started working there, my desk — a table, actually — was near what had been the mansion’s coach/carriage entrance.

By the time I worked there, the old coach entrance was at ground level, with steps up to the floor a few paces inside. That’s where I usually entered the building, particularly in winter when navigating the front entrance’s outside steps could be tricky.

I had a key for that door, since I was often the last one out of the building. It didn’t do me much good, though, after someone unlocked the door and broke their key.

With the key blade still in the lock.

Tools, Time, and a Short Walk

The back door could still be locked, but only from the inside, which meant I had to use either the front or mail room doors when leaving at night. Neither of which were ideal choices, thanks to my distinctly sub-standard hip joints.

It wasn’t a large company, fewer than a dozen full-time employees, so there wasn’t a maintenance staff. Maybe that’s why the door stayed unfixed for a frustratingly long time.

At any rate, I finally decided that enough was enough.

I found a toolbox in the basement.

Then I disassembled the lock until I’d isolated the lock cylinder — the part with lots of fiddly small pieces inside. By then I’d taken about a coffee break’s worth of time, so I signed out.

After that, I took the cylinder to my father-in-law’s place, about a block away.

He used his skills and tools to extract the key blade without damaging the lock, put the cylinder back together and handed both to me.

Another short walk and a few minutes at the back door left me with comfortable access restored, a few tools, and a broken key blade.

I put the company’s tools back where I found them, handed the broken blade to the company’s owner, and told him what I’d done.

He said “it’s a good thing you’re honest”, and I went back to writing advertising copy.

Honestly!

I haven’t heard the platitude “honesty is the best policy” for a long time.

Grammarist says the bromide popped up in English when Sir Edwin Sandys wrote “Our grosse conceipts, who think honestie the best policie.” in “Europae Speculum” (1599).

Latin was still cool back then, and I’m drifting off-topic.

Anyway, I think honesty actually is the best policy. At least in the long run.

That’s my opinion: which, plus a few dollars, will buy you a cup of coffee.

I’m a Catholic, so I don’t have to rely on my opinions, what celebrities say, or some alleged expert for deciding what is and is not a good idea.

The down side is that I can’t do whatever I like, following the moment’s impulse, and congratulate myself on being free of the trammeling constraints of a hierarchical, authoritarian, male-dominated society. Or whatever is considered sophisticated, intelligent, and well-educated these days.

Natural Law, Using Our Brains

I don’t, by the way, yearn for yesteryear — when another set of weird notions dominated my culture’s landscape.

I remember the ‘good old days’, and they weren’t.

As I see it, honesty, being truthful, and related ideas, are part of natural law: ethical principles written into reality’s source code.

Natural law doesn’t change. Ever. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1950-1960)

That was true when the Code of Hammurabi was written, and will still be true when Hammurabi and the United States Constitution are seen as roughly contemporary.

Positive law, rules we make up to deal with whatever circumstances we’re in at the moment, changes as our circumstances change. That’s a good thing. (Catechism, 1957)

When positive and natural law don’t line up, we’ve got problems. (Catechism, 1957-1958, 2273)

The idea of natural law isn’t new.

Folks like Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics figured that order exists, and that it isn’t necessarily whatever the current fashion dictates.¹

Much more recently, Pope Leo XIII wrote about free will, reason, and how we should use these aspects of our nature.

“Such, then, being the condition of human liberty, it necessarily stands in need of light and strength to direct its actions to good and to restrain them from evil. Without this, the freedom of our will would be our ruin. First of all, there must be law; that is, a fixed rule of teaching what is to be done and what is to be left undone. This rule cannot affect the lower animals in any true sense, since they act of necessity, following their natural instinct, and cannot of themselves act in any other way. On the other hand, as was said above, he who is free can either act or not act, can do this or do that, as he pleases, because his judgment precedes his choice. And his judgment not only decides what is right or wrong of its own nature, but also what is practically good and therefore to be chosen, and what is practically evil and therefore to be avoided. … This ordination of reason is called law. In man’s free will, therefore, or in the moral necessity of our voluntary acts being in accordance with reason, lies the very root of the necessity of law. Nothing more foolish can be uttered or conceived than the notion that, because man is free by nature, he is therefore exempt from law. Were this the case, it would follow that to become free we must be deprived of reason.…

“Foremost in this office comes the natural law, which is written and engraved in the mind of every man; and this is nothing but our reason, commanding us to do right and forbidding sin. Nevertheless, all prescriptions of human reason can have force of law only inasmuch as they are the voice and the interpreters of some higher power on which our reason and liberty necessarily depend. For, since the force of law consists in the imposing of obligations and the granting of rights, authority is the one and only foundation of all law — the power, that is, of fixing duties and defining rights, as also of assigning the necessary sanctions of reward and chastisement to each and all of its commands. But all this, clearly, cannot be found in man, if, as his own supreme legislator, he is to be the rule of his own actions. It follows, therefore, that the law of nature is the same thing as the eternal law, implanted in rational creatures, and inclining them to their right action and end; and can be nothing else but the eternal reason of God, the Creator and Ruler of all the world.…”
(“Libertas” , On the Nature of Human Liberty, Encyclical letter, 7, 8; Pope Leo XIII(June 20, 1888)) [emphasis mine]

Free Will and All That

Having free will means that I can decide what I do or don’t do. It also means that I am responsible for my decisions. (Catechism, 1731-1738)

Of course, I can decide that I won’t decide: which is a decision of sorts.

Following whatever daft impulses flutter through my brain has the advantage of being easy and, in the short term, gratifying.

However, I’ve noticed that actions have consequences, whether I want them to or not.

If I haven’t been using my brain, those consequences can be embarrassing, downright unpleasant, or worse.

Taking an example from the embarrassing end of that continuum, there was the week I spent most of the money left after rent on video games. Consequences were minimal, but I felt really stupid. And I learned that paying attention to small expenses was a good idea.

As a Catholic, deciding what I do — or don’t do — is pretty straightforward. In terms of the rules I follow, at least.

Basically, I should love God, love my neighbors, and see everyone as my neighbor. Always. No exceptions. (Matthew 5:43–44, 22:36–40; Mark 12:28–31; Luke 6:31, 10:25–27, 29–37; Catechism, 2196)

That sounds simple. Acting as if I believe it can be incredibly difficult. But it’s a good idea.

I’ve talked about natural law, free will, and acting as if ethics matter, before:

• “Politics, Poppycock, and a Mess in Minnesota” (January 31, 2026)
  • Immigrants, Rules, and Unchanging Principles
• “A Stained Glass Window, a Baron, Initiative and Rules” (August 23, 2025)
  • “Legal” May Not be Right
• “The Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, and the Big Picture” (March 22, 2025)
  • Free Will, Living With Consequences, a Good Idea, and Very Good News
• “Choices, Change, Technology, and Using Our Brains” (November 4, 2023)
  • (Optionally) Rational Animals
• “Lent 2023: Prayer and Prepping For Easter” (February 22, 2023)
  • Wounded, But Still Basically Good

¹ Natural law, a little background:

• Wikipedia
  • Natural law
    • Ancient Greece
  • Summa Theologica
  • Treatise on Law (Questions 90–108 of “Summa Theologica”, Prima Secundæ Partis; Thomas Aquinas)
• “Summa Theologica” (English translation)
  New Advent
  • Prima Secundæ Partis