By Andrea Guachalla
We’ve been locked at home all year long, now it’s time to prepare for the next round. But let’s start this one with a question: How many of you were waiting for 2020 to be over so we could go back to normal?
How naive of us…
I can tell for myself that I didn’t expect for life to go back to normal, but I did expect that Coronaland, the land where we ought to use masks and avoid other people as much as humanly possible, would become the “new normal.” I don’t like it, I don’t condone it, but I live on planet earth, just like you, just like everybody else, and I, too, am supposed to submit to the government and its rigid lockdowns. But wasn’t this time of house arrest a time to discover interesting things? For me, it was a time to discover that being a prisoner is manageable as long as you have some books to pass the time, that the lower half of our faces – that we now ought to cover with a face mask – actually had a purpose in communication and without it, it is hard to show a smile. It was a time to discover that walking to the supermarket can be considered an adventurous walk depending on how fearful you are about going out at all.
All that is well and good. Funny even. I am sure many of you have discovered more interesting things. If you are a Christian you have probably spent more time studying God’s Word, perhaps reading books about the Bible, and hopefully, it’s been a fruitful time overall. But on the other hand, whether you are a Christian or not, you also might have learned something about how the world works, because you have probably noticed the incongruencies of the mainstream media in regards to the management of the COVID situation, and that, perhaps, has led you to be more fair-minded and look for information in different media outlets. Not only concerning this matter but many others. Coronaland just started that search, the search for truth, at least for me.
From COVID-19 spreading all over the world from China to the presidential elections in the US and my home country, Bolivia, and the controversial fact-checkers that Facebook has been using to silence voices, we have had an unprecedented opportunity to learn about how the world actually functions; and it took such a disaster. Being locked at home, bombarded by information, misinformation, unwanted news, etc., made it more obvious that some patterns repeat themselves over and over again, not only where you are, but in the whole world. Not only in regards to the pandemic, but also politics, and ideological trends.
Among the main issues that I’ve seen throughout 2020 is the fact that politics and amoral ideologies have infected education, society, religion, and families. How could I not see this before? I just had to take a step back, listen more closely, read more carefully, and open my eyes wider to realize that what I was taught in school, what I learned in university, what I’m bombarded by on social media, what I watch on TV, what I read on the news, and what Hollywood sells me as mere entertainment is not as unbiased as I thought it was. If anything, it’s the complete opposite really.
I came to realize that all those people who would eagerly analyze what they watched on TV and would fact check information with reports from other news outlets or resist the ideologies that are widespread on social media, were not crazy after all. All the people who would tell me “Don’t believe everything you are being told in school or on the news!”, actually had a reason for doing so. The question is: How did they find out about the media bias? Well, they read. That’s what they do. And perhaps they know a little bit more about history than myself, which helps them see how so many things that have happened in history are happening all over again. These biases and the patterns of corruption that are bound to repeat themselves over and over are thus crushing a generation that is reluctant to read, prone to waste time in senseless entertainment, and therefore follows naively any trend they are presented with by the entertainment industry or the mainstream media.
What have I become? I sound like my grandpa. But I don’t mind at this point.
If we don’t read or dare to think critically, we are doomed. If we don’t stand for the truth of the Bible – the Word of God, and the only source of absolute truth – and how it defines society, government, family, church, men, and women, we are lost. Lost forever.
As a Christian, among the things that I’ve found more distressing, there are several unbiblical ideologies that, over time, have been shaping our thinking in a way that makes it very hard to go back and embrace Biblical truths that we had, perhaps, been taught by our Christian parents, or in Sunday school, or wherever we received any sort of “religious” teaching. Opposing all the good things we learned, we have also been in an environment where we see this: Both men and women are taught to rebel against the design and purpose God gave them. Men are often taught to see themselves as oppressive and toxic and women are often taught to view themselves as victims of oppression. Men are to be more feminine or support feminism as a whole, women are to be liberated and empowered.
How are we supposed to live a Christian life? How are we supposed to honor God?
This is primarily the reason that this year we are publishing several different series of articles addressing femininity, womanhood, and purity from a Biblical standpoint, as a way to fight back the feminist narrative that wants to “empower” us by rejecting God’s design for women. We will explore the life of different women in the Bible and how their walk was shaped by their trust in the Lord. We will be addressing the Gospel as well, and discuss why it’s offensive in this age, and how we must stand firm when facing rejection, persecution, and other difficulties as a consequence of sharing the Gospel of Christ.
Because of how widespread feminism and critical theory are in the entertainment industry, we are publishing the “Feminism and Pretty Faces” series, in the course of which we will be analyzing the rhetoric and ideologies being thrown at us by several feminists, and determine in what sense the ideologies they stand for are in absolute conflict with the truths of the Bible. In addition to this, we are addressing the “culture of death” as expressed in abortion and its legalization in different countries, and ways to fight it. And as always, we are continuing our series on Biblical doctrines and their portrayal in culture and different forms of art. With all this, we hope and pray that you will be blessed, and that you will stand with us as we seek the truth.
2020 is over, yes. A year that taught us that we are nothing but mist in need of God’s grace. Along with other lessons we learned in 2020, I hope we were also encouraged to seek refuge in our loving Father more quickly. If we came to the realization that we are often presented with half-truths at best, and lies at worst in the mainstream media, may we seek the truth, and seek to glorify God as we fight this cultural battle against godless ideologies and movements.
