One might well paint over a dirty wall in a house, but would hardly do the same to the dirty walls of a gothic cathedral. In the latter case sandblasting is needed in order to uncover the prior beauty of the stone and discover a masterpiece. For John, our authentic self is found by removing the encrustations of false attachments and scraping away the accumulations of absolutized possession. After all, people are not the sum of their possessions, whether material, religious, moral, or spiritual.
