Chad Bird

Key Takeaways

• Chad Bird's journey from a cowboy upbringing in Texas to becoming a scholar in residence for a Christian nonprofit.

• The impact of individualism on the church and the need for a shift from self-focus to serving others. Cultural narratives in the church often differ from the cultural narratives of society, and this difference is usually a good thing.

• Confession and repentance are important, but they are not the grounds for God's forgiveness; it is the sacrifice of Jesus that is the source of our hope and forgiveness.

• The Old Testament presents a God who is both merciful and just, and the narratives in the Bible should be read with a focus on what God is doing rather than self-centered interpretations.

• The use of technology in the digital age can be a tool for spreading the gospel and encouraging the body of Christ, but it should not replace the concrete gathering of local congregations.

• The desire for self-salvation and the human need to be the hero in our own stories can lead to a distorted understanding of the gospel and our relationship with God.

Episode Transcript

Caleb Gray (00:01.094)

Well, I'm here with Chad Bird. Welcome to the Upside Down People podcast. How are you going?

Chad Bird (00:06.926)

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I've been looking forward to our conversation. I appreciate the invitation to join you.

Caleb Gray (00:12.07)

Well, I'm so thankful that you accepted the invitation and that we're here Yeah on on either side of the world morning for you nighttime for me having about to have a great conversation. I hope

Chad Bird (00:26.798)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be, you lagged there for a minute, but I think I caught most of what you said. Yeah, it's going to be, I'm just kind of getting started here in the morning in Texas, but looking forward to our conversation today.

Caleb Gray (00:39.143)

Brilliant. So you're in Texas, I believe, is it a right to, like, as a resident of Texas, from Australia's perspective, you own a horse and you have a gun? Is that true?

Chad Bird (00:50.67)

Well, I don't currently own a horse, but I was raised. My dad was a cowboy. I joke that I was riding horses before I could ride a bicycle. So we always had several horses growing up. That wasn't, you know, not everyone had that, but I had a very wonderful upbringing. My dad was a cowboy, so we always had actually more than horses than we should have. Let me put it that way.

Caleb Gray (01:05.094)

Wow.

Caleb Gray (01:20.326)

Awesome.

Chad Bird (01:20.686)

So yeah, and yeah, it's pretty accurate to say the Texans. We do like our hunting, so a lot of guns around here.

Caleb Gray (01:28.614)

Nice. What do you guys hunt over there?

Chad Bird (01:33.294)

Well, if you're into deer hunting, there's plenty of opportunities for that almost all over the state. There's also, we've kind of been infested with what we call wild hogs around, not just Texas, but around the country, which do a lot of damage. So there's some who will actually hunt the wild hogs in order to just kind of cut down on their population so they don't do as much damage to.

Caleb Gray (01:46.375)

Okay.

Chad Bird (02:01.294)

to crops and fields and even front yards. I live in a neighborhood where we own about an acre of land and right now we are being infested by these wild hogs. So some of our neighbors are on the lookout for those.

Caleb Gray (02:15.462)

Nice, provides a bit of fun for them I'm sure. Well, yeah, so one thing I like doing with our guests just to humanize them a bit for perhaps our listeners who may not really know exactly what they do or what they're involved in. So two sort of two parts to this question is one is, yeah, tell us a bit about yourself, what you do, what you're involved with. And then the second part is,

Chad Bird (02:19.406)

It does, yeah.

Caleb Gray (02:44.102)

Maybe something that people may find surprising about yourself.

Chad Bird (02:51.214)

Yeah, so I married my wife, Estacy, and we're a blended family. Together we have four children, three of whom are with us in this world, one of whom, Luke, went to be with our Lord a couple of years ago. So we're blessed to have those four children as well as three grandchildren. I mentioned we live in Texas. We moved actually to where we live in Texas so we could be close to our three grandchildren who are 20 minutes away from us. So it's kind of nice to have them close by.

Caleb Gray (03:15.463)

soon.

Chad Bird (03:18.99)

So, my job is I'm a scholar in residence for an organization called 1517, a Christian nonprofit. I've been working for them for, goodness, almost four years now. And basically, I produce a lot of content for them, online content, on my social media channels. That's in just text form as well as video form. I write about a book a year for them. And then I also travel around, especially...

America speaking in various places, congregations and conferences. And although I'd love to be in Australia sometime, that would be nice. Yeah, yeah, well, I actually, as kind of an aside, I was scheduled to be in Australia to speak in about three locations in the infamous year of 2020. So, needless to say, that trip did not happen. But I'm hoping that sometime we can renew those.

Caleb Gray (03:53.384)

Yeah, well, give us a hollow and you're over this way.

Caleb Gray (04:06.376)

the pandemic, yeah.

