What I've Been Reading: Live Not By Lies
Just the other day the Siri function on my AppleWatch activated while I was having a conversation with someone. As I glanced at my watch the words from Siri appeared: “Go ahead I’m listening.” Personally, I hate the Siri capability. Whenever I’ve tried to use the voice-activated function, Siri gets it wrong. Perhaps it is my strange combination of midwestern and southern drawl that confuses it. I have no idea. The topic was pedestrian so it didn’t matter that Siri was listening but on another level it is incredibly creepy to have someone or something listening to all my conversations. And I’m the one who has purchased these devices! The technology that we have embraced so widely in our culture may not be as helpful to us as we would like to think.
Author Rod Dreher has a term for this phenomena. He calls this an expression of "soft totalitarianism." How could totalitarianism ever be soft? Under a more traditional (to use such a word) totalitarianism, the raw might of the state crushes anyone who does not agree with the prevailing ideology of the party. In soft totalitarianism, “compliance is forced less by the state than by elites who form public opinion, and by private corporations that, thanks to technology, control our lives far more than we would like to admit” (8). Dreher suggests that social media and large technology corporations are subtly conditioning our society toward something similar to Communist China’s social credit system (92).
In his book Live Not by Lies, Dreher proposes that the United States of 2021 is in a pre-totalitarian state. The idea for his book began with correspondence from a Czechoslovakian immigrant who had spent years as a political prisoner. She found great similarity between events in the United States and the time when communism first came to her homeland. Dreher began to explore this concept and much of the content in his book comes from interviews with dissidents and former prisoners from the Soviet Union and other countries who suffered under Communism.
The book is written in two parts. The first is an explanation of the ways in which Western society is moving away from the liberty that we have known. The second section of the book builds on his conversations from courageous Christians who survived persecution to show Christians today how to resist the lies. Building on a well-known statement by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Dreher contends that Christians do not have to live by lies.
Dreher offers several elements that will be essential for Christians to thrive under persecution. First, a commitment to the truth. Truth may cost the Christian, but a lukewarm faith that compromises for the sake of comfort is worth very little. Second, he argues that Christians must take the importance of the family much more seriously. For those under persecution the family provided survival. Third, he argues for the importance of serious Christian discipleship. Dreher calls Christians not just to be admirers of Jesus, but followers.
Any time a Christian has the opportunity to hear the story of persecuted believers or learn from them is a rich experience. The courage of faithful believers inspires us to be more consistent and committed in our own walk with God. The hardships and sufferings faced by others help us realize that much of our frustrations in this world are minimal compared with what many of our brothers and sisters in Christ have faced around the world. If you have a chance to read Live Not by Lies you will be encouraged.