"Be Yourself" is about as useful advice as the Disney adage "And always let your conscience be your guide."
Neither is complete. Neither is correct. (Unless your conscience has been regenerated by a Holy God, you'd do far better to let a number of other things be your guide, not the least of which is the Bible itself. More on that another time.)
But back to the "Be yourself" mantra. I've seen it all sorts of different ways:
Be you
Be yourself
Do you
Be all that you can be
Love yourself
Be comfortable with yourself
Be happy
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Google it and you'll find tens of thousands of memes and quotes that sound uplifting but fall so short of truth they can become dangerous. Several should come with a disclaimer, others with more than a little fine print, and some should be scrapped altogether.
For example:
"Be Yourself" may very well come from the sage advice of "To thine own self be true" from Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Polonius meant that he ought to be "faithful" to shore up his own financial status before he helped others. (Wise, unless God has directed you to do differently.)
The way it's used now is more of a short version of "don't be fake...don't try to be someone else or something else...be honest and authentic." On it's face value, I'd go for that advice, until I realize that 1) my self is incapable of being honest until God has been given full authority over it (Jeremiah 17:9); 2) all Christians are very much trying to allow God to remake them into His image 3) and He's giving us a whole new self (Ephesians 4:24); 4) my self is wholly repugnant without Christ (Galatians 6:3); 5) if I remain this way, I will not be recognized by Christ nor will I recognize Him (1 John 3:2); 6) my self tends toward comfort and apathy, which are not mature; and 7) there's plenty of "authentic" people embracing a whole lot of anti-Christ sentiment (not to mention a whole lot of "authentic" narcissists and just plain jerks).
I'm all for scrapping this one and replacing it with "Be who God is calling you to be." Here are my suggestions for the others:
Be you - scrap and replace with "Be like Christ"
Be yourself - scrap and replace with "Be who God is calling you to be"
Do you - scrap entirely
Be all that you can be - scrap and replace with "Be all that God is calling you to be"
Love yourself - change to "Be faithful to yourself, as a temple of the Holy Spirit"
Be comfortable with yourself - Scrap entirely
Be happy - scrap and replace with "Be content in all situations, finding joy in your salvation"
This is what we really need to be saying to each other:
Yes! Know who God says you are.
Yes! Be all that God is calling you to be.
Yes! Courageously stand on what God has said.
Yes! Stand up for His ways and His Kingdom.
Yes! Learn to please God (by knowing Him) and not man.
Yes! Take good care of yourself, as a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Yes! Celebrate the quirky and wonderful things that make you unique.
Yes! Display God's glory to all mankind!
Yes! Take that step to destroy the flesh that remains and surrender to be made into Christ's image.
Grace keeps us from falling for junk-food advice.
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