What Are You Saying? by Tami Gilman

When my husband and I were building our home, we needed a subcontractor for drywall and paint. The gentleman who was hired for the job had a Jesus fish on his business card and spoke of his strong faith. He seemed to be an honest upstanding man just trying to make a living. I will call him Steve. Every time we saw him, Steve was quoting scriptures. The crew that completed the drywall did a good job so we felt comfortable letting him paint the interior of the home as well. Our exterior doors were wood grain fiberglass which were to be stained and I heard my husband explain to Steve that we would stain them ourselves.

My husband, Kevin was in Kenya when I stopped by the house to check the progress. Much to my surprise, the doors were painted in a high gloss oil based white paint. I immediately called Steve to ask why and he told me the doors were to be painted white. The interior doors were to be white, not all doors. Clearly there was a miscommunication that I could not verify being that Kevin was unreachable. I explained that the wood grain doors were to be stained and asked him to have his crew strip the paint from the doors before it cured. It didn’t occur to me he wouldn’t.

After a few days, I returned to check on the house the doors were as white and shiny as before. I called Steve again to ask about the doors and he claimed they tried to strip them, but there was no evidence to show even a subtle attempt.

I waited until Kevin returned from Kenya because clearly Steve was not responding to my requests and now he was lying. Kevin spoke with him about the conversation they had about how we would be staining the wood grain doors. He asked Steve to have his crew strip the paint. Again he didn’t.

Aggravated, I started to remove the paint myself. Steve showed up at the house one night while I was doing my best to get the paint off the door and his solution to the problem was to start quoting scripture. I recall him saying, “Well the Bible says that all things work to the good of the Lord”. At that point I think I could have easily killed him with my bare hands. Not literally, but his Jesus fish and scriptures were not offering a solution to the situation at hand. The paint had cured and it took me 2 weeks to remove it completely.

This is a cautionary tale to illustrate that there is a time and a place to quote scripture. Using his reference as an excuse to not right a wrong is not appropriate. Luckily for me I was already a Christian because I can easily see how I would not be interested in serving the same God he did. I believe we can often do more harm than good when we say one thing but do another. It speaks of our character. We are all certainly responsible for our own relationship with God and shouldn’t allow others to affect it, however for a non believer what is their motivation to have a relationship with God? If the Christians are conducting business in a way that is questionable and constantly professing their “faith”, what is the incentive to learn more about Jesus Christ? They can lie, deceive and behave how they want without the bother of developing a relationship with God.

In the workplace, school and the community, Christians are watched by non believers and even other Christians. What are they seeing and hearing from us?