By Alvaro and Andrea Guachalla
A few weeks ago we announced that Tasting The Ocean had come to an end and a new era would soon begin. So this is it. We are co-founding an organization called “A Conservative Voice in the Midst of Chaos” that will serve as an umbrella to Christian authors, and podcasters, who want to shed light on socio-political, and cultural events that are happening around us from a Christian worldview. You may refer to the organization as UVCMC for its Spanish acronym.
Now let us explain the background of what all of this is about.
We both got increasingly interested in politics, sociology and culture at different times and stages of life, triggered by two different events. In Alvaro’s case, he had been studying economics and politics from a Christian worldview for a while when a very important event took place: the fraudulent presidential elections in Bolivia plotted by the ruling left back in 2019. This event triggered his involvement in speaking into politics-related issues from a Christian-conservative worldview. Firstly, because it was very clear the left controlled the media’s narrative on what was happening, and secondly, because in the aftermath of the fraudulent elections the Bolivian population was faced with very few acceptable presidential candidates to vote for. Most of them left-wing, progressive and leaning into supporting abortion and gender ideology left Christians with few options to vote for with a clean conscience.
In any case, what came as a surprise to Alvaro more than the ever-present moral corruption from the government and presidential candidates, was the amount of Christians and even pastors who were willing to overlook the progressive stance from the strongest candidates and were even calling other Christians to vote for them. Christians and pastors voting for candidates who supported the murder of babies and/or supported the deconstructing of what the Bible teaches about gender? That was unacceptable, and proved how much Christians ignored regarding trendy movements and ideologies like feminism, gender ideology and socialism that are upfront against God and the Bible. Since then Alvaro has come to the conviction that it is part of his pastoral duty to equip Christians to think biblically about all sorts of things in order to glorify God in every single stage and area of life.
Now, in Andrea’s case, she was oblivious and reluctant to read anything related to politics, and culture. But her living in the European Union at the time and her background in health sciences didn’t allow her to ignore all that took place from March 2020 onwards: the COVID-19 pandemic and the media’s fear mongering. From stats designed to scare you to death, to nonsensical restrictions that didn’t protect anybody she was almost forced to have a stance on whether the traditional media and health “experts” are trustworthy or not, and who is controlling them.
But that was not it for her. Added to the restrictions in 2020, a big event took place in the US that led her to dig deeper into how the media portrays things: the death of an Africanamerican man, George Floyd, while under police custody. First this was shown all over Europe as an act of police brutality that justified defunding the police for their “racist” actions, and also portrayed Floyd as the noblest hero. Lateron it was discovered that the man had been a drug addict and a drug dealer who died of an overdose after being captured by the police. Despite those facts, the policeman who had him in custody was put in jail for homicide. Though Andrea initially leaned into critical race theory back then, she was led out of it by friends who shed some light on what was really taking place in the aftermath of Gearge Floyd’s death: people protesting violently, looting savagely, burning businesses and stealing goods from stores, all in the name of “social justice” and Black Lives Matter (BLM).
In all of these events, the fraudulent elections of 2019 in Bolivia, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the death of George Floyd one thing was clear: the media and social media platforms control what we see and therefore what we believe. And what was more preoccupying: Christians let themselves be deceived by anything they see, they call themselves Christians and yet have no Christian worldview led by what the Bible teaches about politics, social issues, gender, and justice.
It was then, in 2019, that Alvaro’s desire to equip Christians with the Word of God to be salt and light in this world culminated in him starting a podcast called Judging with Righteous Judgment. Lateron in 2021, Andrea started a podcast herself with the same aim: analyze events from a Chrisitian worldview using her background in research and health sciences to do more in depth research on papers and statistics.
In 2023 we decided to join efforts with our sister Carla, who will be in production and social media management, to launch A Conservative Voice in the Midst of Chaos as an organization that serves as an umbrella to the two podcasts (and more to be added in the future) and Christian authors who will be publishing articles in our organization’s website. And so we want to welcome you to join us in the mission of equipping Christians to know God’s Word and be led by it in the way they vote, they choose a school for their children, they partake or not in cultural events, and the way they analyze what politicians, celebrities, and leaders say.
Welcome to a new era! We truly hope our work blesses and edifies you as you seek to reason biblically about everything that happens in the world God has put us in.