Let me refresh an earlier story, not to rehash it, but to seize upon one of its key lessons.

December 2012, one of the buried water lines underneath our ninety-year-old home developed a leak about the size of a pencil lead. Once I discovered the leak, I contacted a company to pump the water out of our crawl space. 10,000 gallons later, they left me with a bunch of drying fans.

Thus began a decade-long odyssey with pettiness.

The first plumber peered into our crawl space and said, “I can’t go down there.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s wet.”

I looked at him and declared, “You’re a plumber!”

The State Farm adjuster reassured me that “…90% of your neighbors have water under their homes. This is perfectly normal.” Another of his gems of wisdom was that gray water from the broken drain “…is not a problem. In fact, the gray water from most homes drains directly into the back yard.”

Pettiness: People with power stating nonsense, or beginning a nonsensical process, that has far-reaching implications. John Locke said pettiness is “thoughts making excursions into the incomprehensible.”

One day, I convened a meeting of four senior State Farm agents and two contractors at my dining table. The issue was State Farm’s insistence that we install mechanical components that are illegal in the State of Texas. The meeting lasted four hours before the insurance people relented. Four hours!

Some portion of every day, for 3,662 days—ten years and one week—I stepped away from the important matters in my life to contend with incomprehensible pettiness. But even with my diligence, the pettiness cost Dianne and me about $180,000.

My reality was that a multi-billion-dollar company, with thousands of lawyers and agents, had a business plan to bully the client with pettiness that eventually saps their soul to the degree they give up and go away.

I’ll tell you the outcome in a moment. But first, let me cast a wider loop.

Dr. Jordan Peterson is a world-renowned clinical psychologist who lives in Toronto. His educational pedigree includes MIT, Harvard, and publication of over a hundred scientific papers (that’s a lot). In January 2022 he published an explanation for his departure from his tenured teaching position at the University of Toronto. If you have not read this, you must. You can do so here.

Dr. Peterson’s popularity exploded with his pushback on diversity, equity, and inclusion training, DEI, which he transposes to diversity, inclusion, and equity: DIE.

As a clinical psychologist, Dr. Peterson is licensed by the College of Psychologists in Canada. This organization is like the AMA for physicians. If you get on their bad side, they will rescind your license and ruin your practice.

In the interview I listened to, Dr. Peterson reveals that the College of Psychologists has brought 12 charges against him, charges that amount to lawsuits since both parties are bound by Canadian law to maintain a legal standard. As a therapist myself, I can attest that the charges are preposterous; clearly a political hit job by a governmental agency. None of the complaints are from clients of Dr. Peterson.

The College of Psychologists want Dr. Peterson to undergo an indeterminate number of hours with an unnamed handler, charging him $250 per hour, to “be retrained.”

During the interview, Dr. Peterson talks about the toll this pettiness is taking on his emotional wellbeing. He says there are two great fears. The first is bodily disintegration due to death or torture. The second is exclusion. Being isolated. Deemed an outcast. You are no longer worthy of being part of the human race, the human collective, the body of humanity moving forward into the future. You deserve to be in Siberia.

I certainly identify—even used the same analogy in my previous article to you. What’s sad is that millions and millions of Americans can also identify with this incomprehensible pettiness with such far-reaching implications.

In a recent speech, Vladimir Putin expressed amazement that the West was rushing headlong into a social experiment with isolation, an experiment he says he hopes Russia will never return to. The tactics by which this experiment was carried out are rooted in pettiness, the incomprehensibleness of Peterson’s two fears: torture and isolation.

When I was working in Eastern Europe, the best guess was that 30% of the population were informants. Land on the wrong side of a complaint and you could easily disappear.

The complaint could be talking too loud, smiling at your neighbor, cooking a meal that smelled too good, or buying something nice. It was pettiness on steroids, but it was pettiness everyone had to take seriously because it was enforced by an entire government.

The result of this pettiness was the disappearance of anyone deemed a dissident. That was 20,000,000 or so in Russia, but that is a tiny number compared to the population that disappeared within their souls. When I was there, no one spoke or smiled. Riding the train, everyone stared straight ahead. There was no conversation. People’s souls were ruined by pettiness.

Western society and many of its institutions have descended into pettiness—utter inanities that are unspeakable but that demand our diligent attention. Our elementary-age school children are being taught sexual perversities as opposed to the alphabet. Our societal leaders assert the remedy for racism is a dramatic increase in racism. Equity will be achieved by distinguishing us by the hues of our skin.

On January 12th, the House of Representatives passed a law—we needed a law to get clear about this—that physicians are required to render aid to a child born alive after a failed abortion attempt. All Democrats save one voted against the bill.

Even though it is none of his business, the Senate Majority Leader inserted himself into the House’s business to decry the incivility of caring for such infants, claiming the bill is an affront to women’s rights. The Vice President called the bill extreme.

Speaking of extreme, while national spending has skyrocketed and inflation is rampant, the folks in charge are insisting that the debt ceiling be removed—so they can spend all they want. Think about your household finances. What would happen if you spent all you wanted? It’s preposterous to even think about!