Chad Bird (04:15.534)

expectations. But anyway, so I write, I teach for them and it's a great honor. 1517 has been around for a number of years. We really kind of exploded in growth over the last few years and so a number of us will do kind of, you know, the teaching, others are behind the scenes doing IT and fundraising, things of that nature.

So that's kind of what I do. I guess something about me that people might not have guessed if they don't know much of my background, and that is that for many years, I was a truck driver. So I did that. It's part of my longer story. When I was in my mid -30s, so over 15 years ago, my life just kind of imploded, or to put it more accurately, I exploded my life, made a lot of...

Caleb Gray (04:51.465)

Yeah?

Chad Bird (05:03.374)

terrible decisions, ended up losing almost everything and shifted from my academic life to being a truck driver. And I did that for many, many years so that I could live close to my children. So I was driving a truck on the side and then I began to write and I was doing a lot of not only truck driving, but also teaching, speaking, book writing on the side. And when 1517 approached me about working for them full time, I was

Caleb Gray (05:13.705)

Well.

Chad Bird (05:28.718)

glad to leave behind the truck driving and to do it myself full -time to riding and teaching. So great, great opportunity I have. It's a gift of God really to be able to do what I do full -time.

Caleb Gray (05:40.971)

Right, yeah that's, yeah I mean I'm fascinated to know a bit about the story there so maybe you can share a bit about your faith journey if you're comfortable with that and yeah what sort of led you to where you currently are now.

Chad Bird (05:52.878)

Yeah.

Chad Bird (05:58.222)

Yeah, so my faith journey began as nothing really unusual about it. I was raised by two Christian parents. I was in a relatively conservative Protestant denomination called the Southern Baptist Church, which is not uncommon in Texas. There's a lot of Southern Baptists in this part of the world. Very thankful for my upbringing, number one, because my parents were in church every Sunday. So,

was, you know, sitting in the pew with my mom and my dad. This was a fantastic example for me growing up, and the Southern Baptist Church was heavy Bible -oriented, and I'm very grateful for that because I ended up, even though I'm not Southern Baptist now, I ended up going the route of studying the Bible, especially the Old Testament, as opposed to studying historical theology or more kind of practical pastoral theology or more kind of doctrine systematic theology. I gravitated toward

what's called exegetical theology, the study of the scriptures, because I think largely because of my own upbringing in the Southern Baptist Church. But anyway, I was raised that way. When I was my late teens, around 18 or 19, I began to explore other theological traditions. I was challenged by a friend of mine with regard to some of the teachings to which I had previously held. And basically, I spent a lot of time studying the Bible, prayerfully reflecting upon...

what I thought that it taught and confessed, and over a period of about three years I gradually transitioned into the theological tradition in which I found myself for the last goodness 30 plus years, and that is I'm in the Lutheran tradition now. But very grateful for both these traditions as well as other Christian traditions. I try and approach Christianity as kind of the C .S. Lewis mode where you're focusing upon the majors.

what he called mere Christianity and not focusing upon our more minor differences. So grateful for things I learned from everybody from Orthodox to Roman Catholics to Presbyterians to Baptists to Lutherans, you name it. I think that we all in the body of Christ have something to teach each other even though we might disagree on some very important matters we can all learn from each other. So anyway, at that point in my life I went on a seminary.

Caleb Gray (08:18.379)

Brilliant.

Chad Bird (08:22.67)

Eventually ended up in the pastoral ministry, ended up in the academic part of the church teaching at a seminary teaching Hebrew and Old Testament. And then that was when my life fell apart. Ended up driving that truck for goodness, a long time until the Lord saw fit to put me back, put me where I am now. So life has been full of twists and turns and ups and downs, but I'm grateful. I'm grateful through that through them all, the Lord was working in different ways in my life too.

shaped me to who he wanted me to be.

Caleb Gray (08:54.348)

Right. And that's, I can imagine that would be quite a challenging, yeah, challenging change to go from a place where you've invested so much time and thought in terms of academia and teaching and to a place of truck driving where I've got a few friends over here, we call them truckies. So long, long hours and very isolating, very lonely for

Chad Bird (09:17.998)

okay.

Caleb Gray (09:24.076)

like can be quite challenging certain aspects of it but I suppose the most challenging is that it's like that mundane it's the like the quietness of life and it's almost the opposite to in a western culture how we are like have this pressure to perform and consume and we're validated by what we do essentially. So I'm wondering if you have

If you've thought about that, if you've thought about what it means to live a quiet life and like how we move towards that.

Chad Bird (10:04.91)

Yeah, in fact, that was unplanned, I'm sure, but that's the perfect question to get the background of what I was talking about. So in my younger years, I was fueled by ambition, like a lot of young people are. I mean, ambition was the source of my study, my...

academic career, everything about me was driven by ambition because I wanted to get ahead, I wanted to climb the ladder of success, I wanted to make a name for myself, I wanted to do all of these things. Now, back then, say when I was, I don't know, 25 or 30, if you had taken me aside and had a conversation with me and said, you know, is what you're doing right? Is this in line with kind of the Christian understanding of the world? I probably would have said yes, of course, you know.

