If you’ve been following PROJECT2031 for awhile, then you may have noticed that while we’ve been posting on Facebook pretty regularly, we haven’t written any new posts for quite some time…at least not since May. We have some great writers on our team, but to be blunt, I’ve been going through what the scripture calls “a time of dryness”. So we’ve been silent.
What’s been interesting is how these seasons can come when you least expect. Or when you think that “I should have so much to say”. But this has been a tough summer, with the #METOO movement, Dr Christine Blasey-Ford, #timesup, and sexual assault in the headlines, and I’ve been struggling through how to talk about any of it. More specifically, how to talk about these things with Christian women.
Why the struggle?
Part of the reason this is such a struggle, at least for me, is that because of how I grew up in a conservative, traditional household, I always feel very keenly just how unacceptable it is for Christian women to discuss these topics.
As if speaking truth to power and talking about injustice would mean that we are nothing more than angry, bitter, unChristlike femi-nazis. As if we would be violating some divine law if we said out loud that men can and often do take advantage of the women around them. Yes, even ‘good’, Christian men. Men with wives and children of their own. And particularly men in those places where they have been granted access to power based on nothing more than the sex they were born. Which is just about everywhere.
And as the year draws to a close and I look back over the year, I realize I’ve been waiting for just the right moment and just the right way to talk about all of this…somehow all without offering offense.
But there really is no way is there?
Keep the Main Thing, The Main Thing
Over the past three or four years, PROJECT2031 has developed primarily into a place of encouragement. With beautiful graphics and daily messages on Facebook reminding us of God’s goodness and grace…of His ability to sustain us through any difficulty. And that we’re all sisters in Christ.
All of which is important.
But God also said,
To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. Proverbs 21:3
And this was the original purpose of PROJECT2031. To challenge Christian women to speak and live boldly. To live eternally here…on earth. To call women to see the world and their place in it as Christ saw it. To live a life where our only fear would be to come to the end and NOT hear “well done, thou good and faithful servant”. Regardless of the cost.
And honestly, I don’t think that we’ve done that. I haven’t done that.
All Things New
Look, we can choose to live in a wonderland where good Christian women act as if the cruelties of a sinful world touch everyone but us. Or that while there may be sin in the world, there’s certainly nothing wrong between women and men that can’t be solved by a little feminine submission. Or we can get real.
This year at PROJECT2031, our choice is the latter.
Over the next year, PROJECT2031 will work to hold itself more accountable to its original mission—to challenge every woman to live up to the call of God on her life. To get off the sidelines of the spiritual and physical battles happening all around us. To remind ourselves that repeating a lie doesn’t make it true. Neither does leaving the truth unsaid.
But just as Paul, we want to come to the end of our race well able to say…
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” II Tim 4:7.
With God’s grace…we will.
