Transcript
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Pull up a chair across the counter your one-stop shop for a variety of perspectives around Jesus and Christianity.
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I'm Grant Lockridge and I'm here with my co-host, jared Tafta, and today we are interviewing Chad Bird.
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Chad is a podcast guy.
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He is a scholar in residence at 1517.
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So my first question for you would be what is 1517?
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You know, I get asked that question a lot.
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Well, it's a good question.
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I mean.
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So the typical guess that people have is that like a Bible chapter and verse.
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Because I teach the Bible, the answer is well, no, that'd be kind of cool too.
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It's taken from the year the Protestant Reformation began.
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Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses on the church door on October 31st 1517.
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That's where we get our name from.
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Most of the people in my organization, which is a Christian nonprofit, are connected with, deeply connected with the Reformation heritage.
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So most of us are in the Lutheran tradition, although at our events we have people speaking from their Episcopalians or Anglicans or Presbyterians, their Reformed Baptists.
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You know Lutherans just kind of across the board.
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But that's where the name comes from.
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Is that year the Reformation began?
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Cool, and what kind of what part do you play in that kind of organization?
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Well, we were joking before we started recording that the title they gave me is Scholar in Residence, so I petitioned for Scholar in Texas when they gave the title out but, cause.
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Yeah, just they didn't go for it.
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So I I'm a scholar in residence, even though my residence is in Texas, the organization is primarily in California, but yeah, I mean so fancy title.
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Basically what I do is I produce a lot of content for the organization.
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I write about a book a year for them, so I started full time with them late in 2019.
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And so I've done a book a year for them about oh, I think it's averaging like 14 times a year, I suppose something like that, so close to 15 times a year across the country, sometimes internationally.
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And then a lot of what I do is just producing podcasts.
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I got three different podcasts that I'm part of.
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One is a finished it's a completed podcast, like surveys of the whole Bible, and the other two are ongoing podcasts.
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So I'll record a couple of those episodes per week and then I do daily videos on the Bible.
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And then I do a lot of online stuff.
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So on my Facebook page I'll post like a textual kind of post and a video video every day.
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So I'm just a a content producer in lots of different formats, whether it's podcast videos or book writing or just little short article blog type writing Sounds like a lot man.
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Yeah, they keep me busy, yeah, and so I'm a, I'm 54 and I think every year that I live I sleep less, and not by choice.
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So my body is now at the stage where, if it gets six hours of sleep a night, it's like okay, time to get up.
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So I'm I'm up early and I've always been an early riser, so I'll get up around to do my thing for the day and then I'll head back to work and get as much done as I can.
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But I love what I do, which is great, because that way it's work for sure, and everybody has bad work days, no matter how much they love their job.
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But for the most part I really love what I do.
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So it doesn't feel like it's just oh, I got to go to work, I got to do this kind of stuff.
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It's more like I love this stuff.
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So that really transforms my understanding of what I do, because I love what I do.
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It's a passion, but I also think it's what God has placed me in, so that just gives a whole different meaning to the work.
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How did you stuff like that?
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Yeah.
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So I wouldn't recommend anybody taking the exact course that I took to get to where I'm at there you go and I'll tell you why.
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I'll give you the really, really brief reason.
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So I began wanting to go into the ministry, which I did.
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I went to seminary, college, four years of seminary, got a couple of master's degrees, and then I served in a church as a pastor.
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I'm giving you this short version here.
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So I served as a pastor for a few years and then I was also, then, after that, I taught at the seminary, taught Hebrew, old Testament classes, and so I did that for a number of years.
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And then, you know, once I kind of had this was my mid 30s, so once I kind of had life everywhere, kind of where I wanted it to be, I thought, you know, what would be a good thing would be to to blow up everything that you've accomplished.
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At this point, yeah.
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Yeah, and then and then like maybe start over and it take 10 or 15 years to to recover.
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So, uh, unwisely, that is the decision that I made.
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Uh, uh, I'll spare you all the gory details, but yeah, I just, I blew up my marriage, my career, my job, everything.
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So this is I'm like I said I'm 54, this is 20 years ago and, uh, lost everything, everything.
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Only thing I still had were my, my two kids, uh, and even then it was just seeing them every couple of days per week.