I'm just, I'm doing this all for the glory of God. But what I was, what I, you know, we're masters of self -deception. What I had to see myself in the thinking was I was doing this all for the glory of God, but I was really doing it all for the glory of Chad Bird. I was doing it all for my own glory. But of course, it's easy to kind of take our ambitions and to put the veneer of religiosity over those and pretend as if...

Caleb Gray (11:02.989)

Right.

Chad Bird (11:27.054)

everything we're doing is justified because we're doing it for God's glory even though we're really doing it for the feeding of our own ego. That's where I was at. So I was driven by ambition. I wanted to get ahead. I wanted to be number one. I wanted to have this great success, make a name for myself because all of this was bound up in my understanding of self -worth and identity. It was all about if I didn't do these great things then what use was I? It was kind of the image I had of myself.

So, well, actually I did. I mean, my goal in life was to go from being a seminary student to being a pastor to then being a professor of seminary students. My goal in life was actually to be a professor. And so I did everything in my life. I shaped everything in my life in order to make myself attractive to those who would be looking for someone to be a seminary professor.

And actually achieved my dream, actually achieved my goal. But when I achieved that dream, it became a nightmare. So when everything kind of came into place is when everything began to fall apart. Pride didn't end in the picture, pride had been there all along, but pride led me to make a number of very selfish decisions, which ended up in this implosion of my life, marriage, career, reputation, everything. Now what was...

I know what I was doing back then, what was God doing in me, well, what God was doing in me was he was basically undoing me. He was taking this tower of Babel, which I was constructing, and he was demolishing it. I was trying to make a name for myself, and God said, I've got other plans for you. You wanted fame, I'm going to give you infamy. And through this all, he was breaking me down. And so within less than a year, I go from...

you know, wearing a suit and being in front of a classroom teaching seminary students, being at the height of my, my career as it were, to sitting alone in a truck cab, wearing just kind of a, you know, blue collar work shirt, a hard hat, steel toe boots, working, driving a truck in the Texas oil fields by myself at night, nonetheless on the night shift. Now that was a humbling experience, needless to say.

Caleb Gray (13:46.327)

Right.

Chad Bird (13:51.15)

But it was a necessary experience because God was showing me that, well, He was stripping away all those things by which I had sought to establish my own identity, sought to establish my worth in the world. He took all of that away. And He then led me to the place where I realized, and I'm kind of shortening the time frame here, this took many years for me to realize, it wasn't like, I woke up the next morning and realized, okay, this is what it's all about. That was a long undoing process. But...

Caleb Gray (14:18.027)

Right.

Chad Bird (14:21.006)

What he was leading me toward was to realize the very point that you were alluding to and that is that my worth, my identity, is not based upon my achievements, especially grand and glorious achievements where I'm making a name for myself. As a Christian, my identity, my worth, all of these sorts of things are bound up actually outside of me in the person of Christ.

so that he becomes my worth, he becomes my dignity, he becomes the reason that I am who I am. In other words, he kind of empties me of me in order that he can fill me with himself. And in that way, whatever I'm doing, whether it's more public or whether it's more private, whether it's on a stage or whether it's in a truck cab, whatever I'm doing, I'm doing it not to draw attention to myself, but rather to draw attention to him. And in that way, actually,

truly to give glory to Him and Him alone.

Caleb Gray (15:20.591)

Yeah, well, that's, that's a yeah, I can imagine that would be a pretty humbling experience as you as you mentioned. And it points to something I've noticed more increasingly, obviously, we've heard of, like in Western cultures are very individualistic, and they sort of geared around the self, the individual and how we can really build up a platform for ourselves and, and

Yeah, everything we see and interact with, it sort of just feeds that individualistic nature. And then what I've also, I came across, I don't know, who was, could have been an author, Jackie Hill Perry was talking about how she noticed like with this increase in self awareness and self help and self therapy.

it's actually doing the same thing where it's creating like a very narcissistic society because even though people are becoming more self -aware if they're not using or not if that's not pushing them towards God like all this self -knowledge really just is puffing them self up so with that like do you have

Yeah, what have you noticed in terms of like the impact of individualism on the church and how you see that sort of unfolding and impacting the church?

Chad Bird (16:56.014)

Yeah, so of course this has been a long -standing problem, challenge we have in Western culture. I think in terms of just my own life. So I was born in—I'm 54—I was born in 1970. And the 1970s were—someone was called the Me Generation. And you have an upsurge of this self kind of language. I was raised on a steady diet of self -esteem. That was kind of the big self dash.

Caleb Gray (17:19.375)

Right.

