A story is told of a man who invites his friend to go hunting with him and his dog. They stop at a pond and soon spot ducks flying overhead. The man aims, shoots, and down fell a duck. The dog runs across the surface of the pond, finds the bird, secures it in his jaws, runs back on top of the water and drops the duck at the man’s feet. For a long time the same scene was repeated, the man shot and the dog faithfully brought the dead ducks. The friend was amazed at the dog’s agility but said nothing. A week later, the man bumped into his friend and the friend enthusiastically asked him “So, how is your dog doing?” The man replied “Got rid of him”. The friend was shocked and asked “But why?” the man answered “The stupid dog can’t dive”. There are some people in this world who are experts in picking up the smallest faults or defects. The man got rid of the dog because it could not dive, but he totally ignored all the other wonderful things the dog could do.
Nitpicking is an ancient English phrase which simply means to be excessively concerned with or find fault with insignificant details. The phrase comes from the task of removing the tiny eggs of lice (nits) from someone’s hair, a tedious activity that required close attention and care. This is a slow and laborious process, as the root of each individual hair must be examined for infestation. As nitpicking requires meticulous attention to detail, the term has become appropriated to describe the practice of meticulously searching for minor, even trivial errors in detail, and then criticizing them. Nit-pickers are those who quarrel with trivialities of expression and meaning, they seldom have a solution or suggestion for improvement, they just enjoy picking up others’ faults. They are often professional fault finders.
Nitpicking is to be excessively concerned with or find fault with insignificant details.
During Jesus’ days there was a group of people called the Pharisees who often found fault with anything Jesus did. On many occasions they were so stuck with their understanding of the law that they never saw the bright side of the healings Jesus did on the Sabbath. The Pharisees were so blinded by their own understanding of how things should work and be done, that they totally missed the big picture of the miracle or the healing. There are several occasions when the Pharisees questioned Jesus and his disciples about what they did on Sabbath. But what’s more interesting is that nit picking is not just the problem of the Pharisees, even among the disciples there was nitpicking. Mark 9:38 notes that John one of Jesus’ disciple said “Teacher, we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”
Churches divide over carpet color, building renovation, piano placements and budget matters. It’s shocking to see how little it takes for a church to split.
Notice the phrase “because he was not one of us”. The disciples of Jesus wanted to have a monopoly on miracles, but Jesus immediately corrected them and warned them against such attitude and bigoted spirit. The kingdom of God is much bigger than our understanding of the Kingdom. It is very unfortunate that God’s children sometimes are so obsessed with nitpicking that we cause a lot more damage to the kingdom by our attitude towards the people who are different than us or who do things differently. It is essential for all of us to understand that we will always have different opinions and views because of our limited knowledge, most of the things we fight for here on earth do not matter in eternity.
Churches divide over carpet color, building renovation, piano placements and budget matters. It’s shocking to see how little it takes for a church to split. It seems there were two small congregations of two different denominations who thought it might be better if they would merge and become one strong and large church. However, they had one problem, they could not agree on how they would recite the Lord’s Prayer. One group wanted “forgive us our trespasses” while the other demanded “forgive us our debts”. So the newspaper reported that one church went back to its trespasses while the other returned to its debts!
The problem with nitpickers is that they seldom make any effort to seeing or understating you, they just focus on finding fault with your actions or words. Some individuals after sometime fall into the habit of perpetual fault finding, no matter what the other person does, it looks wrong to this individual. It is very unfortunate that even among Christians sometimes we are so picky on things that are so trivial that it hurts our God deeply. Philip Melanchthon one of the reformers along with Martin Luther once said “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity”. Nitpicking is a very bad habit, the more we do this, the more we lose perspective and scale and end up magnifying things that make no difference in eternity. If you are still stuck with the accuracy of my description of the origin of the phrase ‘nitpicking’, you just found someone who is good at nitpicking.
“In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity”- Philip Melanchthon
– – Author: Rev. Francis Burgula – –
