Live No Lies is a timely book for Christians in the West. It takes important old (and neglected) truths about the world, the flesh and the devil and helpfully interprets them for a modern audience. It takes the tricky subject of spiritual warfare and, with intelligence and practicality, shows its reality and importance to our discipleship to Jesus.
Summary
The war on lies – Comer begins with the strange story of Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” hoax in 1938, to show we are at war, and how intelligent people can get swept up in a lie.
A manifesto for exile – we are feeling battered and our souls feel they are in a tug of war. This is because we really are at war and in a place of exile. Comer provides an overview of the idea of spiritual warfare in the New Testament to show the reality of the Christian life as warfare (despite the actual pacifism of early Christians). This may strike us modern people as odd, and yet it is vital to understand. To be a follower of Jesus is to be a soldier in a war. He introduces the traditionally understood enemies of the soul – the world, the flesh and the devil. He aims to interpret these ancient ideas to the modern age because he believes they are ‘wreaking havoc in our souls and in society.’ He shows that the strategy of the enemy is to use deceptive ideas (from the devil, the father of lies). that appeal to our disordered desires (the flesh) which have become normalised in society (the world). He reflects on the idea of exile which has felt increasingly real to us because Christians in the West have moved from the majority to the minority, from a place of honour to a place of shame, and from general tolerance to rising hostility. We are in ‘a digital Babylon’ as the world is now at our fingertips. However, the trauma of exile could be good for us, if it brings us together and helps us to recover our souls. Exile becomes something we don’t have to fear even if there are lies we do have to fight.
For Reflection/Discussion:
- Do you sometimes feel like you are in a tug of war, living as a Christian in the modern age? In what ways?
- How do you feel about thinking of the Christian life as warfare?
- In what ways can exile (in ‘digital Bablyon’) be good for us?
Next:
Comer doesn’t seem to write in traditional chapters. Next time we will look at the first two sections of Part 1 which is about the first enemy of the soul, The Devil. Those two sections are entitled, ‘The truth about lies’, and ‘Ideas, weaponized’