Chad Bird (17:23.885)

whatever word, you know, in my youth, it was self -esteem was everything. So you need to, you know, build your self -esteem and all of this kind of language, which was just fed to us in any number of ways. But of course, especially on media, where this is before social media, but commercials and TV shows were all about the self, self -esteem. But of course, it's expanded from there. It's not just a self -esteem, you know, we have self -worth, we have self -care, you know, self whatever. About the only self thing that we don't...

Caleb Gray (17:49.743)

Right.

Chad Bird (17:53.806)

really talk that much about a self -discipline, which is actually a good thing. Self -discipline is nice. Of course, self -help is huge. So, I would say as a rule, if you have self -blank, whatever's in that blank is probably going to lead you in the direction of narcissism, or at least it's going to tempt you toward narcissism. Maybe narcissism too, but narcissism for sure.

Caleb Gray (17:56.975)

That's so true.

Caleb Gray (18:22.671)

Yeah.

Chad Bird (18:23.758)

Why? Well, because we are all of us by nature that care more about ourselves than anybody else. I mean, that's just that's the way that we are. We're St. Augustine said that we are we're in curvatus in se, which is a Latin phrase that means we are curved in on ourselves or as we like to say Tom, sometimes they were navel gazers. We're you know, we're looking we're curved inward and that's just the way we are. That's who we are by nature.

Caleb Gray (18:44.783)

Bye.

Caleb Gray (18:50.608)

Mm.

Chad Bird (18:52.174)

So, of course, I mean, to feed someone, to offer somebody self something is to give them exactly what they want. I mean, there's nothing we want more than that. But even though there's, you know, and I want to say this, certainly there's good aspects. Should you take care of yourself? Well, yeah, of course we should. I mean, self -care is a good thing when it's viewed within its proper perspective. But...

Caleb Gray (19:17.551)

Right.

Chad Bird (19:19.15)

The problem with most of these self things is the beginning and the end, the goal is self. But that's not the biblical view. The end of anything I do with regard to myself, say self -care, so I try and eat healthy, I try and exercise, I try and make sure that I'm intellectually, psychologically, physically healthy, that's good. But the reason I do that is not for myself, it's so I can be a better husband.

Caleb Gray (19:40.944)

Mm.

Chad Bird (19:48.078)

I can be a better father. I can be a better worker. I can be a better neighbor. So, the goal of that should be not how it benefits me, but how it makes me a better servant to others. And you could say the same thing with a lot of these kind of self -images. Yeah, a lot of these are okay, at least on the surface, as long as the goal is to bend us outward so that we're serving others. And...

Caleb Gray (20:01.776)

Right.

Chad Bird (20:17.646)

serving God, but unfortunately in our Western cultures that's not the goal. the goal is to just take care of yourself. And that's the be -all and the end -all of all of the self kind of language. And this manifests itself, of course, in the church in lots of different ways. I mean, the individualism is just rampant within the church. In fact, people have this view that, why do I need the church? It's just me and Jesus, right? Me and Jesus, that's all that I really need. And so there's this kind of a...

Caleb Gray (20:24.4)

Right.

Caleb Gray (20:39.568)

Right.

Chad Bird (20:46.894)

It's really, it's an arrogance, to tell you the truth. It's kind of arrogance, I don't need other people. You know, I just, it's just my personal or my private relationship with Jesus is really all that matters, and why would I need to go to a church where there's a lot of other people? Well, that, it's not only kind of a selfish attitude, but it's also a very arrogant attitude, as if I don't need other people. Of course I need other people. It's very, that constitutes my very identity as a human being.

is to be in dependence upon other people and not to be an island unto myself.

Caleb Gray (21:15.376)

Right.

Caleb Gray (21:21.456)

So how would you then navigate through those different, like cultural narratives that it is all about us. It's, it is sort of what if, to use the church example, like if I suppose if you played it out, if we go to church and it's not feeding something that we like and it's not feeding our internal ego. So the easiest thing is like, I'll just go to another church or.

I won't go to church at all like you're saying, it's just me and Jesus. How do you navigate through that and what are some helpful tools that we can use to identify the ongoings in the heart?

Chad Bird (22:10.99)

Yeah, I think the first step is simply being aware of this. I think a lot of people just are simply not aware of the very subject that we're talking about here. I mean, they've been raised in such a way that they accept unquestionably the fact that all of the self kind of language is not just that they don't accept that it's dangerous. They think it's actually good that all of this is helpful. So the first step is actually realizing, hey, this is a problem that this

This kind of self -talk leads to a narcissism, an individualistic focus on life. So the awareness is the first step. And then, just to use kind of traditional language, repentance. You know, we could repent every hour of every day for our selfishness. You know, God, I'm sorry that I was just thinking about myself and I was not focused upon how I could actually help and serve others. And, you know, if we end up in a church that's not feeding our ego, rather than looking for one that does, we should be

giving thanks to God that the church we are in is not feeding us all of the self and the ego kind of talk. I mean, as a rule of thumb, anything, as a rule of thumb, when we encounter something in the church which is saying that which is contrary to what is taught to us in the culture, it's probably right. I'm not saying every time, but most of the time, if the narrative we're hearing in church is different than our cultural narrative, that's a good thing. Because...

by and large, the culture of the church, the narrative of the church, is not going to dovetail with the cultural narrative of whatever society you're living in. Now there's, you know, there are exceptions, but by and large that is the case. And it's a struggle for us as Western Christians because we are so, of course, immersed in our culture, and at least some of us in the United States still think that, you know, we have a predominantly Christian culture, and so we tend to kind of equate these two.

