Who do you “do”?

A phrase I hear a lot lately is “You do you.”  At first, I liked the sound of this.  On the surface, ‘you do you’ sounds healthy.  It encourages authenticity.  It celebrates uniqueness and individuality. It relieves us of the obligation of should. When someone says to another person, “You do you,” the message is reported to be: I love you and value you for who you are.

Except.

As I think about this phrase, I look at the choices people are making, how we are behaving and treating one another, and I wonder.   Is “You do you” really the mantra we were created to ascribe to?  When I buy into the idea that I shouldn’t worry about the feelings or reactions of others as long as I am ‘doing me’, and if our society forwards the notion that in order to love someone we have to encourage them to please and satisfy themselves above everything else, then where is God? When Jesus met the woman at the well, he didn’t pat her on the back and tell her, “I affirm your right to choose your own path, you do you”.  Nope.  He lovingly pointed out the poor choices she was making and talked her to about worshipping God in spirit and truth.

In His ministry, Jesus spent a lot of time with sinners, prostitutes, the low, and the unrighteous. He also talked with the upper class, the Pharisees, Sadducees, the authorities. The clear intent in all His relationships was to love them.  He accomplished this not by celebrating them as they were, but by encouraging them to walk away from themselves and their own failings, self-centeredness,  and selfishness and embrace Him.   Jesus didn’t ever say “You do you”, He encouraged us with something akin to “you do Me.”