A 1972 Dime with a Roosevelt Imperfection

I really enjoy a television show called Scrubs.  Maybe you’ve seen it.  If you haven’t, it’s a hospital show, but nothing like ER or Grey’s Anatomy or House.  The series chronicles the life and innermost thoughts of Dr. J.D. Dorian, a young doctor at Sacred Heart Hospital.  There is a unnamed janitor at the hospital who finds significant enjoyment in tormenting J.D. in all kinds of creative and not-so-creative ways.  In one episode, J.D. sees the janitor and his friend from food service waiting to thwart him in some new and ridiculous manner, so he acts quickly and distracts them with a riddle:

“What two coins, when put together, make thirty cents, and one of them is not a nickel?”

So the janitor and his low-IQed buddy spend the remainder of the episode slaving over the solving of this query.  After some research at the local library, they return to J.D. with an answer:  you can make thirty cents out of a penny and a 1972 dime with a Roosevelt imperfection, which today is worth twenty-nine cents.

Or, as J.D. points out, you can avoid searching through United States Mint files and simply make thirty cents out of a quarter and a nickel.  Remember, only ONE of the coins isn’t a nickel.  We never specified anything about the other coin.

Hmm . . . the janitor worked pretty hard to come up with an answer that is correct.  There’s no denying his logic.  Yet finding two coins that add up to thirty cents really isn’t the point, is it?  The point is recognizing and exposing the nuance in the riddle itself.  It could be so very simple, but somehow, the way our minds process things, it becomes so very difficult.

So when a well-known pastor writes a book that asks a few questions that challenge the way we typically process this existence we call life, he gets death threats.  And if not death threats, he gets told that he can’t ask those questions.  No, because to ask those questions is to undermine what we believe, and this would change far too much about how we live our lives, and that’s absolutely unacceptable.

This post, contrary to what it may appear, is not a defense of Rob Bell or Love Wins, though I’m happy to have that conversation in another setting.  This post is a critique of the state of the Church that has been exposed in obvious ways since even before the book hit the shelves.

See, we Christians are pretty quick to pull out our long-winded explanations for how and why everything is the way it is, and these spiels are often quite similar to the janitor pulling out a collector’s book and pointing out this particular dime’s current value.  It’s intelligent, sure, and it’s the kind of knowledge that will get someone his or her M.Div.  But is it the point?  And if it’s not, then what is the point?

When asked what motivates me to be an English teacher, I respond with a quote from literary critic Roland Barthes:  “Literature is the question minus the answer.”  Harriet Beecher Stowe could have released a pamphlet explaining academically why slavery is unjust, but she chose to let readers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin make their own decisions.  Jane Austen could have written a convincing essay on the flaws of the Victorian class stratification in Britain, but she chose to tell several stories in which this struggle was explored.

It is astounding to think that most of the things that are supposedly a part (or not a part) of a Christian’s life or church organization are not discussed in the Bible at all.  They were decided somewhere along the way by church leaders who spent their lives searching for Truth.  Except, for some reason, church leaders can’t challenge the status quo anymore.  We can’t ask those questions, because our beliefs have already been established.  We can’t add to doctrine because doctrine is already complete.  Says who?  Not Christ, and isn't that who we're following?  The truth is the story is still being written.  The question hasn't yet been answered.

Because it’s not really about finding an enigmatic dime worth twenty-nine cents; it’s about knowing that, despite the fact that one coin isn’t a nickel, the second coin may be exactly that.

The Exorcism of Linus

At the school where I teach, there are two staff restrooms.  I use the name “restroom” purposely in place of “bathroom,” for I have never taken a bath at school, and fellow teachers understand how a potty break quite often doubles as a wonderfully good time for some R&R.  One staff restroom is kind of out in the open in a main hallway where chaos is still to be heard, even with the fan running.  The other is nice and out of the way, a place where one can enjoy a break from bewailing students and thus, the desire to take the life of . . . (let me clear my throat).  Anyways, there is a intriguing nuance of my behavior that I have discovered by way of another difference between the two.

In one restroom, there is a sink and a single stall.  The other has the same equipment, a sink and a toilet; however, there is no stall.  The toilet sits in the open beside the sink.  Now, here’s the quirky thing:  when I use the restroom equipped with a stall, I always lock the bathroom door, enter the stall, and close and latch the stall door.  Two locks.  Double security.  It makes some sense.  But when I use the other restroom, I am by no means uneasy with the idea that the only barrier I have between my business-doing self and the outside world is the bolt keeping the restroom door shut.  (This is so even in light of a marker-written sign taped to the outside of the door reading, “PLEASE knock before barging in.  Thank you!”  This warrants some speculation on the whos and whens of the story that made this little warning a necessity.)

Having taken note of this little phenomenon, I made a grown-up decision that it is entirely ridiculous to continue double-locking myself in the stalled restroom.  Such a tendency would be described by my college friends as a “barfer move.”  No more would I allow paranoia to control me.  No more would I sit there wrapped in my shroud of comfort, harvesting the idea that I have taken compulsory measures to ensure that none of my coworkers were going to hacksaw their way through the bolt lock on the restroom door so that he or she could see me sitting there in all of my glory and vulnerability.  (Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, looking like a fool with my pants on the ground.)  It would be the same experience as the restroom without the stall.  I’d never complained about a lack of safekeeping there.  No need whatsoever to be under the aegis of two locked doors.  It was always fine, just fine.

The time arrived to begin my new journey of empowerment.  The out-of-the-way restroom, always my first choice, was available, but I had something to prove, so I kept walking.  I knocked on the door, and upon silence, confidently swung it open, swaggered in, and threw my hands up in the air, as if to declare my dominance over the silly supports this restroom sought to entrap me in.  Gritting my teeth, I nudged open the stall door and strolled over to the toilet.  There I was, in the open, battling my preposterous previous notions of susceptibility.  Nothing could take me down from my pedestal of puissance.  And as I sat there . . . I was sore afraid.  Golly gee, I couldn’t take it.  With my foot, I slammed the stall door shut, then leaned forward and fastened the latch.  Phew, I was safe again.

Why?  I don’t know.  But it had to be done.  And it continues to be done.

Sigh.  Linus, I understand.