Caleb Gray (23:58.769)

Mm.

Chad Bird (24:09.006)

And we're not working with the awareness that we need to be able to discern, okay, what is a true biblical Christian cultural outlook on life and what is not, what is actually in usually subtle sorts of ways undermining the very Christian foundations of the Christian culture.

Caleb Gray (24:28.083)

Right. Yeah, just picking up on you mentioned repentance is one of the ways to sort of start journeying with it. It just sparked a thought because I know you released a clip today actually just sort of going over the misunderstanding between confession and repentance and how that can also be an almost

narcissistic thing if you confessing and it's this act of like, I'm the one who's forgiving my own sins. This is my, like I'm doing it. Do you mind sharing a bit or unpacking that thought? I did not do it justice at all, but it just triggered.

Chad Bird (25:14.446)

No, yeah, I'd be happy to. I'd be happy to because I think it's a widespread misunderstanding of the church, and I understand why. So you have pastors like this from 1st John where he says, if we confess our sins, he is God is faithful and just to forgive us. So a person could easily come away from a verse like that, especially if they just kind of take it out of its broader biblical context, thinking that, well,

If I confess my sins and God forgives me, then my confession must be the reason that God forgives me. It must be the very grounds of forgiveness is my confession. Now the problem with that is, as I noted in the video, what we're basically doing is we're taking Jesus off the cross and we're nailing up there our repentance, or we're nailing up there our confession. We're making it the source of our atonement. And so in an ironic sort of way, we're engaging in a self -salvation project.

except our Jesus is our confession, our Jesus is our repentance. And this is a very subtle sort of way, and it's usually in these subtle sorts of ways that the devil does his best work, where it's a kind of a Jesus and, or we substitute something for Jesus. And this can easily be expanded to where, you know, Jesus says to me, but I must also do good works in order to kind of finish out the work of Jesus. Jesus says to me, but I must also repent and confess, or whatever.

Caleb Gray (26:25.875)

Right.

Chad Bird (26:40.974)

And so we're adding to the work of Jesus. So repentance in particular, I think, falls into the people fall into this trap of thinking that that becomes the ground of their forgiveness or the source of their forgiveness. Now, as I mentioned in the video, should you repent? Well, yeah, of course we must. God tells us to. Should you confess, believe? Yes. He tells us to do all of those things. This is part of the way in which God readies us to receive Jesus.

prepares, as it were, the soil of our hearts to receive the seed of His Word to believe. But confession, repentance, all of these things are not the reason that God forgives us. The reason is always the same. It's always and exclusively the sacrifice that Jesus made for us. It's His salvation, His atoning work that becomes the source of our hope and forgiveness, not our repentance or our confession.

Caleb Gray (27:34.548)

Brilliant, I love that. I came across it and I was like, man, that is such a subtle lie that can really creep in and without even noticing just disrupt so many of our different engagements or interactions with our relationship with God. So, yeah, thanks for...

Chad Bird (27:55.438)

Yeah, well, yeah, you know, what happens is, I mean, we're, we love to have some skin in the game of salvation, right? We love to think that, you know, Jesus did it in 99 % and all he expects of me is a 1%. So what's going to be my 1 %? Well, maybe it's a confession, maybe it's repentance, but in a strange sort of way, what happens when we think that way is our confidence.

Caleb Gray (28:02.388)

Right.

Caleb Gray (28:11.54)

Yeah.

Chad Bird (28:21.614)

rather than being in the 99 % of what Christ has done becomes the 1 % of what we have done. Well, I confessed and therefore God must forgive me. I repented and therefore God must forgive me. So even in this kind of twisted scheme we have of Jesus and something else, whatever comes after Jesus becomes the basis of our confidence. So it's a weird thing that we sinners do, where we always want to put our confidence in something that we've done instead of what God has done for us.

Caleb Gray (28:37.811)

Mm.

Caleb Gray (28:41.651)

Right.

Caleb Gray (28:51.635)

Great. Do you reckon it is like it's a human thing and not a cultural thing? It's something that we all want to participate, like you said, in like in contributing to our own salvation.

