“Let Go and Let God”
Maybe you’ve heard the admonition to “let go and let God.” Maybe it provides some comfort. Maybe it’s frustrating. Maybe it makes you angry. What does it mean, and why can it provoke such a range of responses? Why do people say this? How does it relate to a culture of self-help consumerism? Dan explores these issues in this week’s episode.
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My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College, and I am your host.
Glad to be with you, as always.
Begin, as I always try to do, by thanking all of you who support us.
All of you who listen, those of you who reach out to me, this is very much a listener-driven series.
You can reach me at danielmillerswaj, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
Always love to hear from folks.
Always doing my best to respond to emails and to pick up on the topics people are bringing.
Enjoy the engagement, the feedback, the insights.
Please keep those coming.
They really do mean the world to me.
And as always, I want to thank in particular our patrons who support us.
We are completely self-funded and listener funded.
We have no external funding.
We put out content three times a week and need your support to do that.
So thank you to all of you.
As always, you know, working through the emails and sort of collating those and looking back at, you know, the list I developed from folks about topics.
Dive into another topic today that I've heard from multiple people, also from my coaching clients.
Again, I'm a trauma resolution practitioner with the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery, working with people who are Processing religious trauma, and this is a topic I hear about from them.
It's also another topic I've had experience with and wrestled with myself, and it is the admonition or the encouragement to let go and let God.
And I've had people talk about this, as I say, people who find this infuriating.
They just get really, really angry in sort of counseling or coaching terms when I say they find themselves being emotionally dysregulated when they hear this.
They just get really, really worked up.
I've also found people who just sort of find it baffling.
Somebody that, you know, maybe is in their life and they're dealing with a hard time and they've got a big decision coming up or something and the person says, you know, you just need to let go and let God and reach out and say, I don't know what the hell that means.
I don't understand what that's supposed to mean.
Other people, and frankly this is probably the camp I kind of live in, who just find this kind of vapid and empty.
It doesn't really do the work that people might think that it does, stated positively.
But I want to be open and honest and say there are also people who do find this incredibly encouraging.
It means a lot to them to hear this and this idea, and we'll get into why that is in just a few minutes.
But another one of these phrases I think that resonates in very different ways with different people and is worth spending some time on.
So we'll do it like we usually do, just starting with, you know, what does that mean?
And if you're in the baffled camp out there, and you're like, I don't understand, like, when, you know, my brother or my sister or my in-laws or whoever says, you know, you just need to let go and let God, I don't understand what the hell that's supposed to mean.
The idea is straightforward enough, and the idea is basically to Trust in the guidance and providence of God.
To not try to take control of, you know, issues that we can't, or to not fret about issues that are beyond our control, but to trust that God is going to take care of them.
Okay?
And sort of built into this then, if that admonition is going to have any plausibility for you at all, you have to remember that for people who would offer this advice, it's an article of faith, not just that there is a God, that God exists, And not just that God guides the events of the human world, that they are not random, they don't just happen by chance, they are divinely sanctioned and divinely ordered, but that God orders the events of our lives.
And there was another episode I did some time ago called, you know, Right Where God Wants You to Be.
And this kind of, you know, sort of ties in with or intersects that, the idea that God is a concern, not just with like the cosmos or the world with like a capital W, but with your life.
So all of that's in the background of this, and when we're admonished to let go and let God, I think also built into this is that as an act of faith, we are supposed to trust in that guidance of God.
And if we try to take, you know, make our own decisions or take control of things that are beyond our control, you know, we lose a lot of sleep over things that we can't change or whatever, that this is really a sign that we don't trust God, that we're not relying on God's, you know, the theological term would be providential activity, on God's guiding of the world, on God's, excuse me, God's directing the circumstances of our life and so forth.
It's an act that demonstrates a lack of faith.
Those with a full, robust faith are able to hand these things to God, to let go of them and let God take control.
It's a sign of Christian immaturity if we don't do that.
That's the basic meaning, and I want to be clear, this can be encouraging to many.
I have known many people Who are sort of able to do this to sort of conceptually let something go to rest in a kind of trust that things will work out because God will work them out.
And they're able to take them off of themselves and sort of live a healthier, fuller, less anxious life because of that.
Okay?
So I'm really not here to demean the people for whom that's a reality.
And I also have a hunch, though, that for most people who are super happy and confident and comfortable with that, They're probably not listening to this series, okay?
But if you are, and you find great meaning and comfort in that, then good on you, okay?
