Painters of People

Last week as my husband and I were preparing to do some painting in our house, I was thinking about how much I was dreading the job.  I’ve always disliked painting. The actual painting isn’t so bad.  If I could walk into a room and just start slapping paint on the wall, it would be fine.  It’s all of the detailed prep and finishing work that makes painting a long, drawn out process that inevitably takes longer than you plan for.

A few months ago a friend of mine moved into a new house and was removing wallpaper from the walls.  I volunteered to help her and found the job to be quite enjoyable.  Last week, as I sat, dreading our painting project, I thought back to the day that I helped my friend remove wallpaper.  I wondered why that job was so much more enjoyable.

I decided that removing wallpaper was fun because it didn’t require any real effort on my part.  There was no real process to follow or painstaking preparations to be made.  I would run the steamer over the wallpaper and then look for a place to start pulling.  I got so much satisfaction from finding where the paper was already peeling up a little, and then pulling a large piece from the wall.

I remember what my friend’s house looked like when I left that day.  Sticky sheets of wallpaper were strewn about on the floor, the wall was ugly with large areas of wallpaper removed but with a few straggling pieces that were difficult to remove.  There were some places on the wall where the wallpaper was so strongly adhered that we had actually pulled away part of the drywall as we removed the paper.  It wasn’t pretty.

Of course, my contribution to the project was only a small part.  After I and others participated in the deconstruction of my friends’ dining room walls, she had to go to work to do all of that painstaking prep and finishing work that I so detest.  The first time I visited her house after the room was finished I was truly amazed at the transformation.  She had managed to transform a room that was once ugly, somewhat damaged and in complete disarray – a playground of sorts for wallpaper ripping maniacs like myself – into a lovely, warm and inviting dining room.

I realized as I thought about this, that it is easy to tear things apart.  There is even often a great sense of satisfaction in finding a weakness in something and then using it to even more effectively destroy it.  However, that sense of satisfaction is short lived as you realize that what is left is something that is damaged or even destroyed.

Making something better is more difficult.  It takes thought, preparation and attention to detail.  In the case of our room, before we even started painting we made sure that the surfaces we were covering were smooth, we gathered supplies, we cleared unnecessary items from the room and we carefully masked the parts of the room that were still intact so that we didn’t inadvertently ruin them in the process of painting.  As we painted we were careful to avoid dripping or accidentally getting paint where we didn’t want it.  When we finished, we made sure that the paint had covered the wall adequately and painted additional coats as needed.  When the painting was finished, we had to add all of the finishing touches – the lighting fixture and outlet covers had to be reinstalled, new baseboards cut and nailed into place, etc.  Like many home improvement projects, this one required multiple unplanned trips to the store and more time than we had anticipated.  When we finished we were exhausted and happy to be done.  But the result of all of our effort was beautiful.  It was one of those times when I just kept wanting to stand back and look at what we had accomplished.

The next day we went by the house to see the room again (this is a home that is currently being rented by my brother and sister-in-law).  My sister-in-law had done even more work, cleaning and furnishing the room.  It turned out beautifully and it was rewarding to see the fruits of our labor.

So, you may be asking, what does this have to do with living an outward focused life?  Well, as I see it, we have the ability to tear people down or to build them up.  Just as with rooms or things, tearing people down is easy.  It takes little effort and often brings us a sense of satisfaction.  When we are finished, we might leave them hurt, diminished, possibly even damaged.  It often takes a great deal of effort to heal those who have been torn down by others.

On the other hand, building others up is difficult.  It requires effort and thought.  It is sometimes inconvenient and requires more time and effort than we plan to give.  But when we build others, we leave them even better than we found them and have an increased sense of appreciation for them.

Many times when we tear people down by gossiping about them, they may not even know that we have done it.  Do our words diminish them even if they aren’t there to hear it?  Of course!  As we speak negatively of others, we are nurturing a seed of unkindness within us – they are diminished in our hearts and in the eyes of those to whom we are speaking. 

Why do we sometimes choose to tear one another down instead of building one another up?  One of the reasons is that, as I mentioned before, it is easy.  It is easy to see where someone’s wallpaper is peeling a bit and just start tearing at it.  And often, when we start tearing, we feel a sense of satisfaction.  I’ve thought a great deal about why we often feel a sense of satisfaction when we are “peeling away at someone else’s wallpaper”.  My conclusion is that it all comes down to selfishness.  It gives us a way to connect with others who are also happy to tear at that person’s wallpaper, thus giving us a sense of inclusion and acceptance.  It validates our sense of propriety by sharing with someone our indignation at so and so’s obvious goof up.  It allows us to put ourselves in the lofty position of being better than them.

Ouch.

When I look at it that way, I am ashamed of all the times I have said unkind things to or about another person. 

Living an outward focused life requires more of us.  To love, uplift and build others, we must be willing to prepare, protect, work, and pay attention to detail.

We prepare in a couple of ways.  First, we prepare ourselves to be “painters of people” by seeking the Holy Spirit in our lives.  In the Apostle Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, he taught, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” (Galatians 5:22-23)  If we are filled with the Spirit, we will not be inclined to tear others apart.  Rather we will be filled with love for them.

We also prepare to be “painters” by seeking to understand others.  As we take the time to know and understand others, looking for the good in them, we grow more tolerant because we gain an understanding of why they make the choices they do.  We grow to love them in spite of their peeling wallpaper and desire, instead of ripping at it, to smooth in down and make it better.

When we are filled with the love that comes from the Spirit and take a true interest in others, we protect the good in them by helping them see it in themselves and perfect it.  We work to help them overcome weaknesses and strengthen them.  We often give more of ourselves than we anticipated, but we do so because we recognize that we are about the business of creating a better individual - an individual who is already of great worth, but who just needs some tweaking to reach their potential.

Please don’t interpret my thoughts here to mean that we must make a huge investment in everyone we meet.  Often it is the simple ways that we show love that make the biggest impact on those around us.  What is important is that our interactions with others reflect love, selflessness and a willingness to serve them.  If we live our lives in that way, we will know when we come across a person who is going to require a little more effort from us.

Some may argue that often some “tearing away of wallpaper” is necessary to making a real improvement in a person.  In the case of my friend’s dining room, this was absolutely true, and in the lives of some people this also true.  But again I stress the importance of love, selflessness and a willingness to serve.  If we are motivated by love for an individual, we will strive to strip away what must be stripped away, protecting what is good within them, and replace what we have removed with something of beauty.

As we smooth the peeling wallpaper of those around us, or help them strip it away, if needed, and replace it with something better and as we carefully paint over those areas that need improvement, we will find ourselves living in a more beautiful world and experience the peace and joy that comes from knowing that we, the painters of people, labored to make it what it is.