Chad Bird (29:07.598)

Yeah, I think it could be a cultural thing too, but I really think it's a human thing. It's a frightening thing for us to be totally, I mean, completely at the mercy of someone else, even on the human realm. If I'm completely at the mercy of whoever, whether it's a family member or a boss or the government or whoever, if I'm completely at somebody else's mercy, that makes me very frightened.

because that means I have no control over what they're going to do. But what if they change their mind? What if they decide they don't like me or whatever it is? So if I can have some means of controlling what they do, of course, positively toward me, well then all the better. So I think that's just kind of built into humanity. And then we kind of...

Caleb Gray (29:36.628)

Mm.

Caleb Gray (29:40.916)

Right.

Chad Bird (30:01.774)

we turn that vertically between us and God and we kind of think the same way. If there's some way that I can, maybe in a very minute sort of way, control what God does toward me, then I'm going to do that because I don't want to be completely at His mercy. But the gospel comes along and says, no, that's exactly what He's done. He didn't ask for you to save yourself. He didn't ask you, He didn't even ask your permission before He came and died and rose again for you. He just did it.

Caleb Gray (30:30.805)

Right.

Chad Bird (30:30.926)

So we are totally at His mercy. And that's actually the best place for us to be, even though it unsettles us for sure.

Caleb Gray (30:35.605)

Right. Yeah. And do you think it's uncomfortable for us to be in that place because we don't realize how good God is?

Chad Bird (30:48.462)

yeah, yeah, I think of... Yeah, it's difficult for us to wrap our minds around a God who is completely good, who is completely loving, who is perfect in compassion and perfect in mercy toward us. We always struggle with this idea that, you know, maybe God is not quite as good and gracious and merciful as he claims he is.

So, I need to hedge my bets, I need to make sure that I do something to keep on His good side, just in case He really decides to unleash His fury upon me. We know that Jesus loves us, but what if God the Father is hiding behind Him and He's got a bat in His hand ready to beat us up if we do something wrong? So, it's very difficult for us to come to grips with the fact that Jesus is a revelation of God.

see Jesus is to see what God's heart is toward us and to rest in that. But yeah, that's what the gospel tells us.

Caleb Gray (31:55.798)

And so just off the back of that, I suppose many Christians would struggle with that image of God because going to the Old Testament, which that's your sort of playing field, is they see often this narrative of a really angry God who sort of punishes in acts of violence, like all these things that...

in our human brains, we're just like, okay, alert, stay clear, or just like be on your guard. How do you respond to that? How do you wrestle with that?

Chad Bird (32:30.158)

Yes.

Chad Bird (32:36.302)

Yeah, it's a great question. It becomes one of the, especially for people like myself who teach the Old Testament, it's an ongoing question that people have. And I first of all like to kind of dispel the caricature that people kind of work up with regard to this because they will kind of picture God in the Old Testament as an angry, angry God who's out, you know, sending plagues and floods and destroying people. And then they'll...

switch in the New Testament and say, God in the New Testament is such a loving and caring and gracious and nice God. Well, yeah, it's simply a caricature because what you see in Old and New Testament is a God who deals with us in two different ways. So, as he describes himself, he's merciful and gracious, compassionate, forgiving, all of those slow to anger, all of those sorts of things.

wants everyone to come to repentance, wants everyone to come to faith in Him. That's all Old Testament stuff. And that, of course, dovetails exactly with how Christ presents Himself in the New Testament as well. So there's that God who comes to us as a good and a gracious, what we call a gospel -speaking God toward us. But in the Old Testament and New Testament, you have the God who's also just, who doesn't wink at sin.

who calls sinners to repentance and who threatens to punish all who break his commandments. And so you have plenty of examples of that in the Old Testament. But then when you turn, for instance, to the Gospels, look at how Jesus deals with the Pharisees. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, he says, over and over in the Gospel of Matthew. Or you turn to Revelation and Christ's picture there is a warrior who is going out and destroying evil. So you have both

of these ways in which God speaks towards sinners in Old and New Testament. He's a merciful, good, slow to anger, forgiving God in both, but he's also a God who threatens to punish all who break his commands and is ultimately the one who's the warrior who destroys evil. So, he's both of these. And he deals, it's kind of the traditional way of saying he deals with us in law and gospel. The law is

Chad Bird (34:53.966)

the just and the threatening to punish God, but also you have the gospel, which is the good and the gracious and forgiving God. And these aren't contradictory, these are just two different ways in which God deals with us as sinful people who are in need of forgiveness.

Caleb Gray (35:08.472)

Awesome. And so another sort of thought around the Old Testament as well that I've just been thinking about more recently is how I suppose as a child growing up listening to Bible stories and like you hear of Daniel in the Lines, Dan and David and Goliath and often I feel like at times the story sort of focuses around again the self and

around how you read yourself into the story. So it's like, you're David and you'll beat Goliath. Which I'm sure that's not the point of the narrative, to mind. What's the risk in that? Or what's the, I suppose, the disruption that that can cause? And then what would be the correct way of looking at these?

narratives and stories throughout the whole story of the Bible.

