Faithful Observations: Live Not By Lies
We started this “trilogy” of columns with a book written three years ago called "The Benedict Option" which clearly presented the facts that we are living in a post-Christian country and society.
The author then presented ways to build a family and Christian community that focuses on a Christian life and worldview. The column last week answered the question, “How did we get here?” We used a classic book, "The Dust of Death" by Os Guinness that clearly presented the undeniable reality that the education system, media and popular culture has been taken over by the left.
This week we are presenting a current bestselling book entitled "Live Not By Lies" by Rod Dreher. If you are wondering where he is coming from the subtitle is “A Manual For Christian Dissidents.”
Rod begins his book by acknowledging the recent history of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and most of us thought the age of totalitarianism had passed into oblivion. Then, in the spring of 2015 he received a call from an eminent American physician who told Rod that his elderly mother, a Czechoslovak immigrant to the U.S., had spent six years of her youth as a political prisoner in her homeland. She had been part of the Catholic anti-communist resistance. Now, in her 90s and living with her son, and his family, the old woman had recently told her American son that events in the United States today reminded her of when communism first came to Czechoslovakia.
What caused her concerns? Rod relates as follows, “News reports about the social media mob frenzy against a small-town Indiana pizzeria whose Evangelical Christian owners told a reporter they would not cater a same-sex wedding. So overwhelming were the threats against their lives and property … that the owners closed their doors for a time.”
During the next few years Rod spoke with many men and women who had once lived under communism. He asked them what they thought of the old woman’s declaration. Did they think that life in America is drifting toward totalitarianism? They all said yes, often emphatically.
This brought me to an article from the Coeur d’Alene Press at the end of September about Luba Wold, an immigrant from Siberia who grew up in Soviet Russia. In Luba’s own words she tells about the thrill of coming to America compared to life in Russia.
“Since most of my life I lived in a country where socialism was at a very mature stage of 70 years, I experienced, firsthand, the way of living under such system. Young American people have no idea how unfair and inefficient such a system is. They hear these loud slogans of fairness and sharing, but they do not take time to learn why the idea DOES NOT work. I experienced it in my own skin for 26 years … we would not get paid, if we did not have a job. Obviously, all jobs were government jobs with standard low wages. One could achieve a slightly higher wage by obtaining some kind of higher education and hopefully getting a job as a manager somewhere. However, all good positions with “benefits” were taken by communist party members and people who knew people. The reason I share these memories with you is to show what kind of life can be when government controls every aspect of your life.” (Read the rest Luba’s story in The Press, she now has a successful photography business in Post Falls, Photography by Luba.)
Luba related there was no mention of religion growing up, she had no knowledge of Christmas or Easter or what it meant.
Every time we see hard totalitarianism it required the eradication of Christianity whether it was the French Revolution, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China. Young people growing up without a strong faith will not only oppose Christians when we stand up for our principles—in particular, in defense of the traditional family, of male and female gender roles, and of the sanctity of human life. We have florists, bakers and funeral home owners who have been taken to task by the state and forced to go to court or knuckle under. We have boys competing as girls and thinking a same-sex bathroom is logical and of course “men have periods.” Disagree? The “cancel culture” will get you.
Rod states in his book, “Authoritarianism is what you have when the state monopolizes political control. That is mere dictatorship— bad, certainly, but totalitarianism is much worse … a totalitarian society is one in which an ideology seeks to displace all prior traditions and institutions, with the goal of bringing all aspects of society under control of that ideology. A totalitarian state is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and controlling reality. Truth is whatever the rulers decide it is. Today’s totalitarianism demands allegiance to a set of progressive beliefs, many of which are incompatible with logic—and certainly with Christianity.”
The title of the book is taken from the last lines of the final essay that Alexandr Solzhenitsyn wrote before being banished from the Soviet Union. I would commend this book for further reading since we have barely touched the surface.
A reading list would also include, "Brave New World," "Hitler’s Cross" by Lutzer, "Gulag Archipelago" or many others by Solzhenitsyn and especially his address to Harvard students. Solzhenitsyn refused to accept powerlessness and said that the “ordinary man may not be able to overturn the kingdom of lies, but he can at least say that he is not going to be its loyal subject. ”Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,” Ephesians 6:14
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Bob Shillingstad’s columns appear Saturdays in The Press. Email Bob: bjshill@mac.com
