“Live Not By Lies” Isn’t Enough To Save the Truth
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, political prisoner and Soviet whistleblower, told the Russian people to “live not by lies.” As the Russian people grew more and more concerned about Soviet propaganda, he wrote,
“And it is not every day and not on every shoulder that violence brings down its heavy hand: It demands of us only a submission to lies, a daily participation in deceit — and this suffices as our fealty. And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies!”
It’s not enough to know the truth — it has to be lived out. A time may come for standing alone in front of a line of tanks or refusing to bow when the music plays. But what every person — politically involved or not — can do is resolve to live by the truth.
I grew up in circles that heavily overlapped with conservative reformed and evangelical subcultures. And no, this won’t turn into a coming out story or a shocking revelation of secret scandals. I’m just establishing that living in quiet rejection of popular secular culture wasn’t a revolutionary concept to me when I read Solzhenitsyn. There are pockets of people vowing to “live not by lies.” But their isolation from the world often made them ineffective evangelists and their hardline lifestyles rarely sustained beyond one generation. I think many American Christians know how to avoid the lie and live the truth, but I can’t help but wonder if we missed something.
One problem is that resistance to “the lie” led to generalization and slippery-slope fallacies. For example, hook-up culture is bad, based in lies about the reality of human intimacy and human dignity. But refusing to accept the lie of “harmless” one-night stands turned into identifying dating as a part of that same lie, which turned into an often-toxic fixation on courtship and betrothal as evangelicals kissed dating goodbye. A healthy skepticism of Hollywood and pop entertainment turned into a widespread denouncement of popular culture as evil. Instead of identifying the specific lies of modern culture and learning to dismantle them, modern culture itself became the lie — a generalization that swept over more nuanced discussions of how non-Christian philosophy and art can still convey some truth.
The other problem is that we grew paranoid of the lie. Parents who saw young adults leave the faith in college sent their own children to strict conservative schools to protect them from exposure. Families with legitimate concerns about big tech and big government built farms in the middle of nowhere, cut ties with society, and went off-grid. Conservatives and liberals grow more and more polarized, believing the other side is out to challenge their very existence. I’m stereotyping slightly and my point isn’t to condemn any particular lifestyle. But if our actions are driven by fear of “the lie” then the lie still has control over our lives.
My examples are from the specific belief systems I grew up around, but the idea applies to anyone who dares to be controversial and challenge a mainstream narrative. To be effective witnesses for whatever we believe, it’s crucial to “live not by lies” and Solzhenitsyn’s challenge is as relevant as ever. But it’s not enough for 21st century America. We need to confront the complexity and have discussions about what exactly the lie is and we need to live less in fear of the lie and more in love with the truth.
