By Jennifer P. Sims, Ph.D., Columnist
The Gospels tell us that early in Jesus’ ministry, small children were being brought to Him “for Him to place his hands on them and pray for them.” (Matthew 19). However, when the disciples saw this, they “rebuked them.” One has to wonder, why did the disciples appoint themselves the Jesus police? Why did they think they ought to control whether other people interacted with the Lord? Jesus must’ve thought the same thing, and His response is one of His most famous statements, “Let the little children come to me.” In other words, Jesus was telling His disciples to stop being controlling micromanagers, and instead, let others interact with Him as they want.
I thought about this Bible story as I was reading Mel Robbins’ New York Times Best Selling book The Let Them Theory. The author gives lots of examples, ranging from minor to serious, of the frustrations and even fights with loved ones that occur when people try to control other people’s behaviors. She begins with her son’s Prom. He and his friends decided to get cheap fast food before Prom, but Robbins felt like they should go to a fancy sit-down restaurant instead. She is reminded that it is their Prom, not hers, so rather than fighting with her son on such a special occasion, perhaps she should just Let Them eat where they want.
This simple mind-shift works for faith matters as well. Does your sister not tithe as much as you think she should (or as much as she knows she could)? Stop trying to control her financial behavior. It’s her money, not yours, so Let Her spend it how she wants. Has your cousin completely stopped coming to church? Tell him he has an open invitation to join you anytime, sure, but remember it’s his time, not yours. So Let Him spend his Sundays as he chooses.
The author also says that after we Let Them, we’ll find we have more time and energy to Let Me. “Let Me” is the wonderful thing we can do when we are not too busy or frustrated, trying to micromanage others. The disciples would’ve been less frustrated and had more time to listen to and learn from Jesus had they not been so focused on preventing other people from seeing Him. Robbins writes that she could have been focusing on what she, her husband, and her daughter were going to eat for dinner that night rather than obsessing over her son not having the exact pre-Prom meal that she thinks he “should.” You might find that you can afford a second vacation or a bathroom remodel this year if you quit perseverating about your sister’s spending habits and spend more time assessing your own. You’ll start to arrive at Sunday service in a calm state, rather than a frustrated one, if you quit getting into fights with your cousin beforehand over him, not you, deciding what he does on Sundays.
Robbins says that accepting other people’s choices obviously does not apply to life-or-death situations or to our relationships with very small children. But for most other things in life, both secular and religious, let’s let 2026 be the year that we stop rebuking and trying to control others, and instead, Let Them live their life and go to Jesus as they want, while we do the same.