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So, lost everything and I wanted to live where my kids were.
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So I had to, you know, climbing ladder, all that kind of stuff to being a truck driver in the oil fields of Texas, cause that was the only job I could find that would allow me to live where my kids were.
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So, within a year, I went from being a you know having everything together and seminary professor and all that kind of stuff, to being everything together and seminary professor and all that kind of stuff, to being, you know, guy wears a seal toe boots and a hard hat and driving the night shift in the, uh, the back roads of Texas.
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But uh, that was the beginning.
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That, you know, I think it's Louie, the more the Western writer has this quote.
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He says something like that will come a point where you come to the end.
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He says something like there will come a point where you come to the end, that will be the beginning.
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It's kind of what it was for me.
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So when I came to that end point and hit bottom and stayed on bottom for a while, that was really the point where God began putting me back together very slowly and in a very different sort of way for me and over time got me to where I actually had a very healthy relationship with God again.
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I remarried to my wife Stacy.
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This was 11 years ago and around that time I know this is a long answer to your question, but around that time is when I started writing again, just blogging and then some publishers reached out to me and I got some book contracts and got connected with the organization 1517 that I work for now and eventually then they hired me on full time.
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So I kind of went from, you know, like everything going great to everything going terrible, to then God undoing me, redoing me and eventually putting me in a position where this is why I didn't recommend this where I can draw upon my academic and pastoral background, but I can also draw upon what I call my PhD in the School of Hard Knocks, where I've got a lot of scars from what I did, a lot of scars from I lost my son a couple years ago.
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I got that, just that life-shattering loss, and so I draw upon my personal experiences as well as my pastoral and academic experiences.
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I try and blend all that together in such a way that actually communicates to people wherever they're at in their spiritual life.
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What was your son's name?
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Luke.
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What happened?
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He was, uh, as he's 21 years old, so this is back in the summer of 22.
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He, um, he was at the United States Naval Academy, uh, which, which is his dream he, he was at the United States Naval Academy, which, which is his dream he had.
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So in high school he got.
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He found his two passions in high school wrestling and ROTC loved both.
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He was, he's got.
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He was one of these kids where, like if it didn't, if it didn't hurt, or push you beyond the limits, he didn't really want to do it or push you beyond the limits, he didn't really want to do it.
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That was fun for him.
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So I remember I think it was his 19th or 20th.
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It must've been his 19th birthday.
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He celebrated it by getting up at like two or three in the morning and walking 19 miles.
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That's wild, it's kind of the kid he was.
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So he set his sights on getting into the academy.
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So he set his sights on getting into the academy, which is no small feat.
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I mean.
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That takes a lot and he did.
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He was the battalion commander of his ROTC.
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His senior year he won international recognition.
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Just one of those kind of kids that you know very much an overachiever, very much driven 110%.
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And so he ended up at the Naval Academy and then he uh was awarded the chance to study abroad in Chile for a year.
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So he did, or semester he.
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He headed down there and uh got there early in the summer and he'd been there, I think, maybe a month and a half before the accident happened.
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He was out hiking close to a huge waterfall in Chile and taking pictures.
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He was there with another student, so he wasn't alone, thankfully.
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But he got too close to the edge and the ground gave way.
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He fell to his death.
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Dang edge and the ground gave way he.
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He fell to his death.
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So yeah, it was uh you know, the worst fear any parent has is to go through something like that, and it was complicated by the fact, you know, he's, he's in chile and I don't know if you've ever known someone who lost a loved one.
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Oh, you know, internationally it's.
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It's a huge headache to get them home.
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So it took us three weeks.
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Even with, like you know, everybody, everything, everybody, from our uh, the top brass, the military, to our senators, to uh people, americans in Chile trying to, you know, speed things up, it still took us three weeks to get his body home.
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So it was a very surreal time in my life, a lot of kind of foggy memories, honestly, of those weeks and months after that.
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But yeah, it was, of course, one of those losses in life that reshapes you in ways that nobody wants, but God still uses that to do His kind of work in your life.
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That's painful but at the same time, that bears fruit in the sense of it refocusing you upon those things which are most important.
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What year was that?
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2022.
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2022.
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Yeah, so we're coming up on.
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It'll be july, will be the two-year, two-year anniversary of his loss july.