In Minnesota, teachers are required to support trans identity or lose their teaching license. Yesterday, POTUS declared a resurgent epidemic even though a week ago news broke that COVID numbers were actually 10-30% of those reported. The Ayatollah’s Twitter account is active. Jordan Peterson’s was suspended. the Mayor of Knoxville, TN approved and attended an “all ages” Christmas show put on by drag queens. The show included exposed anuses and sex acts. Then there’s the Vanderbilt professor who declared in a major speech that math education is “white and cisheteropatriarchal (sic) space [that] limits queer and students of color.” Note: The prof misspelled who he is blaming.

Do you feel the weight of the previous paragraphs of pettiness?

While you are going to work, making meals for the family, nurturing your friendships, and managing your stressed budget, entire armies of people are dedicated to foisting upon you the pettiness listed above.

Petty is a nonsensical inanity, but if you don’t pay attention to it, it will bite you.

Pettiness is an abuse of power. It is a form of bullying, of exploiting the vulnerable, which would be you. Pettiness requires that you pay attention lest you suffer inordinate consequences.

Dealing with pettiness over a duration, foisted upon you from multiple sources like we are currently enduring, is soul-withering. Over the decade of my water-induced debacle, I was left speechless by incomprehensible pettiness more times than I can count.

But being speechless isn’t the point; it’s the effect. The point is I was forced to devalue my priorities to respond to pettiness as a matter of personal protection.

So, what do you do? Does your faith have anything to say to situations like you find yourself in?

It does! Let me put this in financial terms.

Your soul is organized like a budget with various accounts. As you make withdrawals from your soul, you draw on the appropriate account.

Example: You have a patience account. You ask your kid to clean their room. They dillydally. You ask again. They do a halfway job. You ask again. They get distracted. You threaten consequences. They sport an attitude.

What’s happening? You are making withdrawals from your patience account. Before long, your patience account is overdrawn, i.e., you’ve surpassed your debt ceiling.

When this occurs, two things happen: First, you get angry and say things you wish later you had not said. Second, you are forced to draw upon a different account in your soul because you’ve depleted your patience account. Maybe you borrow from your kindness account, or even your love account.

Asking your child to clean their room—for the umpteenth time—is a petty problem. “Just clean your room already!” But it is a petty issue with long tentacles for both you and the kid.

Now, take this example and substitute the array of pettiness detailed earlier in this article. Do you feel the draw upon your soul? This is why you felt tired when I asked you earlier how you felt.

Pettiness is soul-withering.

Instead of robustly living your life, pettiness requires you to descend from noble places and live life according to the person exhibiting the lowest common denominator.

In order to stay healthy, you must nurture your soul and replenish the accounts inside your soul. The operative word here is must. Tending to your soul’s wellbeing is essential, imperative, and pressing.

As my life grew stupidly complex with petty demands, I was selective about what I read. Same idea for what I listened to, who I hung out with, the meetings I attended, even the dinner invitations I accepted.

Meanwhile, my prayers were frequent.

State Farm tried everything to negate my claim. On one occasion, they ordered an engineering review. I learned from contractors that most engineering reviews of this type are between 5-10 pages. Ours was 162 pages. When I discovered this, I groaned at the pettiness—but note that the groan was also a prayerful turn to Father God. Recall that when you don’t know how to pray, the Spirit prays on your behalf with words that are unutterable (Rm. 8:26).

My failures were frequent as well.

Father God’s mercy was never ceasing.

As you may suspect, I realized in failure that my personal mercy suffered significant shortfall, mainly toward myself, but to others as well. In time, Father’s mercies fueled and informed my mercies. This was a win for me—a win I never would have realized if it weren’t for the pettiness I dealt with for a decade.

Today, with all the mania in the world, I am employing the lessons I learned from the pettiness of my water troubles. I guard my soul. I listen to outside voices very judiciously. I’m merciful with my opinions. I spend extra time walking my neighborhood praying and listening for Father’s guidance. I skim the news for something breaking, which means I don’t read the latest on POTUS’s classified docs, the newest variant from the CDC, or the Sundance documentary on Justice Kavanaugh.

Simply, I manage my soul like I manage our household and the business of Lifetime.org. As demand increases, overhead is eliminated.

Pettiness makes me vulnerable to anger, frustration, bitterness, and the lust for vengeance.

Repetition is key to learning. Unfortunately—but maybe it’s fortunate for you—I realized the sequence of anger culminating in vengeance the hard way. Meaning, I failed repeatedly and found myself time and again with the Scripture, “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord [not yours].”

Late one evening, standing in back of the hotel to which Dianne, the dog, and I had retreated to for relief from the dust bin of our home, I thought of Ecclesiastes and the book’s two points: 1) Everything belongs to God. 2) In the end, God will make everything right.

So, I said, “Father, the house belongs to you, not me. The money I’m expending is your money. All that I have belongs to you, in fact. Therefore, this also includes State Farm, Atmos Energy, Lone Star Plumbing, my attorney, the ruined landscape….” I proceeded to think through all the petty issues, giving each to God as they came to mind. “There you have it, Father. I trust you to make all of this right.”

Once I completed handing off all that I could think of to God, knowing that tomorrow was another day of pettiness and vulnerability, the dog and I went upstairs to our hotel room and I slept.

I pray the same for Jordan Peterson.

I’ve written these words to you in hopes the same will be true for you—even as the pettiness persists.