Chad Bird (36:10.542)

Yeah, that reading ourselves into the biblical narrative is the temptation that we all face. So, you know, how... We all want to be the hero. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we all want to be the hero when David's killing Goliath. We don't want to be David when he's, you know, the peeping Tom checking out Bathsheba as she's bathing and then arranging for the murder of her husband. Yeah, we forget about that part. Or you want to be, you know, faithful Noah building the ark, the minority in the world where everybody else is going to...

Caleb Gray (36:16.279)

We all want to be the hero, right?

Caleb Gray (36:29.079)

We forget about that, yeah.

Caleb Gray (36:36.183)

Mm.

Chad Bird (36:40.11)

you know, going to be drowned, but we don't want to be drunk naked after the flood in his tent, you know. So we're very selective in our choosing of narratives within the hero's lives. Yeah, so rather than saying, you know, who's my Goliath and how am I like David? Or where's my den of lions and how am I like Daniel? Those sorts of very self -centered questions should be set aside. And ask yourself instead, okay,

What is God doing in this story? That's kind of the first question you have to ask. It's not even what is this person doing or certainly not where am I in this story, but okay, what is God doing with this story to teach me about humanity, about himself, about how he works in this world? So a very God -centered, or I would even say a very Christ -centered question is how you begin. And when you ask that kind of question, you're already on the road to the right kind of answer. So for instance, look at the story of David and Goliath.

What is Christ teaching us in this story? Well, he's teaching us that there are forces in this world that are out to destroy the people of God, and they're being employed by dark, sinister forces to do this, and that's who the Philistines were. That's who Goliath is. So Goliath is the icon of this giant of evil out to destroy the people of God, defying God and blaspheming Him. And that way you could call Goliath's sin, you could call him...

of an icon of Satan, but he's this representative of these dark sinister forces. And then who's, well what is God doing with David? Well he's using kind of what we might call a foolish situation, at least from the human perspective, a foolish situation. This young boy with a sling going up, an experienced warrior, but God does this in order to demonstrate that in seeming weakness he overcomes what appears to be a greater strength.

Now when you kind of take that and you step back from it, you see, well, this is really illustrative of how God ultimately is leading to the salvation we have in Christ, where it uses the foolishness of the cross and suffering in order to overcome the dark, sinister forces of evil in this world. Now when you read the story of David and Goliath that way, you avoid moralizing, you avoid injecting yourself into the story, and you come away with kind of a thematic and a coherent

Chad Bird (39:03.374)

theological understanding of what God was teaching us in this story in the bigger picture of salvation history. Now, are we part of the story? Yeah, we are. We're the beneficiaries of the story. I mean, we're the ones who receive that salvation that God has won for us. But if we just kind of read it in a moralistic sort of way, we set ourselves up as the hero and we're overcoming, you know, whatever Goliath is in our lives. And that just ends up being kind of a...

a narcissistic reading of the Scriptures instead of a Christological reading of the Scriptures.

Caleb Gray (39:37.275)

Right. And I also feel as well like it, if that's the case, then when we go through the realities of life as well, we realize we're not always the hero. Like sometimes we get defeated and often we are on the tail end of pain and suffering and struggle. And I suppose it can really unravel one's faith if you sort of believe yourself to be a child of God. So therefore you need to be the hero of your story.

Because we live in a world of pain and struggle, right?

Chad Bird (40:08.75)

Yeah.

Chad Bird (40:12.654)

Yeah, we do. Sometimes we're the opposite of the hero, right? We're the anti -hero. We're the one who needs to be brought down, the one who needs to be humbled. And you're right, I mean, no one can live up to being the hero all the time. Because we're just setting ourselves up for failure. Because look at the book of Job. Job seemed to be a heroic character. He was righteous, but he lost everything.

Caleb Gray (40:23.962)

Thank you.

Chad Bird (40:41.326)

So whether it's through Job -like situations, whether it's through David -like situations where you end up wrecking your life. I mean life is full of suffering, it's full of loss, it's full of pain, it's full of a very non -heroic existence. And the good news of the gospel is that ultimately it doesn't matter who we are, whether we're the hero, the villain, whether we're on top or bottom, ultimately it's not about us, it's about Jesus and what he's accomplished for us. That becomes a source of our hope and that gives us

identity and joy in this life, no matter whether we're at the top or the bottom, whether having a great year or a terrible year, ultimately our confidence and our hope is external to us, it's in Christ, and that then becomes the foundation upon which we can build.

