Are we surrendering when we “Let go, let God” or are we avoiding taking action because we don’t want to take responsibility? Maybe we’re afraid. We can be wrong. That would mean we might be held accountable. We could be avoiding public criticism. In the age of social media, public ridicule can be swift and harsh. It’s possible that we don’t care enough to act but it’s uncomfortable to admit it to ourselves. It’s already challenging to know what we should and shouldn’t do but we make it more complicated anyway. It’s easier to understand what we can and what we can’t do. And yet, we manage to do less than we would like to think ourselves capable of accomplishing. One example of this is a parent having to make medical decisions for their child in an informational void.

The parents who refuse possibly life-saving medical interventions for their own children seem to sidestep responsibility for outcomes while our legal system allows everyone else to walk away as well. Most likely they will not be held liable for any negative outcome. Parental rights in the U.S. outweigh parental responsibility if the parents do not intend harm.

https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/protecting-parental-authority-in-vaccination-decisions

Whatever the rights of the parents, they do not need to be legally insulated from consequences. If they are willing to let their child get sick and die that still counts as negligence. Why wouldn’t a parent do their best? Most parents honestly believe that they’re acting in their child’s best interests. Many though are acting out of fear of making the wrong decision or they’re acting on misinformation.

Medicine is complicated and not explained to the average consumer. The medical community has not helped this situation. Much of medicine’s knowledge is hidden from the general public. Medicine and science still rely on Latin for their naming conventions. Latin has the benefit of being a shared language among those who practice in these fields but it now has the disadvantage of being rarely used outside of those same fields. Up to date medical research and findings are often locked behind organizational gateways. Between the language barriers and the closed systems the average person will rarely see any comprehensive medical information. Whether this is based on a profit motive or out of sincere concern over the public’s inability to understand smart people things is not readily visible. Arrogance is a factor. The only easily available – and free – advice tends to be insufficient at best, if it’s not complete charlatanry at its worst. A majority of it lies somewhere in the middle ground with any and all lists of symptoms and advice prefaced by something akin to:

“…The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on the WebMD Site!…” –https://www.webmd.com/about-webmd-policies/about-terms-and-conditions-of-use

This would seem to be sound advice but the U.S. fails at providing reliable medical care for its citizens. These limitations are regularly created due to legal concerns rather than patient concerns. It’s not any wonder then that most people in the U.S. believe the quackery because it is all they see and hear. They can not afford to ask their physician whenever they have a medical question because office visits are not free and phone calls are generally not taken. Often by the time a physician can be seen it is too late and the decision was already made. Due to that, many make the only decision they feel they can make, which is to err on the side of caution. That, as far as they can tell, is to do nothing. They reconcile their decision by putting it in ‘God’s hands’. Whether they could have found reliable information is left to chance. They have no baseline for what is reliable. The experts keep the information hidden away and the quacks peddle their solutions by deriding the experts.

Sometimes we have to let go and admit our inability to effect change. But in other situations we can find the information we need to make thoughtful, reasoned decisions. The more we learn about science & medicine from sources that are reliable the better choices we can make. How do we know what’s reliable? We have to spend some time learning the basics. MIT has an amazing catalog of free course for no credit and other schools have followed with this trend. Most colleges will let us sit in classes for minimal cost if any when we’re not looking to gain credits for the course. The only way we can fight misinformation in our own lives is to take ourselves to the knowledge.

• MIT – https://ocw.mit.edu/
• Harvard – https://pll.harvard.edu/catalog/free
• Yale – https://oyc.yale.edu/
• Others – https://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses

If we’re afraid of public derision we don’t have to post everything we do, or think, for an audience to view. There really is no need to live in a fishbowl when you’re not a fish.

But if it’s that we don’t care enough to act and we don’t like that side of ourselves then we have a choice to make. Either we admit it to ourselves that we don’t care and make peace with ourselves or we act anyway because we believe we should act whether we care or not. In any situation, the person we have to live with is ourselves and it helps to get through the day if we can face ourselves in the mirror without shame. We can take responsibility, or not but some things will always land on our shoulders and be our burden to bear. Life isn’t about fairness, it’s about who we hold ourselves up to be. Letting go and letting God never means sitting around and doing nothing. Surrender is a verb.