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What a few years ago I think we're coming up on.
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I think we just passed five years.
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Mom, wife's brother, um, at a young age, in his 20s, actually had an accident and fell and there was other details involved, but lost him and yeah, just the losing of a son, what you mentioned like the worst fear a parent can imagine it's.
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We've learned so much about trauma and grief and the fact that there's no time on that healing process and nobody grieves the same way.
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And, yeah, we just passed his birthday a little while back.
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We have photos of my first son His name is Alex of holding our first son and it began a journey of my wife and I as well in the midst of a journey of the Lord reshaping us.
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You mentioned earlier that quote.
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There will be a point when you come to the end and that will be the beginning.
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And there's one author, I think, wrote a book I I haven't read it, but it was talking about the idea of like the j curve, the idea that you, if you think of a j, you think you've come to a bottom and then a trap door opens and then it curves again and you think you've come to a bottom and a trap door opens and you think you've come to a bottom and a trap door opens and, uh, saint john of the cross called what you were talking about.
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I think I'm getting this quote right.
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Actually, I have a resident uh, what's this?
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What is he?
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A resident theologian?
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he's a scholar in residence okay, okay, so I have a friend uh named chad that I just met.
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He's a scholar in residence who can verify whether or not this is saint john of the cross, uh, but he said I think he called it the dark night of the soul, um, and and talked about, like this idea of coming to endings.
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But the long point of what I am talking about is like I feel like there are kind of multiple dark nights of the soul or multiple endings, and I see a man before me that's not put together but is hopefully held together in my opinion.
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So where, where do you find joy now, maybe that's not the right word when do you find life in your hope?
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That is not self-defeatist.
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Yeah, that's a really good question.
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Today I'll give you an answer and tomorrow maybe it's a little bit different answer, but I do think there's some continuity that I've been able to discern over over time.
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So I guess let me let me preface my answer by saying that you know, one of the things I discovered right away that I never would.
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There's a lot of things I found out that I never would have anticipated.
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Right.
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Knowing you're discovering, and one is that when you lose someone young this is a quote from a book I read years ago called the Undertaking, written by an undertaker, but the Undertaking, and he had a chapter where he talks about how, when you bury the old, you bury the past.
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When you bury the young, you bury the future.
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And so true, because what I've discovered is that you have to reconfigure psychologically your entire understanding of what your future is going to be like, because you have, when it's a child, you kind of have unconsciously planned their future.
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You know this is going to happen then, that, then probably this and this he's going to graduate, he's going to find out where he's going to serve, he's going to get married, he's going to have kids, you're going to have grandkids, he's going to bury you one of these days, he's going to bury you one of these days, and that entire future is now not a reality.
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It had been a firm reality and now it's it's gone, so it didn't.
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You have to, almost like your brain has to be completely rewired to think about the future now, because what you thought was the future is no longer going to be.
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Well, then that and this is kind of leading into an answer to your question.
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That then leads to well, what is the future?
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And one of the things that gives me life in the midst of all of this, and joy and hope, is that I know and this is a quote from uh, what's his name?
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Oh, good grief.
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Uh, cs Lewis loved his stuff.
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It'll come to me in a minute, but he talks about how this life is.
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Did you come up with it?
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He wrote fiction nonfiction.
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Oh my gosh, it's like it'll come to me in a second.
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He wrote the fairy tale fictions.
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Yes, yes, yes, yeah.
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So one of us will think of it in a minute, but anyway he's got this great image.
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It was in a letter he wrote to a widow.
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He described this life as the front porch to our father's home Very small front porches are and they're just there, basically, so that you are given a temporary space by which to leave wherever you were, to enter into the front door of the father's house.
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To enter into the front door of the Father's house, and that fits with the Bible's picture of this life.
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You know where it's, as the flowers of the field or the grass or the shadow.
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It uses all these metaphors for the very kind of ephemeral nature of this life.
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So that understanding of the brevity of life has really been brought home to me by this and the understanding that really this life is a preparation.
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It's important, very important, but it's also a preparation for life that will never end.
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Uh, you know, cs lewis did say once we've we've never met a person that will not live forever in one way or another, and so this life is a preparation for that, and so I look forward to that reunion that I will have with my son in a life that will never end, and I know that, yeah, however long the Lord gives me, you know, whether it's a day or a few more decades that, in the light of eternity, will seem but a drop in the bucket compared to the life that we will share in the future.
