Walking with the Wise #186: Live Not By Lies

"A truthful witness saves lives,

but one who breathes out lies is deceitful." 

— Proverbs 14:25

On February 12, 1974, while living in communist Russia, Alexander Solzhenitsyn penned an essay entitled, “Live Not By Lies,” which ended up circulating among Moscow’s intellectual elite at the time. On the same day he wrote the essay, the secret police broke into his apartment and he was arrested. The next day he was sent into exile in West Germany. This essay is his call to courageously stand for truth in a world of lies. He wrote,

“When violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: ‘I am violence. Run away, make way for me—I will crush you.’ But violence quickly grows old. And it has lost confidence in itself, and in order to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehood as its ally—since violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every shoulder. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily participation in lies—all loyalty lies in that.

And the simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies. Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace everything, but not with any help from me.

This opens a breach in the imaginary encirclement caused by our inaction. It is the easiest thing to do for us, but the most devastating for the lies. Because when people renounce lies it simply cuts short their existence. Like an infection, they can exist only in a living organism.”

If we are to be children of light, then we must endeavor to tell the truth. If we fail to tell the truth and seek to live by lies or justify a lie we participate in a satanic rebellion. Satan’s arsenal is filled with the weapons of his creation—lies. He is a liar and the father of lies (cf. John 8:44), and uses lies to create a world different than that of God’s where he is ruler, or in the case of many, he allows them to believe that they are rulers of their own little world. While Satan wants all glory for himself, he will tolerate man thinking that he is god of his own little world, because it in some measure takes glory away from God. As long as God is not perceived as ruler Satan will allow men to have their day and believe that they rule and are determiners of their own destiny.

Man may try and suppress the truth of who God is, but he can’t, as C.S. Lewis so poignantly noted,

“A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.”

If we are to be true servants of God, we must refuse to live by lies. We must be worthy servants of Him who is truth (John 14:6), because of our testimony to the truth of who He is, many will believe and be set free (John 8:32) as our proverb for today clearly states.

Are you living by lies? Recognize that the only way to truly achieve victory in this world before Jesus comes is to make sure that we refuse to live by lies. We must make sure that we are practicing “personal non-participation in lies” venturing to tell the truth in the most difficult situations, knowing that God’s truth will ultimately be victorious. Amen.