Listening to news programs, particularly the yakity-yak-my-view-is-the-only-right-view programs you might come away with the idea that there is a war on everything.

The list goes something like this, the war on: Women… Poverty… Drugs… Terrorist and on and on I could go. You name it, there is a war addressed. I believe we should be serious about dealing with certain negative aspects of society and do whatever it takes to make people’s lives better. I am all for those ideas, however, I sometimes think it goes just a little too far.

Most of the time, someone is for a certain “war” because of some political advantage it will give them in the public’s eye. I guess you cannot be a politician unless you are willing to poke somebody in the eye!

Is it just me or have you noticed people will create a war on something just to get in the limelight? They are not against something they just know someone is; that someone is someone that goes to the polls and votes, and they want their vote.

Do not let this thought get too far, but I think it would be a whole lot cheaper during election time for politicians just to write checks and send out to all the voters saying, “Here’s $1,000, vote for me.” It would be a lot cheaper in the long run and who couldn’t use $1,000 right about now.

This war I am speaking of is rather covert and does not get any time on the national or cable news. Everybody knows it is going on but nobody wants to point it out. That is, up until now.

The greatest war going on in our society today is the war on common sense. There, I said it. And I stand by what I said. There is a tremendous attack on common sense in our society today.

Perhaps somebody could argue that there has never been a time in our history where we had too much common sense. That may be true, but it seems that people today are going out of their way to make common sense nonsense.

I must confess that common sense is not as common as it once was and perhaps never was. I like to think that somewhere along the line a few good people have entertained common sense.

There are so many laws in our land these days that it is impossible keep up with them all. There must be a law somewhere particularly in Washington, DC that says any law that makes sense has to be immediately thrown out. We have politicians that would not recognize common sense if it bit them on the nose. Most politicians have their nose in other people’s business anyway.

It would be nice if just some time these politicians would simply come together and establish a law, merely one law that makes sense. In order to make one law that makes sense they have to have 999 other laws that confuse it to such a degree that it no longer makes sense.

Common sense would tell me, for example, if I do not have enough money I cannot purchase a certain thing. That does not work in Washington. Oh no. In Washington, affording something financially is never part of the equation. The only thing important in that equation is, does this make somebody who voted for me happy enough to vote for me again?

It takes a lot of good old-fashioned common sense to take care of money and run my household budget in such a way that the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage is happy. Taking care of money and making sure that we do not spend money on things we do not need is part of the common sense that helps me balance my checkbook month after month.

Common sense says I need to balance my checkbook.

Washington sense says, write checks until you have no more checks to write then order more checks. Forget all that stuff about balance. If we run out of money, we just print more money.

Does that really make sense?

It would be great if I could do that with my home budget. If I do not have enough money one month all I need to do is go down into the basement and print a bunch of money to make up the difference.

Not only is common sense eliminated from the financial aspects of our country, but health issues are also thrown to the curb.

Common sense would tell me I need to eat properly.

Washington sense says, eat what I tell you to eat. I have seen some of the stuff that they, the government, wants us to eat. The government wants to come into our school cafeterias and force-feed our children a proper diet.

In most of these schools, I cannot speak for all of them, the children have the common sense to throw it away. Common sense says if it does not look good or taste good it probably ain’t good for you. (Pardon my French.)

The Bible has a lot to say about this. My favorite verse of Scripture is, “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” (James4:17).

I need to make common sense the standard of my day-to-day living based upon the common teaching of the Word of God.