One of the most dangerous trends lately in our culture is the idea of “you do you.” It’s a concept that comes right out of our consumerist culture where everything has to cater to the whim of the individual. It can be harmless on the surface — “you do you” when it comes to choices on a menu is one thing — but the whole “you do you” concept can turn into a license to sin, and I’ve even heard Christians embracing this idea.
There’s nothing wrong with individualism, but as Brett McCracken puts it at Crossway, “If on the surface it evokes the ‘virtues’ of rugged individualism and personal empowerment, the deeper implications of ‘you do you’ are rather foreboding.”
The Bible warns us about the dangers of doing things our way. Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” The wise man in Proverbs tells us that “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.” Read the depressing state of the Israelites in the book of Judges to see what happens when “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25b, ESV)
The Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans what happens when we devote ourselves to the “you do you” way of thinking and living:
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
In other words, if “you do you,” it’s not pretty, and it’s dangerous. As novelist Colson Whitehead wrote in 2015, “’You do you,’ taken to its extreme, provides justification for every global bad actor. The invasion of Ukraine is Putin being Putin, Iran’s nuclear ambitions Khamenei being Khamenei.”
Related: Sunday Thoughts: ‘Don’t Judge Me!’ Not so Fast.
McCracken informs us that not only does “you do you” lead to sin, but it also negates the community that we’re meant to be in and ultimately brings us to loneliness.
“We should want people in our lives to speak hard truths when necessary, redirect our errant paths, and grab us from the brink of self-imposed disaster,” he writes. “God puts people into our lives not to rubber stamp our every whim and fancy, but to point us to truth and offer wise advice — not to shrug and say ‘you do you’ while we walk off a ledge, but to boldly say, ‘you should do,’ even if it’s hard for us to hear.”
“You do you” sounds tantalizing; after all, we like to think, as poet William Ernest Henley put it, “I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.” But we’re all fallible. When we’re left to our own devices, our bent is to be selfish and sinful, and that’s why we should be grateful to let God guide us.
Rather than “you do you,” our mindset should follow the Proverbs 3 model:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your flesh
and refreshment to your bones.
May we all seek to live in a way that brings healing and refreshment to our lives rather than the destruction and despair that “you do you” can bring. You can still be an individual; just be an individual who submits to the Lord.
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