FCC Rating: TV-PG
USCCB Rating: Not rated at the time of this review
Reel Rating: 3 out of 5 reels
Jesus famously said that “the truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32). Inversely, a lie will enslave you. Live Not By Lies, the new Angel Studios miniseries based on Rob Dreher’s 2022 bestselling book, immerses the viewer in a world that existed not too long ago and ran almost entirely on a diet of falsehood.
Yet, many voices rebelled from out of this dystopia and eventually conquered the lies, offering a means and method against similar movements today.
The basic plot of the series involves “the lie” as a primary tool of totalitarianism and how to fight effectively. Although the series looks at many examples, it primarily examines the Soviet Union’s control over Eastern Europe in the second half of the 20th century.
The audience is introduced to a wide range of dissidents and activists, including Kamila Bendová, a Czech mathematician who organized an underground book club that read Western literature that included the later president of the country. Many of these individuals are only in their late 60s or early 70s. The tortures of the gulags and intense scrutiny of the Stasi occurred quite recently, but seemed forgotten the moment the Berlin Wall fell.
Yet echoes of this tyranny are still felt today. For example, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested in 2022 for praying quietly outside an abortion clinic. Then there are many tragic stories of parents who lost custody of their children after refusing to affirm their child’s gender dysphoria.
There are many fascinating stories in Live Not By Lies, but no central narrative. Instead, it features four episodes, respectively on thinking, remembering, identifying, and living. This causes the show to wander and at times seem aimless. Occasionally, it acts like a Ken Burns documentary with old photographs and narration. Other times, it features sit-down interviews with conservative intellectuals such as James Orr and Douglas Murrey.
Thus, the series does not work well as a straightforward episodic program, but better as a video podcast that you can pick up, set down, and start up again.
The series presents two large antidotes to totalitarian lies.
The first is religion. Christianity is a threat to state control because it sees truth and value in a common humanity rather than a single political entity. God is also eternal and supernatural, whereas the state can only work with the material realm. If humans can find peace and meaning through love of God and neighbor, then they do not need to find it through government-sponsored programs.
This is why totalitarian systems, both on the left and the right, have always suppressed religion. All dictators and their laws are temporary, but God lasts. He also created the Universe and all its ordinances, so alternative laws and structures will never create lasting peace. When the people understand this, oppression seems to be the only option, but God promises that “the darkness will not overcome.”
The other antidote is the family. One surprising aspect of Soviet dissidents was their large family sizes. Despite Bendová being blacklisted and her husband forced from the university into hard labor, they raised six children in a tiny apartment. Families create bonds built on faith and blood rather than political ideology. They support one another, even when they disagree. This is connected to religion because the Christian family is a domestic church, an evangelical witness to the Gospel. When lived rightly, the Christian husband and wife act as Christ and the Church towards one another, showing the world the truth of God’s properly ordered love.
The state tries to stop the family by encouraging abortion, promiscuity, or–if children must be had–forcing them into state-run centers. In one of the most heartbreaking sequences, Bovi Martin–a Romanian dissident–recalls working in an orphanage with appalling conditions where children were raised like an assembly line, changed, fed, and trained to work in factories with no love or education. Fortunately, he was able to find families in the West for some of them.
It’s easy in 2025 to think that such a world is behind us. Yet, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn stated in his famous 1978 Harvard address, the West has become complacent in its worldly pleasures. And now we are facing ever greater calls to censorship, especially in the areas of religion and the family, just as before.
It can happen again, and it will happen again, in some shape or form. Yet the Gospel gives us the tools to keep the human spirit alive. And we have the promise that Christ “will be with you, until the very end of the age” (Mt 28:20).
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Imagine if a “Week of Absolute Truth-telling” in all matters was fostered by the government.
Imagine if the Catholic Church under Pope Leo declared a Jubilee Year of Truth.
How would society be different if everyone strove to just tell the truth at all times, in all things, in every way, to everyone?
I like Olszyk’s biblical The truth will set you free, even if I’ll probably never see the related Live Not By Lies movie. Reason is it offers an entree to what I want to talk about.
When the raging love affair for our new Roman pontiff [by looks he fits the role well] is finally over and endorphins have settled down to normal output – in God’s good time the truth will set us free from hasty euphoria. Not that Pope Leo doesn’t deserve it. He has to earn it.
Supposedly any choice would have caused the same eruption of positive emotions following the last. But likened to a needed binge the hangover follows. Needless to say, though I’m by nature cynical I do indeed hope for the best, even had to check my own exuberance drawn by the force of collective apassionata. I’ve been around too long for that. Nonetheless, to date Pope Leo has had its effect having unusually great sleeps for days in a row.
Caution. When Cdl Jorge Bergoglio was announced I felt quite good with the choice. Until the details of his admirable vision began to play out.
We gave that man so many benefits of doubt, didn’t we? We gave him many years. Many prayers, and then he mocked the number of rosaries that had been said. That number 13 proved itself our bad luck.
I remember that some people worried from his first moments on the loggia, asking the people to bless him rather than his invoking God to bless the people. Some people noticed the people accompanying him. Others noticed his clothes. There were those signs from the first moment on the loggia. At least we don’t have the same signs. At least not yet.
So true. My good msgr life long friend had premonitions when he appeared on the loggia. His immediate instinct proved correct.
I’m remaining cautiously optimistic. I really don’t care that he’s American, other than he might not be so nasty toward us as Francis was. I’m more concerned about what he will do for the Church and the faith. Will he uphold the teachings of the Church and share them with the world? will he clean up the mess of abuse and cover-ups? will he save souls? Time will tell.
Nick Olszyk states: “It’s easy in 2025 to think that such a world is behind us,” referring, I assume, to the previous paragraph’s lament about a time and place where children are raised without love or education to work in factories. So, just who finds it easy to believe?
Hmmm. I think you’ve pointed out a paradox. A totalitarian horror may not be behind us, but we prefer to picture the future as rosy. Do we prefer false optimism to rude reality? Do our new church and nation leadership offer renewed hope? Do we trust God to save us from a future hell on earth, or to grace us enough to bear it?
After all, We did live through the past 13 years. The Berlin wall did fall, the West did defeat the Nazis, and we today pray and hope for peace in many war-torn god-forsaken places. Trust and hope, grace and God will help us through whatever comes, right?
None of this comes as any surprise to those of us who have been following the news over the past 5+ years, both secular and traditional Catholic news. I’d like to know more about the past though, so where/how can we watch it? Thank you.