Have you heard the one about the wheat and weeds growing together in a field? It goes like this: an enemy comes and sows some weeds into the wheat field. It grows and only then do people notice. Now, do you weed it out or not? The lesson told is to let God do the weeding and don’t worry about it. Nit picking in a field of young wheat does more harm to the wheat than good. It damages plenty of good wheat to get at a few weeds.
We know religion is a growing in grace lifestyle, a living and tolerant thing, a joyous open minded life. For faith to be honest, it needs to live and grow in an actual, real world. Who decides what is wheat and what are weeds?
In any group, nit picking people are damaging. You know the type. Folks that are overly concerned with picayune details; who are obsessed with inconsequential errors. OK, let’s stop right here, put down our packs and have a seat and look at this scenery a bit.
If there is a change in any organization, nit pickers can come out in force just like mosquitoes in June. Nit picking is being fussy. These things happen simply because anxious people turn into very anxious people when change happens. Change stresses them out. This isn’t like that, this person is different than that person, Costco just rearranged the shelves, oh my! Differences persuade a few people to engage in anxious nit picking.
We know that nit picking stirs things up with no real solution. And it tells us more about the nit picker than we want to know! For some it’s a harmful habit.
A few weeks ago I found a study done by Google. They had some of the best and the brightest people in the world working together in teams, but some teams worked and some fell apart. They started Project Aristotle. It studied 180 Google teams and analyzed over 250 different team attributes. Most of the things you’d think would make a difference in actual fact didn’t. Being able to get along, creativity, having the same goals … none of those things made the big difference.
What Google found out surprised them. The greatest single factor that made a team work well together was that there was a culture of personal safety. People felt comfortable in risk taking and voicing opinions. They felt like people supported them. A culture was created where managers provide air cover and create safe zones so employees could let down their guard. That is psychological safety.
That’s also what nit picking destroys. Safety. That assurance that you are free both to succeed and also to risk failure.
A better way is to simply love people and accept change and differences. Fussy organizations never grow. Persnickety families just hit the brakes and stop the love. No one wants to be with finicky people or work alongside a nit picker. Nothing is safe when nit picking gets to have the big voice. We know that. We know we can be destroyed from within by a hundred little complaints that destroy our joy. Nits that take away the enthusiasm for doing your best. Complaining that stops leadership from doing what needs to be done.
There is plenty to complain about that is truly worth raising a voice. Protecting people, the environment, our civil rights and safety. Keeping the economy fair and restraining greed. Ensuring that our institutions follow the rule of law and the better angels of our nature. Looking for wisdom instead of opinions. Getting things to work their best. It is not nit picking when big issues that affect us all are at stake.
Do we nit pick the weeds — risking the good wheat? We can all benefit from sacred words. Let God take care of it and just let it go. The Beatles’ Paul McCartney, even got the idea. “Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, whisper words of wisdom, let it be.”
• Rev. Mark R. Peterson is the interim pastor at Resurrection Lutheran Church.
