I'm not too proud to admit that my wife and I hoard our change. Well, perhaps hoard isn't a good term; we collect it, only to eventually cash it in. It's always amazing (a) how much actually collects over time and (b) how it comes in handy at the most opportune of times.
As I was at the local Coinstar the other day, I heard a strange "clink" as I was pouring my coins into the feeding tray. I felt around the slot below where the reject coins end up. Sure enough, there were a few strays there, so I fed them back into the top with the other coins. "Clink" once again. So as I pulled out the "round two" reject, I noticed something different in the feel of this coin. Instinctively, I glanced down to notice Washington's head where it belonged on this quarter, but the date caught my eye and caused a double take. No wonder it felt strange: it was minted back in the day when they actually used silver! My immediate thought was this: the machine rejects the more pure and is more willing to accept the more alloyed coins.
What an apt commentary on society today, I thought. How quick we are as a culture to embrace the things that are less pure as if they are somehow synonymous with "new and cutting edge" and hence more laudable. One author recently bemoaned how our culture has "lost the ability to blush." Things that were once held in modesty are now trumpeted; and sometimes the more perverse the better. From reality t.v. to our tabloid appetite for reading material, we keep accepting a greater and more "alloyed" product while rejecting the pure. The eventual end product will be an all out disdain for anything pure.
But perhaps the cure would be found in a resurgence of valuing what is pure. Whether it ties into our purchasing power, or simply our thought life, it's there for us to recapture. Scripture implores us:
"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praise worthy-think about these things." (Phil. 4:8)
Sounds like pretty clear marching orders to fight the disdain for purity. If we were to occupy ourselves with what is pure and allow that which is not to languish, perhaps it would curb the disdain for purity and instead, reverse the trend. Are you game?
