If an object waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck then it must be a bowling ball.
If you found the above statement absurd, then you understand the concept of the “common sense.” Humans have five senses with which God has blessed us: sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell. According to the philosopher Thomas Aquinas, using the data we can take in about the world around us using these senses, our brain combines the data we collect to make a common sense. This information and the use of our God-given intelligence is how we can come to know all the knowledge in the world and how we can make judgments on how we react and act toward the world.
Simply observing nature and the universe around us, common sense tells us that there must be an intelligence greater than ours to direct it. Paul wrote in Romans 1:20, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse.” David added, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). All the complexity and clockwork precision of everything cannot be by mere chance left for chaos to form into such order. To believe such, not in theory for the sake of advancing scientific knowledge, but to genuinely believe it defies common sense.
Animals trust their common sense. They observe the world around them using all their senses and react accordingly. Mistakes can be made because imperfections exist, but common sense serves animals well. God gave us a soul with free will, though. In the garden, Adam and Eve were given paradise. Using their senses, they could know the goodness of God, and by hearing His words, the common sense would be to obey Him. The devil manipulated Eve, though by speaking not to her common sense, but to her selfish desire to see beyond the senses. The self, the thing which interprets common sense, overrode what the common sense was telling her. The devil gently guided her to take sense knowledge and interpret it from within rather than using the information given to her by her senses from God. At that moment, something new was born in her, and she ignored her sensibilities, and decided her desire was more important that common sense and she ate.
The sins of man are all birthed from within us. They are not born from interpreting data and understanding it correctly. Our intelligence, given to us by God, is manipulated by our own selfish desires. Jeremiah 10:23 says that “it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.” Instead, we must pull in the correct information and use our intellect to interpret common sense. While many in the world would look at the things described in Galatians 5:19-21 (“Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”) as enjoyable affairs, even the fallen world will, in time, acknowledge those things are detrimental to the human soul, even if they provided a type of joy and happiness for a time.
Lance Byers