Book Review: “Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul,” by Chad Bird

Tales of fallen ministers have become all too common in our day, and nearly everyone reading this will have been affected personally in some way. Perhaps you know someone who has betrayed his calling or your church has been harmed by such a person. Perhaps you, yourself, are the person who fell into scandalous sin.

Chad Bird fell into the last of those categories. A rising star who joined his alma mater’s seminary faculty at age 31, Bird forfeited it all five years later as the result of marital infidelity. The moral failure resulted in the loss of his family, his teaching position, his ministry credentials, and his sense of psychological and spiritual well being. This book, which is both painful and hopeful, chronicles his journey.

A reader looking for titillating details about Bird’s moral failures will be disappointed. That is not to say that the author skirts those realities. However, he gives enough information so that the reader knows of the author’s failures both before and after his fall from ministry while focusing on what God has taught him over the course of the last decade. He describes a stew of conflicting thoughts and attitudes that will confound anyone who has not walked with someone that has had this experience. Bird can describe himself as so sinful that he knows that God will not forgive him, yet express anger at God for abandoning him. He can be angry at himself for betraying those closest to him while also being angry at his isolation. He can lament his wickedness that got him to this point and hide behind masks suggesting he is really better than what he has received.

Bird does not sugar coat his life, and the feelings expressed are often raw, as when he asks, “Where in the Hell are you, God,” or recounts his teenage daughter tearfully asking why he had cheated on her mother. While all of the discussion is poignant and helpful, a couple of the chapters stood out. Bird effectively writes about how the Psalms provocatively show how pained people honestly cry out to God. Pointing out that churches, just like our biblical forebears, are composed of disappointing people, Bird calls upon us to embrace the church as the right place for us when we recognize we also are disappointing. His commentary on the father’s initiating love in the parable of the prodigal son is moving and encourages hope.

While the book does offer hope through the various topics, it is not arranged chronologically. This is helpful, as the author did not seem to want to give the impression of a steady upward glide (“’The victorious Christian life’ is, quite frankly, a fairytale version of a life no one actually lives.”). Nonetheless a couple of themes emerge through the various topics. One regards the need to give up one’s sense of control of his own destiny and instead learn to look to God in dependence. The other is that God is found outside of ourselves in Christ, not by looking inward.

The church has struggled to know how to minister to those who have fallen. There aren’t that many resources available to those who have fallen into this type of sin. This book can serve both functions.

A New Year's Day Read

Last night, I began reading Rosaria Butterfield's The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, and I finished the page turner today. Ms. Butterfield's story has gotten a great deal of attention since its publication five years ago, as it recounts her conversion (she prefers the term "impact," as in a "train wreck") to Christianity in 1999. Until that time, she was a lesbian activist and women's studies professor in Syracuse, New York. Being claimed by Christ turned her world upside down. In addition to telling of her own conversion, Ms. Butterfield, both in this book and in other forums, has been forthright in drawing attention to the way that various modes of Christian public and private moralizing, including insulting language toward those with whom we have moral disagreements, is unhelpful to the Christian cause.

These are themes that I care deeply about, and I appreciated the way that the author addresses them here..

Having said all of that, I found the most moving parts of the book to be the concluding chapters, which summarize events after Ms. Butterfield's conversion, and that center on family life as the wife of a Presbyterian minister. She and her husband have adopted four children ranging in age from new born to teenager, and they have been foster parents for a number of others, as well. Her passion for adoption and fostering children, with all of the hopes and heartaches entailed, was inspiring, and I wish that this aspect of her story would get more attention. I heartily recommend it to others.

This was a great read.