Common Sense, if you’ve got, use it, and if you need some, God’s got it.
On February 18, 2003, I remember hearing the disturbing news that Robert Hanssen, a 25-year veteran of the FBI and expert in counterintelligence, had been arrested on espionage charges. He was accused of passing top-secret information to the Soviet Union, starting in 1985. Federal agents apprehended him at a Virginia park just minutes after he left a package under a wooden footbridge, which investigators say was a drop site for delivering secret documents to his Russian handlers.
As the information on Hanssen poured out, we learned he was a faithful church member who attended services every week. In addition, he was a member of Opus Dei, a conservative religious order that was strongly anti-communist and stressed moral righteousness. Sunday after Sunday, I have to wonder if Robert Hanssen really heard what was being said at his church. Hello? Are we listening? The writer of Proverbs, said in chapter 8, vs 5, to get some common sense, and don’t be so foolish, and part of getting common sense is having wisdom and understanding. And on a side note, it seems to me that most all of us get common sense by probably having had no sense at all. When we tripped and stumbled for lack of common sense, then we learned from it. i heard a fellow say once, “Wisdom is knowing what to do; discretion is knowing when and where to do it.” i think one of today’s major enemies against common sense is the instant gratification world we live in, gimme, gimme, gimme. We’ve gladly become the “have it your way” people, getting what we want, when we want, willing to live in the illusion we can pay for it later … somehow. Common sense is having sound judgment in practical matters. i learned the hard way, that if it hurts to hit your fingers with a hammer, then move your fingers. That would be common sense. A lack of common sense would be to just stop hammering because the hammer hurt me. Well now there’s some twisted thinking. It was the hammer’s fault. Victim thinking is very disturbing.
Common sense says if you want to eat, then you’ve got to work, and if we want to know God, then common sense says pray, read your Bible, look for Him and He will find you. Some people just seem to be born level headed, but folks like me seem to only learn by getting knocked around. i don’t know much, but what i do know is solidly fixed in my head and heart. The Lord helped me gain some common sense, thank you Jesus! i figure, no one can have as little common sense and live as i did when i was a young man.
In Matthew 13:14-15, Jesus talks about people who are like Hanssen. He says, “… some crowds that gathered around Him will be ever hearing but never understanding; ever seeing but never perceiving.” There will always be people who won’t get what Jesus is saying which is why he said what he did in verse 15.
“For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.”
In my lifetime, it seems there’s been a moral disconnect between faith and action in much of the Christian culture in this country. Or, what we believe, our orthodoxy, and what we actually do, our orthopraxy, most sharply doesn’t add up.
People can hardly hear with their ears, because they have determinedly closed their eyes.
James 1:22 says, “Don’t merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” Jesus talked about the heart or soul of a person becoming calloused by only being a hearer of the word.
Proverbs 2:7 says, “He grants a treasure of common sense to the honest. He is a shield to those who walk with integrity.”
I think minding the gap between hearing and understanding or seeing but not perceiving is being compromised by the sin against having common sense. James wants every believer to have common sense and there’s nothing like the Bible and walking with Jesus for developing that. i’ve got this idea in my head that says that we can’t live out the scriptures unless we are confident that it means what it says, so when the Lord says He’ll give common sense and wisdom to those who asks, He’s not just kidding around. He will do what He said. In Jeremiah 49, a question aimed at Edom was asked, “Is wisdom no more in Teman? Has counsel perished from the prudent? Has their wisdom vanished?” When we read on though, the Edomites are prophesied to lose, not just their wealth, but also their less tangible riches, even their common sense! The worst part may be that they will fail to even recognize that it has left them all together. Clueless as to the vastness of their cluelessness. i don’t want to be like them. Help us Lord to have common sense, and put it to work.
All to often though, mankind has a bent to live in a destructive self-delusion. How sad if believers do that too. Isn’t this a lack of common sense in the believer who lives like that?
i’m Social Porter for Living In His Name Ministries.