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So I definitely anchor my hope and my joy into that, but at the same time, that's future oriented.
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The same time, even in the present, I use my memory of Luke as an inspiration to live in such a way as to honor his memory and to carry forward on what I know he would want me to do, which is to continue being faithful in my callings, to continue appointing people to the life that we have in Christ, to continue giving my all in serving other people.
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I think it was Luke's graduation speech from high school where he said uh, the most important people in our lives are those that we can look at and say that my life, my life, is better because of you.
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Be that person.
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So, that's what I, that's what I try to do.
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So that's the present focus.
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And then there's also the past, because I thank God that I have a lot of great memories with Luke.
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You know we had a fantastic relationship.
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We did hikes together, we worked out together every week.
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We always stayed close, and so I'm grateful that I can, on those bad days, drop on those good memories as a way of helping me to bear up.
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If it's a really bad day, I can think back to those good times that we had together, and that helps me to maneuver those days when I'm ambushed by grief, or just the really hard days, like anniversaries and birthdays and basically any holiday where you would expect him to be there and he's not.
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So those are some of the ways I find life and hope in the midst of everything else that goes on.
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That's beautiful man, but hit me with that quote one more time, Not the.
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I think we were talking about George McDonald, maybe.
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I had to Google.
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Yeah, yeah, yes, yes, I had george, but I couldn't think of it.
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I was like irish guy.
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I don't.
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I don't know who we're talking about, but I did google it, so I'm going, george mcdonald yep, but um, what was that quote that you, your son, said in his graduation speech?
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Because that's like he said some of the best things it was great.
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Yeah, he said the most important people in our lives are those that we can look at and say my life is better because of you be that person that's great.
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So yeah, and end it there, so we're good on that.
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That's it.
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It's a mic drop moment, for sure yeah, that's literally so good that's so yeah, well, and how he lived after that, it is it's pretty amazing too.
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I mean he really was one of those just looking for others way to help others.
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You know, very driven uh, but in a good way.
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He wanted to be, he wanted to excel in order to be able to be of service to other people.
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I mean that's he wanted to be.
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He wanted to excel in order to be able to be of service to other people.
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I mean that's.
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He went to the military with that, with that idea in mind.
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You know he was there as, like we say you know, thank you for your service.
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He was there to serve uh, always looking out for for other people.
00:21:35.578 --> 00:21:46.761
So he did, he didn't just say it, he embodied it too he did, he didn't just say it, he embodied it too.
00:21:46.842 --> 00:21:47.143
Love it.
00:21:47.143 --> 00:21:47.644
That's, that's powerful.
00:21:47.644 --> 00:21:48.005
That that's huge.
00:21:48.005 --> 00:21:49.710
Yeah, yeah, he's one of those guys with a uh what are we?
00:21:49.710 --> 00:22:11.654
Old head on young shoulders, or however that saying goes he uh just kind of had one of those, those personalities, and so grateful for the 21 years we had with him and for the impact that he had during those uh years as well yeah what has the embodiment of that spirit?
00:22:12.997 --> 00:22:22.669
how has the embodiment of that spirit brought new life to your efforts in others?
00:22:23.810 --> 00:22:32.112
Yeah, one of the things I wanted to do and I and strangely enough, this was one of the more coherent, logical, conscious decisions I made early on.
00:22:32.112 --> 00:22:35.888
You know so much of, as you and your family probably probably experienced too.
00:22:35.888 --> 00:22:44.946
Uh, you know so much as just kind of this, your loss, this miasma of grief where it's really difficult to think and make decisions, and everything else.
00:22:44.946 --> 00:23:07.444
But early on I I knew that I wanted to honor Luke's memory by kind of reinvigorating what I do and using I mean it was I was already kind of doing what I had already been doing, but even more um, I mean what, what's the right word?
00:23:07.444 --> 00:23:12.726
Doing it even with, with even even greater, uh, zeal and focus.
00:23:12.726 --> 00:23:14.317
I wanted to.
00:23:15.019 --> 00:23:26.767
I guess I don't know if I've ever put it this way, but in my head I was like you know what I want to do, what I do in teaching and and writing, and focusing upon the scriptures and Jesus and what he did for us.
