You’ve probably heard that maxim offered recently. I hear it and you hear it: “You gotta do, what you gotta do.” In fact when we hear it, it ends up echoing in our heads looking for a place to fit because it’s a vague statement. Hunh? You could apply it to a lot of things. You gotta wash clothes when they get dirty. You gotta send a birthday card to your brother or sister. Obviously there are a lot of things which need to be done, some on a daily basis. You gotta check your messages. Otherwise you’ll have 937 waiting for you to reply and delete and you’ll never get it done. Some things we don’t like doing, but we have to do them anyway or we’ll find ourselves in big trouble. Like filing taxes… Jesus said in Luke 20, “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and render unto God the things that are God’s.” Or like remembering to change the oil in the car, especially if your car burns oil!
When you hear it these days someone is rationalizing something that shoudn’t be done, but they are going to do it anyway. Or excusing a behavior because for some shortsighted reason it made them temporarily satisfied. In our post-modern error, this ’stinkin thinkin’ comes clothed as a harmless statement, but it is really bad thought applied to sinful behavior. You just have to agree that things are not going the right way in our world (not always GW’s fault), and yet all of us are responsible for the choices and actions that we make. Like, if you have a stressed out day at a job, you say: “I think I’ll go get stinking drunk to numb myself”, then you might say, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” but you will have to deal with a hangover. If you decide to drink another shot as you wake up and try to go back to work in order to prolong the pain, you might use the same reasoning. Then when you are discovered with alcohol on your breath at work, in order not to be fired, you quit, saying “Y-G-DoWaY-G-Do.” So you go home and get plastered because you just lost your job and you hate the idea that you’re a stupid idiot. Now you find its logical end and excuse yourself for your own behavior saying, “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do!” I think that the general acceptance of this disastrous attitude goes hand-in-hand with the change in peoples perspective of eternal punishment. No one believes how they live is really going to make any difference at the end of their life. Now Paul the Apostle said in his letter to the Corinthians ” “Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything.” and also “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; All things are lawful to me, but not all things edify.” He didn’t want anything to stand in his way of receiving the most of what eternal life would bestow upon him through his choices and actions in earthly life, therefore he gave all he had, thoughtfully. All of us fight temptation in some form; all of us must. It comes in the momentary, the mundane, and the immediate, and so does our compromise. Do not say, ‘I had to do it.’ “For God tempts no one…”(James 1) And the next time you hear that cop-out: ‘Gotta do it’, say, “No, actually you don’t have to.”