2020 has been one for the books. If you had told me that the California economy would be reduced to a desolate wasteland of empty storefronts and masked-up grocery clerks by Christmas of this year, I would have thought it silly at best. And hey, I would have been wrong. Somewhere amidst the frenetic panic surrounding COVID-19 in March, smuggled between the mobs of teeming masses descending upon pallets of Costco-stocked toilet paper, hidden among the riotous looters who have burned entire cities to the ground, lurking within the never-ending presidential election, and popping up despite the best efforts of bureaucratic tyrants was a single, radiant concept this year: hope. I have long been a disgruntled consumer of the negativity that our modern press thrives upon, amazed at the preposterous damage that it wreaks on society. Every hour of every day, news channels and social media feeds are bursting with data and reports that are drunk on chaos, fear, and inflammatory rhetoric. Under a thinly-veiled attempt at civility, our media system stokes division, hatred, bitterness, greed, sexism, perversion, and the promotion of outright criminality. If 2020 was a lesson in anything for me, it's that there is great relief in turning off the television and turning off the computer.
And still, hope remained.
Kicked off campus, ordered to shelter-in-place for 15 days (what a joke! 15 days was just a small taste of the insanity to come!), I began asking myself one simple question: what really mattered in life? If the world were to end tomorrow, would I be ready for it? My mind whirled and twisted with such thoughts, consumed with the anxiety of the COVID crisis, and things only got worse over the summer as ANTIFA thugs and BLM "activists" destroyed businesses and homes around the country, pillaging, looting, and inflicting their unrestrained lawless anarchy on innocent civilians. I have often thought throughout the course of 2020 that the direction of the United States is far too close to my own Collapse Series, an odious parallel that I never wanted to witness. And yet, here we are.
Still, hope remained.
Personally, I stopped watching the news sometime in 2012, fed up with the constant regurgitation of discouraging stories, but now, I've sworn it off altogether. I prefer to get my news from independent journalists and bloggers who are capable of covering relevant topics without obvious disdain or bias. You know - what journalism used to be. Regardless of whether or not the death of modern journalism is a political topic for you, I think we can all agree that 2020 has been a jackhammer of negative news.
For me, buried in the worst COVID regulations in the country aside from places like New York, California has been a battleground for our basic constitutional rights, with small businesses constantly being steamrolled by corporate giants like Walmart - corporations who pocket millions while mom-and-pop restaurants are closing their doors because of unfair double-standards in terms of operational guidelines. California has suffered through a slew of insane yo-yo regulations, opening and closing shops and salons on a chaotic, unsubstantiated schedule that has clearly done no good to our suffering citizens (California has some of the worst numbers for COVID cases in the country - shutting down clearly has only made it worse).
And still, hope remained.
Despite the shutdowns and the economical ruin and the atmosphere of anxiety created all around us in California, I have used this time of chaos to realign my values and mindset. I've previously spoken about my experience with feminist mysticism, and how I tore down those weak walls over the past year or so to fully grasp how diluted my understanding of God's Word had become, thanks to theology that had been corrupted by the gospel of radical feminism (and communism). I used 2020 to educate myself on the definition of truth, to face the reality that I didn't want to face until now (that God is God, and I am not!), and to dig into the Bible, focusing on absorbing as much theological knowledge as possible so that I will never be fooled by pretty lies again. Without 2020, I don't know if I ever would have had the time or will to dive into the Bible again at the level that I currently am (perhaps I would have later, but how many more years might have gone by?). This is not to say that I wasn't already grounded in many ways - I've always been a self-proclaimed "anti-federalist" (someone who is against strong centralized government), and had very clear ideas about right versus wrong. Yet until the last couple of years (and even more so in 2020 - it has compounded exponentially), I don't know that I actually understood how much the gospel of communism (which is the underlying energy of the modern feminist movement) had crept into my spiritual life. Corrosive, indeed. I could (and will) write an entire book about this corruption of theology that has seeped into our churches and personal lives, but that's another story for another day.
Hope remains for all of us who are prepared to bid farewell to 2020. On Netflix, there is a new film that has been released called Death to 2020. I haven't watched it, but I ask this simple question: why must we hate 2020? If you are going to be angry at anyone, be angry at the petty tyrants who have inflicted catastrophic mandates on small businesses and driven hard-working Americans into the ground. If you are going to be angry with anything, be angry at the injustice and the confusion regarding the entire COVID crisis - the constant flip-flop of information, the dubious data, and the Chinese Communist Party who created this virus in a lab and released it into the world. Be mad at our enemies, and channel that anger in a positive way. Don't hate 2020. Be grateful for it. 2020 has brought to light so many things that have been previously hidden. Total and complete corruption from the state level in so many different places has been laid naked for the nation to see, and what's more, people like me (and hopefully you, too) have stopped to say, "Life must be more than just going through the motions. We can't simply be functional bags of bones, arisen from primordial goo, having haphazardly evolved from tadpoles to human beings! There must be more - I can feel it in my bones!"
Hope. The hope of Jesus Christ, the hope of His death on the cross, and His sacrifice, which purchased a pardon for mankind's sin. All you have to do is accept His gift, recognize His glory, and confess that He is the Christ, the Lord. That's all. A stunningly simple concept amidst a world fraught with so much confusion and deceit. Just remember what the Bible says in Romans 12:2:
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Accepting Christ's gift of salvation is wonderful and simple. Living out His will is a little harder. But it can and must be done! That's my hope for myself, and for you, dear reader, as we step into 2021. Don't be afraid to hope for a better year. In fact, after the lessons of 2020, we should all be moving forward with knowledge rather than fear, and truth over confusion.
I'm looking forward to 2021, no matter what happens. I am working on lots of book projects, I'm hammering away at school, and I've got tons of developments happening here at the homestead - from managing my first big vegetable garden, to chasing my (almost) 2 year-old, to selecting our first chickens, and landscaping our giant front and back yard. The wheel of the world continues to turn, for better or for worse, and I, like so many of you, am hanging on to the better parts as I welcome 2021.
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Release Calendar Updates:
Expedition 99 - March/April 2021
Resurrection: Vengeful Dawn - July 2021
The Luciferian Conspiracy - 2021 (unspecified)
Colony 99 - Fall 2021
2020 Recap: The Good, The Bad, and the Better
