Review of “Live No Lies” by John Mark Comer: Amazing and Missing Grace
If you spent any time in the church in the 90s, you probably heard the expectant pulpit call of “God is good.” As the choir shuffled off stage, congregates loudly responded, “all the time, God is good’’’. It marked a transition in the service, not unlike a priest who asks for the mass to be seated. That tradition has become a phrase of days by-gone in the church (thankfully, along with some unmentionables). I thought repeatedly about this phrase as I read “Live No Lies” by John Mark Comer. The recent publication, published in September, examines the deceit implicit in the alt-Christian trifecta–the world, the flesh, and the devil. Comer commences to unpack their relationship, intertwining theology, history, and popular psychology. “Here’s the one problem: our capacity to hold unreality in our minds is our genius,” writes Comer, “but it’s also our Achilles heel. Because not only can we imagine unreality, but we can also come to believe it. We can put our faith in ideas that are untrue, or worse, that are lies.” In short, human beings are prone to to believe and embody lies which make residence in our minds and reinforced in our culture.
Comer’s study is a stark difference from his peers. Neither his application to current social issues or his passive voice, detract away from the fluidity of his argument. Comer resists the temptation to fluff his writing with long personal anecdotes like peers, Paul Tripp and Jennie Allen. In fact, besides a repeated mention of pastoring a church in Portland and a tidbit about his family, Comer remains silent about his personal life. Comer is a master of weaving other voices from a variety of traditions in his writing–from C.S. Lewis, Michael Foucault, St. Augustine, and even a Pentecostal theologian here and there. The author will frequently reference Ignatius’ definition of sin– unwillingness to trust what God wants for me is only my deepest happiness. Comer writes, “But when we believe lies–ideas that are not congruent with the reality of God’s wise and loving design–and then, tragically, open our bodies to those lies and let them in our muscle memories, we allow an ideological cancer to infect us. We live at odds with reality, and as a result we struggle to thrive.”
Comer’s almost Orwellian exploration of the devil as the master of misinformation is the crescendo of the book. Following the scriptural temptation in Genesis account and the Gospel of Mark, Comer frames the enemy, not just as a cosmic power, but a distorter of the truth: “the devil’s primary stratagem to drive the soul and society into deceptive ideas that play to disordered desires, which are normalized in sinful society.” You do not have to believe in a higher power to hear the resonance of Comer’s messaging. The whole country is reeling from the evil and devastation of misinformation in an ever-increasing digital age. Decades ago, Orwell reminded us that, “Political language — and with variations this true of all political parties, from Conservatives and Anarchists- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. That work is a swipe away now. Comer reminds us of those words now. Linking the distortion of the truth to surveillance capitalism, Comer writes, “Those algorithms can work out when you are most emotionally vulnerable and susceptible to manipulation, then inject an an emotion-loaded news story, alert, or link into your feed at just the right time to prey on your fear or desire and index you toward their desired behavior, opinion, or view.” Technology makes it too easy. Troublingly, what takes the back-burner in the read is the character of God himself.
There is no sense in the book of God’s grace and never-shifting nature despite human failings and shortcomings. As Matthew Henry reminds us, “Grace is the free, undeserved goodness and favor of God to mankind.” This redemptive theme is repeated throughout scripture and is seen in passages like 1 Peter 2 and Psalm 103. Rather, for Comer, “To win, we need access to a power that is beyond us. We need an ally in the fight to come alongside us and turn the tide. That power is the Spirit of Jesus. And how do we access this power? Simple: via the practices’’. In this positionality, change comes from human practice, not grace or divine intervention. As the chapters culminate, Comer’s book begins to read more like a monastic counterpart to James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” (which, incidentally, isn’t cited). That is all well and good–I am a big fan of Clear and his practical advice for cultivating habits that led to a transformed future. But there is a difference between human systems and divine systems — the character of God as shown to people. Throughout scripture, we see God showing up and showing out in peoples that long departed from the practices. Jesus comes and shows out when we don’t have faith. He uses messy people like Rahab, Josiah, David, Jonah, Abraham, and Jacob. Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber reflects, “ God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over.” Let me be clear, I am not abdicating personal responsibility that scripture demands (Philippians 2). I am not suggesting what Dietrich Bonhoeffer once described as “cheap grace”. Rather, I am advocating for is an awareness and faith in a grace that calms storms in disbelief, sends a whale to swallow up a disobedient prophet, and continuously leads us by “still waters” (Psalm 23). Incidentally, Comer does not even reference grace. While Comer’s book is sure to become a classic, garnering attention from the faith community, Comer and his audience would be good to listen to the old hymn that reads ”grace will lead us on”.
