Parallel Christian Society

Confessions of a Steward

By Guest Post on February 27, 2023

The Creator’s Pattern

In 1961 as our family looked out over this newly-acquired farm property with its rocks, gullies, and weeds, we needed a roadmap to healing. In our imagination, we could see fertile fields, filled-in gullies, and soil-covered rocks, but how to get there was intimidating. Our redemption project seemed impossible.

My dad contacted both private and public (government) agriculture experts to receive as broad a range of counsel as possible. Every advisor recommended borrowing more money, planting corn, building silos, grazing the woods, and feeding the soil chemical fertilizers.

What If We Would Build a Schoolhouse?

What If We Would Build a Schoolhouse?

By Guest Post on February 13, 2023

By Lisa Miller, Wife to Marlin, publisher of Plain Values Someone once told us, “If you are looking around hoping for someone to do something…

Giving Little Ones with Special Needs Room to Bloom

Giving Little Ones with Special Needs Room to Bloom

By Guest Post on February 9, 2023

By Marlin Miller, Publisher of Plain Values

I began our first post with this question and a statement. “What do the Amish, little ones with special needs, two nonprofits, four adoptions, two one-room schoolhouses from the 1800’s and a monthly print magazine have to do with homesteading in 2023? It is the story of our family, and it is a joy to share how the Lord has pieced it together over the last twenty years.” This is the second installment of that story.

Everything we discuss and share inside Plain Values magazine is focused on loving our neighbor. From adopting a child, raising extra tomatoes and peppers, helping that neighbor build a fence or a woodshed… it’s all about living out the two greatest commandments: to love God and love your neighbor.

Confessions of a Steward—Beginnings

Confessions of a Steward—Beginnings

By Guest Post on February 6, 2023

By Joel Salatin, Plain Values

Does God Care How I Farm? That question defines my life’s work and vision because it moves the visceral, practical decisions I make in my farming vocation to a place of sacredness and godly living. If God cares about physical and practical things in my life, then my theology and belief structure are more than academic pursuits.

They are not just discussion groups and conversations. If God cares how I farm, then I should enthusiastically embrace searching for techniques and protocols that please Him. After all, it’s all His stuff. The courthouse may say I own this land, but ultimately I don’t. Legally and culturally, I may advocate for property rights, but really it’s all God’s property. Does He care how it’s handled? Does He care how I leave it? Does He care what I do with it?

Christians Must Enter the AI Arms Race

Christians Must Enter the AI Arms Race

By Andrew Torba on January 27, 2023

If you are an engineer who has experience with AI and are interested in working on this project with us, please get in touch: [email protected]

There has been a lot of debate recently about artificial intelligence with the launch of Chat GPT, Silicon Valley’s latest technology darling. To call Chat GPT “intelligent” is misleading, as it has no actual intelligence.

Technology like Chat GPT is trained to generate information by ingesting enormous data sets and generating sentences based on that data. It is subject to the biases of both the data it ingests and the programmers who train it. It can mimic different writing styles and be forced to ignore taboo or “hateful” subjects its designers program it to avoid. Think of it more as a Google search and Wikipedia on steroids than a Terminator-esq sentient AI.

Nations Are Built Upon Loyalty

Nations Are Built Upon Loyalty

By Andrew Isker on January 26, 2023

Faith as Allegiance in 1 Samuel 20:1-42

by Pastor Andrew Isker

In our passage today, we see the heir to the house of Saul pledge his covenant loyalty to the heir to the house of Jesse. We see a transfer of loyalty in Jonathan between his father’s doomed house and his father’s replacement. That is what is in view here, and, if we have eyes to see it, it is a picture, with stunning clarity, of what the gospel of Jesus Christ is.

How Four Adoptions Led to a Magazine

How Four Adoptions Led to a Magazine

By Guest Post on January 24, 2023

by Marlin, Plain Values

What do the Amish, little ones with special needs, two nonprofits, four adoptions, two one-room schoolhouses from the 1800s, and a monthly print magazine have to do with homesteading in 2023? It is the story of our family, and it is a joy to share how the Lord has pieced it together over the last twenty years. My name is Marlin Miller, and here we go!

Lessons from Livestock, Part Three

Lessons from Livestock, Part Three

By Guest Post on January 21, 2023

When the Lion Lies Down with the Bug

by David Treebeard

Read Part One
Read Part Two

The other day I was hauling a couple of cows to the slaughterhouse when a new-model truck with blacked-out windows blazed past me on the left. Big block letters on the rear window read: “LIONS NOT SHEEP.”

It was a nice truck, and I’d guess that the driver was an impressive guy — strong bench press, profitable business, maybe no exogenous mRNA in his bloodstream — but I’m also sure this truck bro is actually a particular type of sheep. A sheep in lion’s clothing, if you will, and I know that precisely because he considered himself to be a lion.

Lessons from Livestock, Part Two

Lessons from Livestock, Part Two

By Guest Post on January 17, 2023

To Be or not to Bug

by David Treebeard

Read Part One
Read Part Three

When animals become numbers, human numbers are not far behind. For the past several hundred years since the imaginations of Descartes and other enlighteners permeated our power structures, people have been treated as machines or numbers – abstract variables that can be subtly manipulated, to achieve certain goals. This is how the modern government exercises its power through an upside-down form of Christian “pastoral” leadership.

What if the way a culture treats livestock is an indication of how its political leaders will treat people?

The War Against Chaos

The War Against Chaos

By Guest Post on January 13, 2023

by J.Pilgrim

I’m typing this out while I’m racked out in the back of my SUV in a Walmart parking lot in a college town, sipping a beer. I was attempting to spend New Year’s Day camping at the homestead, but my fan belt frayed out on the drive and ripped off the top of the dipstick. I assume that the fan belt is a delayed casualty of the sub-zero cold we had a couple of weeks ago, but I don’t know for sure. I do know I’m not going to risk driving home and having the belt completely fall apart.

The Visual Examination

The Visual Examination

By Guest Post on January 12, 2023

The Art and Science of Watching your Animals

by A.L. Bork DVM

The squeak of the grass, as it’s pinched between tooth and gum, harmonizes with the slow, baritone hoof beats of the flock advancing across the shadowy hillside. Each individual navigates independently, but pulses forward in unison with the band, as if obeying a silent command to push on just past the next sunlit clearing, and then the next, and the next.

Do Your Part

Do Your Part

By Guest Post on January 10, 2023

Become an Active Citizen of the Parallel Economy in 2023!

by The Parallel Economist

Commit to becoming an active citizen of the Parallel Economy this year!

Gab’s progress in creating the Parallel Economy’s web infrastructure has been both extraordinary and inspiring. Andrew Torba’s leadership has been unparalleled, but the Parallel Economy is bigger than Gab’s management. The Parallel Economy requires the hundreds of brave businesses that have trail-blazed on Gab Marketplace, but even they are not the whole of the Parallel Economy, even on Gab.

The Parallel Economy needs everyone to succeed, and that means the thousands of Gab users and hundreds of thousands of Gab readers to be active citizens. Building a new economy is not a spectator sport. The Parallel Economy needs all hands on deck!

You must become an active citizen of the Parallel Economy!