Listen to the Sermon
Sermon Details
- Pastor Name: Jonathan Cornell
- Date & Time: May 17, 2015 | 10:00am
______________________________
SERMON SERIES:
Trinity
Coleson Whitehead is an African American writer from New York City who retells the classic fable of the Frog and the Scorpion. In it, the Scorpion asks the Frog to carry him across the river on his back, to which the Frog says, “No way, we’ll get out there and you’ll sting me.” The Scorpion replies, “Well that wouldn’t be very smart of me; then we’d both die.” The Frog sees his logic and agrees to take him across the river. But sure enough, half way out the Scorpion stings the Frog, and as they’re going down the Frog asks, “Scorpion, what’s the deal? I though you weren’t going to do that.” To which the Scorpion responds with the popular phrase, “You do you.”
We are fascinated with questions like this: “What does you do?” Is you do you, the answer to any of life’s real pressing questions?
There is a commercial that aired recently with President Obama looking in the mirror practicing his selfie face, you know the surprised face, the awestruck face, the pucker face, PRUNE. He’s practicing saying February, as well as practicing his jump shot. And just as he’s sinking a pretend fade away in his office, an aid walks in, and quoting Coleson Whitehead he asks, “Can I live?” To which the aid simply says, “You do you.”
This phrase “You do you,” Whitehead suggests, is a modern example of the depth of our narcissistic culture, like boys will be boys, or it is what it is, or haters gonna hate….hate, hate, hate. Whitehead says that it’s phrases like You do you or haters gonna hate, reflects the self-love, flattering, me-centered world we live in. We justify our own goodness by stating that the attitudes of others who oppose us are “haters.” Do you. Do you, Napoleon. Do you, Bernie Madoff. Do you, Tom Brady. Do you, Scorpion. You can do it.
But where does “You do you” really get us? The Scriptures suggest that “You doing you” does not get us very far. For it is the Scriptures that humble us by telling us that all have sinned and fallen short. Seems your doing you, our doing us, just is never good enough. Our being us shows us just how broken you and me really are. So if the answer is not “you do you,” then what?
Download the entire transcript here: Galatians 3 Reconciled
