live not by lies

Lies surround us. That in itself isn't a surprising thing--Satan has used lies since the Garden. Not so long ago, I wrote, "Lies don't have to be silenced. The truth is much stronger than the lies, and even if truth is whispered while lies are shouted from the rooftops the truth will always win out in the end." I'm not surprised by the lies that are being spewed out by so-called journalists who seem to have just become talking heads who read what is handed to them instead of researching and studying and delving into matters deemed newsworthy. I'm not surprised that lies are being fed to our children through the media they consume--movies, books, television shows, and social platforms that feed them a constant diet of "self-affirmation" and "live your truth."

What I am surprised by is how many of us are just standing idly by, letting the lies take over.

I've been guilty of it myself, way too many times than I want to admit. I've let what has seemed at the time like an "unimportant" lie slip by without making an attempt to counter it. After all, like I wrote a few years ago, the truth will win out in the end, right?

The problem is, the truth isn't even being whispered.

"And they put whomever they want on trial, and brand the healthy as mentally ill—and it is always “they,” while we are—helpless.

We are approaching the brink; already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble:

“But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength.”

We have so hopelessly ceded our humanity that for the modest handouts of today we are ready to surrender up all principles, our soul, all the labors of our ancestors, all the prospects of our descendants—anything to avoid disrupting our meager existence. We have lost our strength, our pride, our passion. We do not even fear a common nuclear death, do not fear a third world war (perhaps we’ll hide away in some crevice), but fear only to take a civic stance! We hope only not to stray from the herd, not to set out on our own, and risk suddenly having to make do without the white bread, the hot water heater, a [...] residency permit."

Those words were written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and released on the day he was arrested and stripped of his Soviet citizenship--for warning about the dangers of Communism. 

That is where we find ourselves today, right now. We are watching our country slip away from us, down the short path to socialism and communism, and we are doing nothing. Too many of us are going along with the steady stream of lies, choosing to say we no longer believe the truth. 

"You can choose not to believe it's cold outside, but it won't raise the temperature." ~Pastor Allen Jackson

It was Mary Flannery O'Connor who once wrote, "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." We can pretend like God's word changes with the times, that His truth is dependent on the current state of society or the latest cultural trend--but that doesn't make the belief true.

God's moral rules for life haven't changed. He still knows what's best, what leads to life and what leads to death. We can try to paint Him in whatever light we wish, but it doesn't change who He is.

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning." (James 1:17)

So what do we do? In a world that is sprinting the wrong direction and calling it "progress," a world that is feeding our children a steady diet of lies, a world that seems to be spinning completely out of control, what can we do?

Solzhenitsyn has a suggestion:

"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! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!

And this is the way to break out of the imaginary encirclement of our inertness, the easiest way for us and the most devastating for the lies. For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person.

We are not called upon to step out onto the square and shout out the truth, to say out loud what we think—this is scary, we are not ready. But let us at least refuse to say what we do not think!

This is the way, then, the easiest and most accessible for us given our deep-seated organic cowardice, much easier than (it’s scary even to utter the words) civil disobedience à la Gandhi.

Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies! Having understood where the lies begin (and many see this line differently)—step back from that gangrenous edge! Let us not glue back the flaking scales of the Ideology, not gather back its crumbling bones, nor patch together its decomposing garb, and we will be amazed how swiftly and helplessly the lies will fall away, and that which is destined to be naked will be exposed as such to the world.

And thus, overcoming our temerity, let each man choose: Will he remain a witting servant of the lies (needless to say, not due to natural predisposition, but in order to provide a living for the family, to rear the children in the spirit of lies!), or has the time come for him to stand straight as an honest man, worthy of the respect of his children and contemporaries?"