Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed

By Alisa Childers

So much of what we’re experiencing in our culture today is derived from the popular lie, live your truth. This lie has been masquerading in the realm of self-help for decades, doling out promises of peace, freedom, and hope for those who follow their heart and prioritize the self. The idea of being the boss of your life and experiencing a never-ending stream of happiness, pleasure, adventure, and excitement is as much attractive as it is inspiring. Living your truth sounds positive, liberating, and the pathway to limitless success, but does living your truth provide you with the clarity, stability, and empowerment you desire or is it making you more anxious, more confused, and more exhausted? 

The human quest for answers, security, and truth leads many to pursue self-help, self-care, and self-love, but have we ever paused to consider that the self cannot be both the problem and the cure? 

Being the captain of your ship, determiner of truth, maker of your own reality, and source of success is a huge burden no human was meant to bear. Real freedom, knowledge, and objective truth are discovered only by choosing to live by God’s Truth. 

Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed by Alisa Childers tackles some of the most commonly perceived “truths” that are seen, believed, perpetuated, and accepted throughout society. 

These deeply deceptive “truths” that populate the internet and infiltrate nearly every corner of our culture involve: 

• Following your feelings over factual reality
• Trusting in the testimonies of self-cured “gurus” and armchair “prophets” (such as authors, influencers, life coaches) and the advice they peddle (that is often based on a life-altering decision that brought the “guru” momentary happiness without lasting fulfillment)
• Manipulating language to fit an intended outcome or agenda
• Redefining reality through the lens of subjectivity and relativism 
• The idea that you’re enough (you’re all you need in this world so make yourself your #1 priority)
• Embracing authenticity as your identity
• Happiness as life’s highest achievement 
• Condoning the “truth’s” of others (ex. what is true for you may not be true for me)
• Being the boss, authority, and arbiter of truth and morality in your life
• The unwritten law that all you need is love
• The necessity of female empowerment to defeat the patriarchy and a misogynistic society

Live Your Truth and Other Lies is inspired by megaphone messages, catchy memes, and slick slogans broadcast throughout culture as motivational, self-inspired mantras of truth, love, and validation believed (most often) by women, including women who claim to be Christians. As someone who experienced deconstructionism and came out on the other side stronger, bolder, and more confident in her Christian faith, author Alisa Childers understands the appeal for many Christians to view the Bible through a cultural lens rather than viewing culture through the biblical lens. Whether it’s for social acceptance, cultural relevancy, or other reasons that would lead someone to follow the desires of self, Childers wants her reader to discover the solid foundation that is established when knowing, recognizing, and distinguishing Truth (big “T,” God’s Truth obtained from His Word) from what is perceived to be “true.” 

The author uses her personal stories as well as words publicly declared by progressive Christians (on social media, in published books, etc.) to analyze problematic messages, cultural lies, and half-truths (that is, lies mixed with truth that blend together to create a lie that looks like truth). 

Throughout this book, the author dissects worldly statements made by influential progressive Christian figures, such as Rachel Hollis and Glennon Doyle, and weighs their words against what is stated throughout God’s Word.

I found this element to be incredibly beneficial – it reveals how progressive ideologies have seeped into American Christianity while also providing evidence for the division we’re witnessing today amongst those who identify as Christians.

Live Your Truth and Other Lies is geared towards Christian women to hold women accountable in studying scripture, consulting the Bible as the authority of Truth, and using God’s Word as the lens to view and consider the world. When you interpret the Bible properly and are equipped with the knowledge of all that is true, you will be able to discern truth and distinguish it from lies.

This book is a great starting place to understand how and why the Church is divided on many of the cultural issues we are experiencing today. It is a great read for women of all seasons of faith but is especially relevant for those teetering on the edge of evangelical Christianity and progressive Christianity. It will challenge what you know about God’s Word while convicting both your ideological and theological beliefs. It’s a fantastic read that will empower the reader to live in the way God intended – through the freedom of Truth and not by the enslavement of lies. 

*I personally purchased this book. Any thoughts or opinions expressed are my very own.