Ticketing the Trees

Lessons in Legalism from Absurdity

In this essay, I wanted to return to one of the institutional patterns we’ve explored before: legalism. Legalism isn’t just about being strict or following rules too carefully—it’s about how communities slowly move the goalposts, enforcing increasingly ridiculous and extrapolated rules to preserve the appearance of holiness. Over time, it becomes less about real transformation and more about maintaining control, about compliance for its own sake.

Using a humorous but revealing example from Peppa Pig, where Officer Squirrel writes a citation to a tree, I unpack how institutions can fall into the trap of what psychologists call prevalence-induced concept change—where as genuine problems become scarce, we unconsciously expand what counts as a problem just to keep the enforcement machinery running. This is how we end up "ticketing the trees"—moving the goalpost to continue enforcing increasingly absurd rules.

At the heart of this essay is the claim that holiness, perfection, and purity are not earned through compliance but are rooted in our identity, our belonging, and in the credit that belongs to God alone. When we lose sight of that, we trade the beauty of becoming for the burden of performing. And only repentance—not more rules—can break that cycle.