Caleb Gray (41:31.739)

I love that. Just sort of it draws back onto what we were discussing before in terms of being in an age where it's very technologically advanced, so we're in a digital age, and the need for the local church, but I'm wondering how, yeah, what discipleship sort of...

looks like in this current age where we have like, I'm doing a podcast and I'm hoping it encourages people in their journey with Christ. Otherwise, it's just pretty much useless conversations, but I know it's an encouragement and it sort of pushes people towards Christ. I know you're very involved in the digital space with content creation. So I'm wondering what does the...

Yeah, what does discipleship look like in this current space that we find ourselves?

Chad Bird (42:33.006)

Yeah, it's almost like anything that comes along the world, any new creation, there's positives and negatives. And I don't think I need to explain to anyone the negatives of the digital age. Spend five minutes on social media, you're like, okay, these are the negatives. I mean, yeah, everyone's aware of those. They're very obvious. But we can't let those overshadow all the positives.

Caleb Gray (42:48.667)

An hour's passed. Yeah, I'm not joking.

Chad Bird (42:59.342)

benefits that are there. It's a matter of how are we going to use the tools in such a way to bring people truth, to bring people hope, and to encourage people to engage in community. You know, what you're doing with the podcast is you're getting the Word of God out there, you're encouraging people, you're presenting a Krishna witness, and all of this is intended to not kind of take the place of the church, but actually to build up the body of Christ.

And it's the same with me. I never want people to think, for instance, that my Facebook page is like one big church. It's not. It's not a church at all. It's a place where people who are Christians, people who are interested in the Scriptures, come together digitally to learn, to discuss, sometimes to debate, to pray, all of those sorts of things. And that can be beneficial then to the broader body of Christ.

And the same with, you know, whether it's videos or podcasts or just kind of social media in general, all of these can be ways that the Spirit uses people in order to encourage each other to engage in apologetics or evangelism or whatever it is with the goal then not of taking the place of the concrete face -to -face gathering together of Christians, but rather to encourage that all the more. And so we're spreading the gospel, we're spreading hope, we're spreading...

the forgiveness that we have in Christ, then with the goal of this actually impacting our concrete lives, concrete callings, and then concrete local congregations so that we can gather together as disciples of Christ and learn from each other. So, again, this would be another tool that the Spirit uses in order to foster unity and to encourage...

Caleb Gray (44:51.614)

Awesome, yeah, I love that look of, yeah, it's like a redeemed lens that you can see technology used with, yeah, that gospel perspective, which is great. Awesome. Well, yeah, just aware of the time, don't want to hold you too much longer. So if people were wanting to find out more about yourself, the work you're involved in,

Chad Bird (45:03.63)

Yes, absolutely.

Caleb Gray (45:19.678)

find a copy of one of your books, where would you direct them to?

Chad Bird (45:26.318)

So all my books are available on Amazon. You can also, the nonprofit for which I work, 1517, also has an online bookstore and almost all my titles are available there as well. So just look for type in Chadbird books and I think six or seven books will open up there for you. If you're on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, I have channels on all of those.

I have a, on most of these I put out a daily video, which is a very short 90 -second, real length video, and then I usually will post something that's just kind of a reflection upon the scriptures on these channels as well. So there's a daily encouragement for you there. I have a couple of podcasts I'm doing on a weekly basis, one's 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, where we have for, goodness, almost 10 years have been working our way through the Old Testament. We're,

Caleb Gray (46:23.872)

Awesome.

Chad Bird (46:25.07)

We're almost, we're beginning Ecclesiastes and our next recording, so we've gone that far. But if you want a kind of a deep, long dive into the Old Testament, and kind of what you might think of as a podcast commentary on the entire Old Testament, then check out 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. But then also have a devotional podcast called Hidden Streams, where we go through the Psalms, and these are more kind of meditative devotional podcast formats. So anyway, just...

Do a Google search and you'll end up where you want to be.

Caleb Gray (46:58.784)

Beautiful. And do you have a favorite book of your own that you'd recommend?

Chad Bird (47:05.358)

of the one that I wrote? Yeah, I think that I'd have to say that this will probably always be my favorite just because it's my story, Night Driving, Notes from a Prodigal Soul. That was the book in which I kind of told the story that I was briefly recounting earlier in our podcast episode where I went from being a seminary professor to a truck driver. And so it's a story of God.

Caleb Gray (47:06.912)

Yeah, the one that you're... I know it's a... Yeah.

Chad Bird (47:31.278)

kind of breaking me down and putting me back together. It's been called my spiritual autobiography. So, Night Driving is the name of that book. That's, I think, probably always will be my favorite.

Caleb Gray (47:42.627)

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for your time, Chad. I've really enjoyed this conversation and yeah, just I've thoroughly enjoyed how easy it is and has been to chat with you and just how the conversation and how you've centered it around Jesus, regardless of what the different questions were. And yeah, so thanks so much for your time and just for encouraging myself and

listeners I'm sure in the Gospel and the work of Jesus.

Chad Bird (48:16.91)

I'm very glad to do it. Really enjoyed our conversation and keep up the fine work.