But I also think there are a lot of things to say about this phrase, regardless of how it hits us.
And one of the first is, in kind of situating, and I think this is an important part of sort of decoding this or getting it, you know, the other work that goes on with this phrase, is one of the things that interests me
And I explore this not just with this phrase but with other things when I teach like religion and pop culture and things like that, is the kind of, we call it a therapeutic orientation of this admonition because it bears the marks of the form of or a form of popular American Christianity that is marked by, among other things, a kind of Therapeutic turn.
What do I mean by that?
What I mean is that within this form of Christianity or these Christian expressions, there's a move away from kind of authoritarian models of God.
There's a move away from, you should do this or that or the other because God is all-powerful and God is sovereign and God says that you should and if you don't you'll run afoul of God's will and God will punish you or God will smite you or whatever it is.
to an emphasis on the idea that the reason God requires what God requires is that it's for our benefit, it's for our own good, it is for our betterment.
So, one of the areas this plays out is in purity culture, and there has been a rhetorical shift in the last, you know, Decade plus away from the you have to remain sexually pure and abstain from sex until marriage or God will punish you and terrible things will happen and so forth to the reason God wants you to abstain from from sex before marriage is that it's it's for your own sexual and emotional health.
It's a healthier better lifestyle.
It's for your betterment and so forth.
It's a model to this kind of vision of, again, a therapeutic understanding.
The fundamental theology, in my view, doesn't actually change, but the packaging does.
It becomes a therapeutic model.
And we see this, again, in authority culture, But we also see it when we get the rhetoric about anti-LGBTQ plus policies, not being about punishing LGBTQ people or, you know, that God hates them or something like that, but the softer lines, you know, we're protecting women and children.
This is for the benefit of those in society.
Or whatever it is, this kind of therapeutic turn within this form of popular Christianity that plays out in rhetoric, in my view, like the let go and let God.
And I think it reflects other cultural emphases that shape this kind of form of popular Christianity.
One of them is obviously the overall cultural influence of kind of popular self-help theories.
There's a lot of good stuff out there about how a certain kind of popular Christian expression takes on board a lot of this kind of self-help theoretical stuff and it turns into sort of a way of developing spiritually and so forth.
I think tied in with this as well, and it's related to this, is the kind of Christianization, if you like, of kind of popular Eastern-inspired mindfulness practices.
I put mindfulness there in quotes, okay, because mindfulness can mean a lot of things.
Practices like meditation or yoga practice or different things take a lot of different forms, and I'm not trying to, you know, belittle, you know, Buddhists or anything like that.
But there is a sense in which often these mindfulness practices, when they sort of filter down to a popular level, they get sort of picked up and marketed as just sort of a form of self-help, divested of a lot of the background and the depth, frankly, that they have when they're situated within these Eastern traditions.
And I think you get all of this is a key component of this kind of therapeutic self-help model within American popular culture, and it bleeds its way into not just what takes shape as sort of more quote-unquote secular forms, but the Christian form as well.
So when you hear the phrase, let go and let God, I think it's a phrase that typically doesn't foreground those elements of its literal meaning.
It doesn't go into all that stuff about, you know, God and providence and so forth.
I think it's more akin, it's sort of the popular Christian version of the affirmation that, you know, everything happens for a purpose.
Or again, a very sort of pop mindfulness version of a notion of quote-unquote karmic justice As it's understood in its popular sense, right, of just a sort of what goes around comes around or good deeds will, you know, bring about good consequences or, you know, something like that.
And again, the theory of karma and karmic consequences and so forth is quite sophisticated in the traditions out of which it comes, but it's often boiled down into a very basic, fairly, in my view, fairly vapid and shallow marketable, you know, kind of self-help that's made for American consumers.
This is the Christian version of that.
That's what it really is for me.
I think it helps popular Christianity in a number of ways.
I think the reasons they picked this up, I think it makes for a kind of, I've called it in the past, a kind of kinder, gentler Christianity that can get away from images of an angry, domineering God.
Well, no, no, God doesn't want you to do these things because God wants to punish you.
God does it because God loves you and wants you to flourish and so forth.
I think it also helps this form of Christianity to try to compete in a kind of cultural self-help marketplace where there are lots of options out there for our own betterment and spiritual health and so forth.
I think it lets a form of popular Christianity try to have a place in that marketplace.
And I think related to this, it also allows this form of popular Christianity to kind of find a place in a consumer-driven, designer religion mentality of popular culture.
And it kind of, you know, it's about spirituality, not religion, sort of model that, well, our religion is not about institutions and doctrines and so forth.
