Jackie Hill Perry doesn’t waste words.
In a time when much of Christian discourse has softened into hashtags and slogans, she still insists on naming things plainly. God is holy. Sin is real. And the line between belief and blasphemy is far thinner than most of us care to admit.
“Not many people would dare call God a liar out loud,” Perry writes in her book Holier Than Thou. “What the mouth doesn’t say, though, the heart still reveals.”
It’s not an indictment of skeptics. It’s aimed at believers — those who say all the right things about God’s character but quietly live as if His word is negotiable.
“If Lord, we serve. If Creator, we’re humble. If Savior, we trust,” she said.
Perry’s argument is both ancient and disruptive: when we reject God’s commands, downplay His judgments or question His goodness, we’re not just struggling with doubt. We’re accusing God of deception.
She acknowledges how often our emotions attempt to override truth.
“We determine [God’s] integrity by how we feel over who God has revealed himself to be,” she said.
In other words, we trust our own affections more than we trust God’s authority. If something feels unjust, we conclude God must be unjust. If obedience feels too costly, we assume the command must be optional. And if we ache and don’t find relief, we begin to doubt He ever loved us to begin with.
That’s not a theological misstep. It’s a quiet, everyday rebellion.
“Truth is resisted because it demands something from us,” Perry said. “It tells the heart what the heart refuses to acknowledge. That it is not as happy as the smile it manufactures or as full as it claims to be.”
Before belief comes surrender — and surrender is always costly. If God is who He says He is, then everything we have belongs to Him: our minds, our bodies, our desires, our autonomy.
That’s not easy to accept. But it doesn’t make it any less true.
Perry confronts the impulse to worship a God who affirms without challenging, who comforts without confronting. She calls that preference what it is: “pseudo-freedom.” The illusion that we can have life on our own terms and still inherit the life God promises.
“This is the pseudo-freedom that sinners prefer,” she said. “Life on their terms. Heaven and hell at the same time.”
But if God is truly holy — morally perfect, totally pure, utterly other — then none of that holds. A holy God cannot lie. And if He cannot lie, then His word stands, whether we affirm it or not.
“Whether we believe He is holy or not, He will always be what He’s always been.”
It’s not a threat. It’s a guarantee. God’s character does not rise and fall with our belief in it. It is an anchor — the only foundation strong enough to build a life on.
There’s a reason Perry brings us back to the garden.
“The one who provided Eve with an alternate reality said, ‘You will not surely die,’” she writes.
Satan didn’t offer open rebellion. He offered reinterpretation. The deception wasn’t crude. It was convincing. It still is.
“He is the ‘father of lies’ who ‘doesn’t abide in truth,’” Perry said. “How many of our sins began with the belief that God didn’t love us truly?”
That question is piercing. And it sticks.
Perry doesn’t just quote Scripture. She holds it up like a challenge. Jesus’ question in John 8:46 — “Which of you convicts me of sin?” — is not rhetorical. It’s a moral test. If Jesus is sinless, then he isn’t merely a prophet or philosopher. He is truth embodied.
And if that’s true, then his claims about salvation, judgment and identity are not just valid — they are final.
“Only Jesus can stand next to the law and it be a spitting image,” Perry said. “Always. As in, at all times, consistently, perpetually, night and day, the Son pleases the Father.”
It is not an overstatement to say that the credibility of the Gospel depends entirely on the trustworthiness of the one who preached it.
“There is no grey area when it comes to how evil it would be if Jesus were lying,” Perry said.
“If someone decides not to believe him, they will die in their sins.”
It’s the kind of line that doesn’t make it into curated Instagram posts. But it’s the line Scripture draws.
C.S. Lewis famously wrote that Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic or the Lord. Perry doesn’t soften that argument. She tightens it. If Jesus claimed to be the bread of life and offered himself to the hungry, then he is either telling the truth or performing the most destructive con in human history.
“If this were the case, we would be wise in our denial of him,” she said. “No one with good sense should give their allegiance to a lie.”
But that’s not the option we’re given.
Instead, we are met with a man who says “I tell you the truth” more than 25 times in the Gospel of John alone. A man who claims that every word he speaks is both authoritative and trustworthy because his very nature is truthful and holy.
“To say ‘I tell you the truth’ means Jesus is assuring us not only of the importance of whatever statement he makes,” Perry said. “He is equally assuring us of his true and holy character behind those statements.”
Truth is not just what Jesus says. It’s who he is.
That’s what makes the stakes so high.
If we do not trust God’s character, we will not trust His words. And if we do not trust His words, we will look elsewhere — to our desires, to our feelings, to other gods entirely.
As Perry reminds us, “The inevitable consequence of not believing what God has said about himself is to take what God has made and call it Lord.”
That is not freedom. It is idolatry.
But Perry leaves her readers with more than warning. She leaves them with clarity.
“If God is holy, then he is true. And if he is true, then he is trustworthy. And if he is trustworthy, then he is worthy.”
Worthy of our trust. Worthy of our surrender. Worthy of our worship.
Even when it costs us something. Especially when it does.
