Have you read the masterpiece by Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies? It's brilliant I'm in the midst of it right now. This needs to go on your must read list for 2023. Do it! It's a real page turner I can barely put it down. I've highlighted and underlined every page. But I would like to share my top ten favorite quotes from the book, but this will only include part one. I'm only halfway through it is why.
These quotes are dealing with the problems we face, in part one. So I want to challenge you to pray specifically for God to move in these areas that concern us. If Christians pray, and ask God to move in these areas, we will see breakthroughs.
"In 2005, the sociologists of religion Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton coined the phrase Moralistic Therapeutic Deism to describe the decadent form that Christianity had taken in contemporary America. It consists of the general belief that God exists, wants nothing more from us than to be nice and to be happy. In therapeutic culture, which has everywhere triumphed, the great sin is to stand in the way of the freedom of others to find happiness as they wish." -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 12-13
"..the death of God in the West had given birth to a new civilization devoted to liberating the individual to seek his own pleasures and to managing emergent anxieties. Religious Man who lived according to belief in transcendent principles that ordered human life around communal purposes, had given way to Psychological Man, who believed that there was no transcendent order and that life's purpose was to find one's own way experimentally. Man no longer understood himself to be a pilgrim on a meaningful journey with others, but as a tourist who traveled through life according to his own self-designed itinerary, with personal happiness his ultimate goal. This was a revolution even more radical than the 1917 Bolshevik event, said Rieff. For the first time, humankind was seeking to create a civilization based on the negation of any binding transcendent order." -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 11-12
"What is happening here? A progressive -and profoundly anti-Christian militancy is steadily overtaking society; one described by Pope Benedict XVI as a "worldwide dictatorship of seemingly humanistic ideologies" that pushes dissenters to society's margins." -Rod Dreher, Live Not By Lies, p. xiii
"The foundation of totalitarianism is an ideology made of lies. The system depends for its existence on a people's fear of challenging the lies. Said the writer, "Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies!" -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. xiv
"This totalitarianism is therapeutic (soft totalitarianism of political correctness). It masks its hatred of dissenters from its utopian ideology in the guise of helping and healing." -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 7
"Back in the Soviet era, totalitarianism demanded love for the Party, and compliance with the Party's demands was enforced by the state. Today's totalitarianism demands allegiance to a set of progressive beliefs, many of which are incompatible with logic - and certainly with Christianity. 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." -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 8
Today in our societies, dissenters from the woke party line find their businesses, careers, and reputations destroyed. They are pushed out of the public square, stigmatized, canceled, and demonized as racists, sexists, homophobes, and the like. And they are afraid to resist, because they are confident that no one will join them or defend them." -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 8-9
"In Orwell's fictional dystopia, the state installed "telescreens" in private homes to keep track of individual's lives. Today we install smart speakers into our homes to increase our sense of well-being. How did maximizing a feeling of well-being become the ultimate goal of modern people and societies?" -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 11
Almost a quarter century before the fall of the Berlin wall, Rieff predicted that communism would not be able to withstand the cultural revolution coming from the West, one that purported to set the individual free to pursue hedonism and individualism. If there is no sacred order, then the original promise of the serpent in the Garden of Eden- "Ye shall be as gods" is the foundational principle of the new culture." --Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 12
"A Soviet-born US physician told me - after I agreed not to use his name - that he never posts anything remotely controversial on social media, because he knows that the human resource department at his hospital monitors employee accounts for evidence of disloyalty to the progressive "diversity and inclusion" creed. That same doctor disclosed that social justice ideology is forcing physicians like him to ignore their medical training and judgment when it comes to transgender health. He said it is not permissible within his institution to advise gender-dysphoric patients against treatments they desire, even when a physician believes it is not in that particular patient's health interest." -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 41
"What is happening here? A progressive -and profoundly anti-Christian militancy is steadily overtaking society; one described by Pope Benedict XVI as a "worldwide dictatorship of seemingly humanistic ideologies" that pushes dissenters to society's margins." -Rod Dreher, Live Not By Lies, p. xiii
"The foundation of totalitarianism is an ideology made of lies. The system depends for its existence on a people's fear of challenging the lies. Said the writer, "Our way must be: Never knowingly support lies!" -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. xiv
"This totalitarianism is therapeutic (soft totalitarianism of political correctness). It masks its hatred of dissenters from its utopian ideology in the guise of helping and healing." -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 7
"Back in the Soviet era, totalitarianism demanded love for the Party, and compliance with the Party's demands was enforced by the state. Today's totalitarianism demands allegiance to a set of progressive beliefs, many of which are incompatible with logic - and certainly with Christianity. 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." -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 8
Today in our societies, dissenters from the woke party line find their businesses, careers, and reputations destroyed. They are pushed out of the public square, stigmatized, canceled, and demonized as racists, sexists, homophobes, and the like. And they are afraid to resist, because they are confident that no one will join them or defend them." -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 8-9
"In Orwell's fictional dystopia, the state installed "telescreens" in private homes to keep track of individual's lives. Today we install smart speakers into our homes to increase our sense of well-being. How did maximizing a feeling of well-being become the ultimate goal of modern people and societies?" -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 11
Almost a quarter century before the fall of the Berlin wall, Rieff predicted that communism would not be able to withstand the cultural revolution coming from the West, one that purported to set the individual free to pursue hedonism and individualism. If there is no sacred order, then the original promise of the serpent in the Garden of Eden- "Ye shall be as gods" is the foundational principle of the new culture." --Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 12
"A Soviet-born US physician told me - after I agreed not to use his name - that he never posts anything remotely controversial on social media, because he knows that the human resource department at his hospital monitors employee accounts for evidence of disloyalty to the progressive "diversity and inclusion" creed. That same doctor disclosed that social justice ideology is forcing physicians like him to ignore their medical training and judgment when it comes to transgender health. He said it is not permissible within his institution to advise gender-dysphoric patients against treatments they desire, even when a physician believes it is not in that particular patient's health interest." -Rod Dreher, Live Not by Lies, p. 41