It's about, you know, just letting God be God and letting God take us with God and so on and so forth.
Okay?
So stated most positively, I think all of this pop psychology self-help stuff, all of it, including the Christian piece, but also sort of popular mindfulness and so forth, I think it's aimed at helping people address real and significant issues of anxiety, feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness, maybe meaninglessness and so forth.
And again, for many people, it achieves its purpose.
And I'm not trying to take away from that.
If you've struggled with Those kinds of things and this way of thinking or these kinds of popular practices or articulations work for you and help you mitigate the force of that?
Then go for it.
Fantastic.
Great.
Okay.
But, and all of you who listen to this know that I'm going to say that and then I'm going to say, but here are my issues.
I have real issues with the let go and let God mantra, if you like.
They're sort of mixing that Eastern influence.
With this way of thinking, okay?
And reflecting that therapeutic focus, a lot of my concerns cut across these kind of pop psychology models.
Generally, I'm not a fan of them, you know, beyond the specifically Christian articulation of them, but some of them are aimed more at this specifically Christian articulation.
And so the one big obvious overarching issue that comes up is whether or not there is in fact some entity or force that directs the events of the world that affect us or whether we have any reason to think that that's actually how the world is sort of built.
Okay?
Whether we're talking about a being like God or some sort of impermanent moral force or law, as with popular conceptions of karma, it's the same issue.
And if somebody doesn't find that idea compelling, if you just don't think or don't feel that it's compelling, it doesn't move you to think that there is a divine being or entity that directs the course of the world.
Or if you think that, you know, Stuff happens or it doesn't, and sometimes good deeds lead to terrible consequences, and sometimes terrible people flourish, and so forth, and there just doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to think that there is some sort of karmic cycle of reward that, you know, bad people will ultimately have bad ends or something.
If you just don't find that plausible, then this phrase, let go and let God, it's just not going to work.
It's not going to provide comfort for you.
And this is one of the issues that I confront in, say, my coaching work, is the pain and the frustration and the confusion that clients deal with, for example, when the assertion of a purposive force or entity guiding their lives, when it loses that plausibility.
They feel adrift.
They often don't know what to do.
They don't know sort of how to give a shape to their experience once that falls away.
And it's also an experience that can confront people when they do try to lean on God or karma or whatever and things don't work out.
When they hit a certain point of disillusionment and what they take really as a kind of promise that if you live a certain kind of life, if you go through the world in a certain kind of way, there will be something positive that comes out of that.
When that all falls flat, again, it can lead to sort of debilitating levels of confusion, anxiety, anger, And what have you.
So that's one piece of it.
That's one set of concerns that I have.
Okay?
The more sophisticated one is to take it up a notch and say, okay, even if somebody does accept that there's a being or force guiding the events of the world, I don't think that this way of thinking provides the assurance that it's intended to do, okay?
Because no matter what we take to be the case, let's say fine, we think that there's a God and God cares about us and has a plan for our life and we need to just let go and let God or whatever or, you know, good things will happen to good people in some sort of cycle of reward or whatever.
Ultimately, we still have to act.
We still have to make decisions about what we're going to do.
We still got to go out in the world and do stuff.
And this is the key, is that waiting or choosing not to act, I'm not going to do anything because I'm going to let go and let God or whatever, that is also an act.
Inaction is an action.
Deciding not to do something active is still a decision.
It is still an act in its own right.
And no matter what we do, we have to live with the consequences of those actions or those inactions.
God or karma or whatever, It doesn't have to weather the storm that might come from our decisions.
They don't actually affect God or karma.
They affect us.
Whether we do something active and figure out later that it had bad consequences and if we could go back in time and do something different, we would.
Whether we're inactive, whatever happens as a result of that, that's on us.
We have to live with that.
And I think that at its worst, these ways of thinking, they lead people into patterns of passivity and inaction that set us up to be stuck where we are.
If things aren't good, we sit around waiting for them to change.
And when they don't, it just becomes worse.
And I've encountered this issue with my clients as well.
I have felt it acutely myself, where people fall into a pattern of persistent inaction, which leads to all kinds of problems in their lives.
Staying in destructive relationships, not trying to find a new job, not taking control of finances, not advocating for their own needs, and on and on and on.
I think it can be a recipe for disaster, waiting for something to happen when there are times when what we need to do is go and take action for ourselves.
Okay?
So that sort of amps it up.
