Driving from deep darkness into the Light

In Night Driving, former pastor and seminary teacher Chad Bird has given us a short, intense book, hard to put down. All told, this is a confessional memoir, but in that telling Bird regularly shifts genres like the gears on the Mack Truck he drove for some years after his affair and divorce.

Sometimes a cautionary moral tale, Driving travels deeply personal, often wrenching theological-doctrinal roads exploring sin and grace. Not content to leave this merely as a chronological narrative of sin, confession, forgiveness and restoration, Bird traverses landscapes of human lostness and eventual forgiveness, inviting readers into his passenger seat on his journeys, both physical and spiritual.

He first climbs hills of remorse after his affair. But on the downhill he recognizes that remorse is an attempt to win God’s favour. It leads not to true repentance, but down wicked hairpins of dangerous pride and self-deception. Thus after stopping like a runaway truck in a roadside runout, Bird finds that God is always ready to tow all sinners back on an honest, rigourous route of self-awareness and utter dependence on divine mercy.

Bird’s tortuous, always compelling route doesn’t lead to “‘the victorious Christian life’ . . . [which is] a fairytale version of a life no one actually lives.” So, it’s no wonder they “feel deceived by hope, tricked by God.” While God surely forgives sinners who go straight, they still suffer heartbreak, like a recovering alcoholic pastor whose church dumps him.

Bird drives home well-known, but usually not well-lived, points. On this fascinating pilgrimage, he follows roadmaps of classic Christian spiritual piety down new paths. Gradually recognizing he had long tried to live by “wielding absolute control,” Bird admits to being a “spiritual engineer . . . constructing a vast theological edifice . . . the whole of which was built on sand.” This amounts to an “if-then theology” of what he should do to make himself worthy of forgiveness: confess, take a low job feeding pigs – or driving a truck. Bird identifies throughout with the Prodigal Son in Jesus’ parable, who was loved fully, even though he considered himself a “conditional son,” dependent on himself to earn forgiveness.

In Bird’s convincing telling, God always makes unlikely friends of sinners like Abraham, Lot, David, Jacob, Peter, Jonah and their ilk. His point is that their ilk is also his own and ours. All need severe, divine mercy. The mercy that awakened Bird, saving him from his proud past, slogs along with Leonard Cohen’s bold insight: “Love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and broken ‘Hallelujah.’” That’s the painful pastoral grace that awakened and grabbed Bird from his past. Still, that process pushed Bird through terrible losses of family, home and career that he boldly, humbly describes.

Bird eventually finds Light beyond the darkness of his own betrayals of all he once held too dear before trusting God more fully. He wishes losses of family, home and career on no one, but recognizes that as a necessary part of his own path to reveal and destroy pride and self-sufficiency.

Stirringly, Bird cites an old lesson from St. Jerome who couldn’t rid himself of lust even after moving to a desert monastery. As a troubled married couple realizes they cannot repair themselves by moving to a new house, Bird recalls Jerome’s conclusion: “We can’t escape our problem, because it is not external to us. It is within us.” He offers a plain-spoken account of the misunderstood doctrine of Total Depravity at work in his own life. That is, Bird illustrates how we are not as bad as we can be, but can do nothing good ourselves without God. Romans 3:23’s declaration of all sinning and falling short of the glory of God is still the lot of all humanity.     

Thus we have a novel, accessible understanding of divine sovereignty. Without using the term, Bird implies that God – as the only Being who can forgive sin – is indeed sovereign, in the biblical sense, because sin is the root of all human and cosmic suffering. The only solution to such horror is submission, surrender to God. Bird’s memoir memorably reminds readers of that truth throughout and thus makes a fitting book for personal or group reflection.