Book Review: ‘Live Not By Lies’

How am I supposed to live? What am I supposed to do? These questions form the basis of the human condition, and they have been asked again and again for millennia. They are of particular interest to Rod Dreher, whose first book “The Benedict Option,” presents a strategy of hunkering down in intentional communities as a way of keeping moral commitments in a secularizing society. Dreher’s latest book “Live Not by Lies” is an apt sequel, offering millions of people in our “Brave New World” (his allusion), solace and instruction in how to live life in the face of challenges ahead.

“Live Not by Lies” is divided into two parts. Part one, “Understanding Soft Totalitarianism,” is a corollary to Hannah Arendt’s seminal work. Arendt, Dreher reminds us, wrote that totalitarian movements are “mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals.” Such a description may have applied to Weimar Germany, but it even better represents our current age” Modern life is ripe for totalitarianism. Although what Dreher calls “soft totalitarianism” may still be in its incipient form in the West, it is evident by the complete politicizing of everything, from bathrooms to basketball, that the process has begun.

The second part of “Live Not by Lies,” titled “How to Live in Truth,” deals with the problem that inevitably arises from such a diagnoses. Even if one can clearly foresee the steady march of “soft totalitarianism,” comparing current life in America to Soviet Russia is a bit of a stretch. Christians in this country are allowed to go to church to profess their faith, and no serious person thinks this right is in any immediate danger. What, then, is causing this feeling of uneasiness? And, more importantly, what is to be done?

Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents — $17.26

Dreher’s answer can be gleaned by the book’s title, “Live Not by Lies,” which comes from a quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Although Christians aren’t likely to be thrown in gulags any time soon, the vast monoculture increasingly mandates that anyone who wants to work or otherwise participate in society must subscribe to woke ideology. This includes renouncing certain truths considered foundational to Christian doctrine. All morality must be subverted to Western capitalisms one overriding principle: “There is only here and now and the eternal flame of human desire. Volo ergo sum—I want, therefore I am.”

Part one is a good study of how we as a culture got to this point, but the real value of this book comes in Part Two: “How to Live in Truth.” In reporting for the book, Dreher went to countries of the former Soviet Bloc. He talked to people who remember living under real totalitarianism, where mere faith in God could lead to getting shot. Many of those interviewed expressed misgivings about trends they are seeing the younger generations. However, in relating their own stories, they provide hope that as long as there are individuals willing to fight, then all is not lost. And as long as there is memory of a time when individuals were willing to fight, then there will be motivation and encouragement to live up to that example.

As far as specifics, Dreher’s best advice is on this point:

“Most of us in the West don’t yet have opportunities to suffer for the faith like Christians under communism did, but we have their stories to guide us, as well as the accounts of Christian martyrdom worldwide throughout the ages. Familiarize yourself with their stories, and teach them to your children.”

If there is a takeaway from this book, it could perhaps be the famous verse from Ecclesiastes: “What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun! ” Anyone who needs reminding of this fact would find value in “Live Not by Lies,” and, at the very least, a starting point for how to forge ahead as a stranger in a strange land.