Even if somebody thinks that there is a plausible notion of God or karma or whatever, I just don't think that this admonition does what it is that I think implicitly it claims to do.
Okay?
But finally, and again, listeners, this isn't going to surprise you at all, I'm also opposed to this because of the power dynamics that I think come through in this.
And this is the issue where I think, and here I'm turning more directly to the specifically Christian articulation of it, I think it is selectively applied and I think it's prone to abuse.
And the people that I encounter who get angry about this, who have been hurt by this, and again I put myself in that camp as well, this is why.
Because I've described the phrase, let go and let God, as an admonition, and that raises the question.
And those of you who've listened to me know your ears should be perking up.
It raises a number of questions like this.
So like, okay, so if it's an admonition, who is doing the admonishing?
And to whom are they making this admonition?
And in what circumstances?
And to what end or purpose?
Why are they telling me or somebody else I need to let go and let God?
Those are all questions that make me suspicious and I'm cynical.
And we obviously can't untangle all of that here.
I've already been talking for a while.
I need to wind this down.
But here are some thoughts.
So the first one is that it obviously highlights the role of authority.
And the fact that the supposed trust in God, you need to let go and let God?
For all the talk that this kind of popular Christianity has about a direct individual encounter with God, that encounter is always mediated by some very this-worldly individuals or institutions, including whoever it is that is telling you You need to let go and let God.
So very often we're not really talking about God or karma or whatever.
We're talking about the authorities or the elites or those with power over us in some way who are doing that admonishing.
And it brings up that question of why they're making the admonition and how, you know, to whom and so forth.
It brings up the question of their interests.
And very frankly, I think often their interests are not the interests of those who are being admonished to just let go and let God.
And that brings us up to, I think, the next piece of this, which is the issue of what I would just call the selectivity of this.
To take the Christian example again, people are not told to let go and let God all the time.
They're not told that in all circumstances.
They're not told that consistently.
There are lots of instances in which Christians are not told to, quote, let go and let God.
They're told to take action.
They're told to take action to prohibit abortion.
They're told to take action to get the right candidates into political office.
They're told to take action to erase the social visibility of LGBTQ plus people.
They are told to take action to make sure that America stays white and European.
They are told to take action to legally protect religiously motivated discrimination and on and on and on and on.
It's like the notion when people say, well, God's ways are not our ways, but that's inconsistently applied.
So there are all kinds of times when the same Christians will say, well, you need to just let go and let God.
They're not going to tell you to just let go and let God.
They're going to tell you to take action, and they're going to tell you that they know what the right action is and what right action looks like and why you should do it.
When they tell you to let go and let God, then it turns out it's a pretty limited set of instances.
It's often those that relate to us as individuals that are viewed as not socially important.
It can be times when maybe you're posing a question to those authorities, and instead of giving an answer, or maybe because they don't have a good answer, they say, well, you know what, you need to just let go and let God, let God sort it out.
That's when they tell you to do this.
It keeps us in a position of passivity.
I think the aim of this oftentimes is to keep us from acting when our actions would be taken not to threaten God, not to unwind.
Folks, if God is big enough and exists and whatever and can direct the entire cosmos and so forth, what the hell are you as an individual going to do to throw off the divine plan?
If God is all-powerful and whatever, and can be thrown off by my actions as an individual, that doesn't say that much about God.
So when they tell you to let go and let God, I think oftentimes we are being told to sit back, to go sideline ourselves, to sit down and be quiet.
And that is the aim.
And folks, I'm suspicious any time anyone tells me or anybody else who asks hard questions or is dealing with hard things to just sit down and be quiet and accept how things are and accept that things will work out.
So, let's say I gotta wrap this up.
I realize that this admonition can bring real comfort to some folks, and if it does, good for you, okay?
It doesn't for me, and it hasn't for a long time.
It doesn't because, number one, even if I accept it, I don't think it actually tells me concretely what I'm supposed to do, and I think it can make the things it's supposed to fix, negative circumstances in my life, feelings of anxiety or hopelessness, I think it can intensify those rather than mitigating them.
And even more importantly, I think, like so many things we talk about in this series, it ultimately comes down to a tool in the toolbox that can be used by manipulative religious figures to advance their own agenda at our expense.
Those are my thoughts.
Love to hear your thoughts on these or any other thing, ideas for the series.
You can reach me at Daniel Miller Swedge, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Again, thank you for listening.
Thank you for giving me this forum to share.
Keep the ideas coming.
Love your thoughts on this or anything else.
As always, please be well until we have a chance to talk again.
