By Andrea Guachalla
2020 has come to an end and it’s time to look back and reflect on what this year has brought and how we coped with all the challenges and disappointments. Did we despair? Did we trust God? Did we fulfill any of the goals that we had? How has God used us throughout this time to bless others?
As for Tasting the Ocean, and the work that has been done this year I can say that God has been good and gracious. It is crazy to look back and realize that the website was launched exactly ten days before the rigid lockdown started in Vienna, and therefore I had more time to invest in writing the blogs, re-writing the project proposal, exploring how to do marketing, building a team with my lovely sisters (genetic and spiritual), and pray that the Lord would use anything that we would publish to bless others and bring them closer to Him.
It has been a year of incredible challenges, but also a year of tremendous blessings for those who are in Christ. Tasting the Ocean reached thousands of people with the weekly articles published and in the next section I would like to share with you the five most-read articles of 2020, and encourage you to read them if you are interested in any of the topics. Note that the articles belonging to the Rubik Cube Series are not included in this ranking because they are mentioned elsewhere:
1. A True “Useful Vote”
The first article in the ranking was written in the context of the presidential elections of Bolivia in November. The idea of the “useful vote” was widely used by the media and people to encourage the population to vote for a political party that was very far from being aligned to what the Word of God says is good. Though written specifically for this reason, the section “dangerous ideologies” exposes how the younger generations are being indoctrinated by the media and education, thus it’s relevant today.
2. A Call To Serve Those Who Serve Us
This article was written to encourage people to support the frontliners (doctors, nurses, policemen, etc.) who had been working non-stop against the spread of the virus. I personally have friends who were working in hospitals (and still are) during the most critical months of the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, so I believe this one is still relevant today and will be for as long as we have large numbers of new COVID-19 cases.
3. Take Your Aunt’s Advice
“Take Your Aunt’s Advice” was part of the “Beyond Romance Series” that explores what romantic movies are really all about by taking as an example one of my favorite directors of all times: Joe Wright and his cinematographic productions of “Pride and Prejudice,” “Anna Karenina,” and “Atonement.” This article explains what I learned from the interaction between the main characters of Pride and Prejudice: Lizzie, and Mr. Darcy, and a secondary character: Lady Debourgh, who happens to be Mr. Darcy’s aunt.
4. Ashes And Viruses
It took about 20 hours of research and a couple of sleepless nights to write “Ashes and Viruses,” which is a historical analogy between “The Year Without Summer” that was caused by a volcano explosion back in 1816 and “The Year Without Spring” caused by the spread of COVID-19 at the end of 2019 and throughout 2020. Both scenarios share several similarities: natural phenomena, the continent of origin, consequentiality for the world, they caused isolation and fear, but they also allowed people to create art. How? You’ll have to read the article to find out. This is one of the few articles written in a poetic form and one that I absolutely enjoyed writing and researching for.
5. Living In Coronaland: a survival guide
A survival guide for these times that we are forced to live in Coronaland. Characterized by strict lockdown, and many, many restrictions, there is no way of planning too much ahead of what we will be doing next. But we can do many things while being at home. This survival guide has several tips, and ideas, of how to make the most of the strict lockdown, grounded, of course, on what brings us real peace and joy: a relationship with Christ. With the new lockdowns starting in Europe, and that will probably be mandated in the coming months (I wanna say years, but I don’t wanna make you cry), it is still relevant today.
I am incredibly grateful that these articles were a blessing for some and incredibly thankful for all the people who took the time to read them, share their thoughts, and share them with others. The support of the readers has been a great blessing and their interaction with our digital platforms. However, there has also been a bad side to using these platforms – those managed by Facebook – to make our content visible.
As some may know, due to the political movement that has been taking place in the USA and the social conflicts that have been taking place there, Facebook, and all the platforms it manages (Instagram, Twitter, etc) has decided to use left-leaning fact-checkers and algorithms to shut down any post that is not aligned to their political or ideological views. Which of course means that many Christian ministries, and organizations have been partly or completely censored because of their views on marriage, gender, inequality, and other issues, as defined by the Bible and not the world.
This has sadly been the case for Tasting the Ocean, and it started with the release of “Hopelessness and Glam Rock: Zeros” a review of an album written by the left-lining composer Declan McKenna. Though the article was only partly censored, all other articles that were published since then were censored in one way or another, even though in some cases the content had only slight references opposing leftist ideologies, critical theory, or feminism. As a result, these articles had a very low reach through the visibility tools of Facebook platforms, and it negatively affected the visibility of our content as a whole
In the coming section I share a ranking of the most censored articles of the blog:
1. Atonement In A Godless World
This article addresses how Atonement is defined by the Bible, and how it is defined by the world, by using as an example the ideas exposed by Ian McEwan in his book “Atonement”.
2. A Christian Life Without Christ?
“A Christian Life Without Christ” was our first article written by a guest and it addresses what a real Christian life is, exposing self-righteousness, and stating our need for Christ and God’s grace.
3. Believing The Best Of Others In A Victimized World
This one explains 1 Corinthians 13:7 in the context of living in a world where we are told is Ok for us to feel like victims and excuse our sinful attitudes with our feeling victimized by others.
4. Hopelessness And Glam Rock: Zeros
This article is a review of an album released earlier this year by Declan McKenna, a young musician from England. The article addresses hopelessness as a trait of today’s youngest generations and how education plays a role in that hopelessness.
Even though several features for visibility were immediately deactivated by Facebook and Instagram’s fact-checkers for these articles, some of them reached thousands of people thanks to the people who shared them. For that I am grateful. Though having our content being censored is discouraging and disappointing, we will keep working and find a way to make it visible in 2021!
I will end this article by thanking the editors, reviewers, proofreader, and graphic designer that have been working on this project alongside me! It has been a great joy to learn, grow, and seek God’s guidance, comfort, and wisdom. To all of you, our readers, and those who follow our content every week: Thank you! May the Lord bless you through what we do.
