Whatever Happened to Common Sense?

After the attempted shoe bombing 10 years ago, TSA made everyone remove their shoes. Then last year, someone put a bomb in their underwear: the underwear bomber.  Thank God for ‘body scanners,” or who knows what new rules TSA might have implemented. But alas! This weekend, a 95-year old woman was made to remove her underwear—an adult diaper! And last month a 5-year old was given a pat-down. Everyone is wondering “what happened to common sense?” (Apparently, it got thrown out with the dirty diapers.) But this matter is not limited to TSA. What about the common sense of our elected officials? On what planet does it make sense to borrow and spend our way out of debt?

Considering the aforementioned, “common sense” seems to have been replaced by its alter ego, “collective insanity.” Let’s hope it is a temporary condition. But “temporary insanity” is not uncommon to fallen man. Adam had a spell of temporary insanity when he agreed to eat the “poison apple.” Wasn't David temporarily out of his mind when he slept with Bathsheba and tried to cover it up.  Centuries later, Paul asked the Galatians, “Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth” (3:1). And even Jesus gave witness to this malady in His story of the Prodigal son: “After he came to his senses, he returned to his father “(Luke 15:18). The prodigal had a bout of temporary insanity.

Satan’s strategy has always been to cast a spell of deception on the unwitting. I don’t have much hope for our nation’s “collective insanity.” But I do hope and pray that we in the 21st century American Church won’t wake up one day (come to our senses) and find that we’ve been deceived into a “pig pen” mindset, “just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent” (2 Cor. 11:3).