00:23:26.767 --> 00:23:32.488
I want to do everything I can to make sure that Luke has as much company as possible in heaven.
00:23:32.488 --> 00:23:40.566
I want to keep people focused on Jesus.
00:23:40.566 --> 00:23:44.846
I want them to think of this life as a front porch to our Father's home.
00:23:44.846 --> 00:24:14.922
I want people to, one of these days, meet Luke and say something like one of the impacts that you had was on your dad, who once said this, once said this or once wrote this or whatever it might have been, and and that was what God used to help me to know you better and to to know Christ better, and to and to love him and and all of that.
00:24:14.981 --> 00:24:16.104
So I want.
00:24:16.104 --> 00:24:27.970
That's one of the one of the ways I want to always honor his memory is by focusing upon the one that he's with now, focusing on Christ pointing people toward him.
00:24:29.236 --> 00:24:29.936
I just had this.
00:24:29.936 --> 00:24:36.006
This doesn't feel morbid to me, but don't take offense, but I just had this image of you.
00:24:36.006 --> 00:24:39.711
Like you know, when you lose someone there's birthdays, you can't celebrate.
00:24:39.711 --> 00:24:42.935
Like you know, when you lose someone there's birthdays, you can't celebrate there's, you miss those opportunities.
00:24:42.935 --> 00:25:03.183
And I had this image of you just like filling the stands, like filling the room for every birthday that you're going to get to celebrate with Luke, with everybody possible, just like, bro, we're going to have so many people, we're going to celebrate so hard, we're going to have so many people, we're going to celebrate so hard.
00:25:03.183 --> 00:25:16.361
And when you said that it's just like you have no idea the parties that we're going to have because of the impact that Luke has had on you, and then you are holding fast too, yeah, that's beautiful.
00:25:17.935 --> 00:25:30.468
I'm thinking of the Hebrews 13, I think, where he says you know, we have this kingdom that cannot be shaken, and he talks about I just hear it being like get ready to bring your ticket to the Feastal Gathering.
00:25:30.468 --> 00:25:36.646
Like don't lose that pass, you know, don't give it up for a daggum bowl of soup, like let's go.
00:25:36.646 --> 00:25:42.644
I'm sure you can say what I just said in a very academic way.
00:25:42.705 --> 00:25:43.567
No, I love it.
00:25:43.567 --> 00:25:45.618
That's exactly right.
00:25:45.618 --> 00:25:47.645
Yeah yeah, here's this.
00:25:47.645 --> 00:25:50.304
The feast is prepared, so pull up a chair.
00:25:50.304 --> 00:25:53.503
Yeah, I love that the more the merrier.
00:25:53.503 --> 00:26:03.484
In the Gospels it says you know, there's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, or the angels of God rejoicing over one sinner who repents.
00:26:03.484 --> 00:26:15.211
So I want there to be constant applause in heaven over people who are coming to faith and trusting in Christ and being given that feast, that seat at the table.
00:26:15.672 --> 00:26:15.832
Yeah.
00:26:17.237 --> 00:26:33.326
This is going to sound strange, but a lot of things I say sound strange, but sometimes I feel like at least in my life personally I feel that I can experience the delight of the Spirit of God, almost like a string.
00:26:34.856 --> 00:26:35.900
When a string is plucked.
00:26:35.900 --> 00:26:51.248
There's this resonance, and sometimes there's just things that are said, or often with words or story or song, that it just I don't know why, but it feels like this just resonance of delight.
00:26:51.248 --> 00:27:34.486
And when you, when you said you know the quote from luke about be that person, um, yeah, the most important people in life are the ones we can look to and say my life is better because of you be that person, like and then later you know you said that you wanted to do everything I can to make sure that Luke has as much company as possible Like I just felt, I just want to honor the Holy spirit and say, like I just felt such delight, like just incredible delight, those two sentiments, um, because the son got his, you know, got that spirit from his father in heaven, but also like there's a transference to you of your hopes coming aligned and being the same.
00:27:34.486 --> 00:27:37.020
So that's beautiful, yeah.
00:27:38.926 --> 00:27:42.596
I just thank God for moments like that, where the Spirit does that, you know.
