Let Them: Don't Let Other People's Silliness Distract You
It’s so easy to let someone else's bad mood, poor choices, or careless remarks become your problem. Most of us know what it’s like to fixate on an unfair criticism, turning it over and over in our minds. The frustrating part is that the person who said it usually isn't thinking about it at all.
Some criticism is fair and worth hearing, but a great deal of it is not. Yet we can give hours, sometimes even weeks, of our inner life to people who gave us thirty seconds of theirs.
In The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins argues that much of this burden can be lifted with two simple words: let them. Let people make their choices. Let them have their opinions. Stop trying to control what was never yours to control and focus instead on your own actions and attitude.
While many would package Robbins’ theory as modern self-help, it’s actually pretty close to biblical wisdom. The Bible may not use the phrase "let them", but it repeatedly calls God's people to the same freedom: to stop being ruled by the reactions of others and to keep their attention fixed on the things that really matter.
Where Our Attention Goes
Attention is one of the most precious things God has entrusted to us, because what holds our attention slowly shapes our hearts. Paul knew this when he urged the Philippians to fix their minds on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable (Philippians 4:8). It was a word to a church under pressure: what they dwelt on would form who they became.
This is why it’s worth paying attention to what has been occupying your attention. For many Christians it isn’t great sin or grand temptation, but an irritating colleague, a lingering misunderstanding, an unfair comment, or someone else’s foolish decision. None of these things is especially dramatic, but together, they can slowly crowd out the important things.
Underneath it is often something tender: we want to be understood, thought well of, and treated fairly. Those are not wrong desires. Left unchecked, though, they lead us to wrongly believe that our peace depends on other people seeing things the way we do. It doesn’t, of course - and it never will.
Too Busy to Come Down
Few people in the Bible faced more distraction than Nehemiah. Returning to rebuild Jerusalem's wall, he was surrounded by mockery, rumour, and opposition. Sanballat and Tobiah ridiculed the work and questioned his motives.
Then came the invitation: “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono” (Nehemiah 6:2). It sounded reasonable, but Nehemiah saw it for what it was. His reply is one of my favourite lines in the Old Testament:
“I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3).
They asked four times, and four times he gave the same answer. The fifth time they sent an open letter accusing him of plotting a rebellion. Nehemiah didn’t write a long defence. He sent a single sentence: “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head” (Nehemiah 6:8). Then he prayed, “Now strengthen my hands” (Nehemiah 6:9), and went back to work.
And the wall was finished in fifty-two days!
Nehemiah understood something we easily forget. Not every invitation to argue needs accepting. Not every accusation needs a full response. Some conversations are simply ways of getting you off the wall.
Jesus and the Crowd
Jesus lived under constant commentary. He was called a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of sinners, a man in league with the devil. Crowds adored Him one week and turned on Him the next. Yet you never get the sense that public opinion set His agenda.
John tells us that even when many believed in Him, “Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people” (John 2:24). He loved the crowds and had compassion on them, but He didn’t need their approval to know who He was or what He had come to do.
When the disciples came to Him anxious that the Pharisees had taken offence at His teaching, His answer was striking: “Leave them; they are blind guides” (Matthew 15:14)
Leave them! It’s an even earlier way of saying let them.
There’s another moment that illustrates the same point. After the resurrection, Jesus speaks with Peter by the lake about his calling and the cost it will bring. Peter looks over at John and asks, “Lord, what about him?”.
Jesus’ reply is gentle but direct: “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me” (John 21:21-22).
What is that to you? I suspect many of us need to hear that challenging question more often. Someone else’s path, opinion, or poor choice can become a remarkably effective way of avoiding our own obedience. Jesus brings Peter back to the only thing that was truly his to attend to: you must follow me.
Paul and His Critics
The apostle Paul was misunderstood almost everywhere he went. People questioned his authority, mocked his speaking, and even tried to stir up trouble while he was in prison. But he refused to take the bait. To the Corinthians, who had plenty of opinions about him, he wrote: “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court … It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Corinthians 4:3-4). He wasn't trying to manage his public image. His whole focus was simple: “My only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me” (Acts 20:24).
Paul didn’t ignore every criticism. When the gospel was at stake, he answered with care and courage. But he refused to let every misunderstanding become a detour. He had a race to run.
The Wisdom of Overlooking
The book of Proverbs has a great deal to say here too: “Like one who grabs a stray dog by the ears is someone who rushes into a quarrel not their own” (Proverbs 26:17). (You can picture how that one ends!)
Elsewhere we read: “A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offence” (Proverbs 19:11). Overlooking takes strength and the security to let some things pass.
Proverbs also places two sayings side by side: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly” and “answer a fool according to his folly” (Proverbs 26:4-5). Read together, they call for discernment. Some things need answering; most don't. Wisdom is learning the difference and letting the rest go.
Back to the Wall
God has not called you to manage everybody else’s opinions, behaviour, or foolishness. He has called you to faithfulness.
Paul tells us that we are “God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). There is work with your name on it: people to love, a family to serve, a church to build up, gifts to steward, and a gospel to share.
Every hour spent rehearsing a reply to someone who wasn’t listening is an hour not given to that work. That is the real cost.
So when the comment stings or someone does something silly, take it to God before you take it anywhere else. Ask whether there is anything true in it worth learning. If there is, learn it humbly. But if there isn’t, put it down.
You don’t have to correct every misunderstanding or win every argument. You don’t need everyone to understand you or like you. God already does.
So let them think it. Let them say it. Let them do it.
Then get on with the work God has given you.