This is the first in a two-part series dealing with the hiddenness of God. In the first talk, "Why God Hides," Ross discusses the interplay between “atonement” (covering) and “apocalypse” (uncovering) as a framework for understanding how God reveals himself…and why he hides. An article of the same title was recently published in Mere Orthodoxy. You can find more articles like this at Ross's Substack, PatientKingdom.com.

Ross hosts tech-entrepreneur-turned-polymath (and recent Christian convert) Jordan Hall for a conversation about the church, the commons, vocation, education, currency, community, & the future of civilization. To watch the video, or to find more content like this, visit PatientKingdom.com. Jordan Hall has a mind like few others. After a successful career as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur (retiring in his mid-thirties), he has since become a philosopher focusing on the relationship between ...

New Testament scholar Thomas Dixon joins us to talk about the surprising nature of divine wrath and election in Scripture, especially regarding the oft-misunderstood passage from St. Paul, Romans 9-11. Thomas and I begin the conversation by exploring the thesis of his new book, Paul and the Wrath: Divine Judgment and Mercy for Israel in Romans 9-11, that, in Paul’s thinking, as elsewhere in the Bible, divine wrath and mercy are not opposites. From there, we journey into questions of human and...

A short story wrestling with the problem of "divine violence" in the Bible, specifically the stoning of the Sabbath-breaker in Numbers 15. A man is caught picking up sticks on the Sabbath, and the Lord tells Moses to have the people stone him to death. How could such a thing possibly be ordained by God? How should Christians think about such passages? Yuval Noah Harari's TED Talk clip that I mentioned My Substack: Patient Kingdom

This episode is a wild ride. What began as a straightforward movie review of a Disney animated film turned into an in-depth theological/philosophical/mythical journey from Prometheus to Aladdin to Rumpelstiltskin to Midas to Faust to Frankenstein to Adam to Cain to Gilgamesh to Satan to Jesus to Garth Brooks. There's a lot going on here. But I promise it's worth it, it fits together. Give it a listen and tell me what you think."Let me say from the start, I'm not the kind of guy who hate-watch...

A Parish Manifesto is a vision for the future of our evangelical churches in America. Two central streams run throughout Scripture in seemingly opposite directions: holiness ("being set apart") and inclusion ("bringing together"). Ultimately, these two streams flow together in Christ and in his church. Yet, in practice, sometimes one stream takes center stage. Joseph's blessed relationship with Egypt at the end of the Book of Genesis was an inclusion movement. The 20th Century heyday of Eva...

Over the past few years, in our Virginia Beach community, I’ve been exploring the question, “What does faithful participation in the body of Christ look like? Where do we begin?” In response, we’ve formed some very simple collective practices: Scripture, Prayer, Fasting, Church, & Authority. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here. Quite the opposite. We’re trying to rediscover the wheel, as though somehow along the way, the wheels of our church fell off and got lost, and we’ve j...

“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” — Mark 11:24Prayer means asking. But asking is a more foreign concept to us than it might seem. Adults in the modern world don’t actually do a lot of asking. We press buttons and things appear. We take pills and things disappear. We wish for things. We work for things. But we don’t often ask, because…asking is a very vulnerable thing to do. The faith required to ask is differ...

Nobody wants to be religious anymore. Secular people often say they are “spiritual not religious.” Evangelicals often say, “Christianity is not a religion; it’s a relationship.” Sure, Christianity is about a relationship with God. But there's a reason the Bible is full of priests and temples, ceremonies and sacrifices, prayers and prophecies, covenants and commandments. Our relationship with God was meant to be a religious relationship. And it's time for Christians to become religious again. ...

Good news! Podcast episodes are back! This one's an introduction to what I've been thinking and writing about lately. It's taken from a recent post on my Substack newsletter, Patient Kingdom. If you'd like to read more or receive weekly posts to your inbox, please visit PatientKingdom.com and subscribe. Thanks!- Ross Byrd

Why do Christians fast? I was recently asked to record a podcast on that very question as our VB community embarks on a 21-day season of prayer and fasting. Hope you enjoy. You can find the written version of this talk on my new website PatientKingdom.com. Subscribe there to receive weekly articles from me in your inbox. Hope you enjoy.

What does it mean that Jesus says of Peter, "Upon this rock I will build my church?" Especially since only a few verses later Jesus rebukes Peter with the words, "Get behind me, Satan!"This is just a TEASER clip from the brand new VB Fellows Podcast, which will be featuring live content from some of my lectures for the VB Fellows Program.Check it out and subscribe here:VB Fellows Podcast on AppleVB Fellows Podcast on Spotify

First Q & A episode! Focusing on the theme of our problems with the God of the Old Testament. What do we make of the Old Testament's theme of religious violence (e.g. the wiping out of the Canaanites)? How should we think about salvation for people outside of Abraham's family before Christ? Why does God seem so intent on judging and punishing all the time? What is the purpose of God's choosing one specific people to the exclusion of everyone else? A couple of years ago, famous ...

A friend of mine, who knows I’m a sucker for reading things I don’t understand, sent me an article the other day entitled "Our Improbable Existence Is No Evidence For A Multiverse" from the online magazine Scientific American. I sort of understood it. But mainly it got me thinking about science and religion and especially about our ongoing relationship with what we do not know: what the Bible often calls "mystery" and what scientists sometimes calls "randomness." A thought: Without the a...

We used to live in a physical space and get certain things on the internet. Now we live on the internet and get certain things done in a physical space. In other words, the internet is de-incarnating our existence. It gives real life to fantasies, but no real way to embody those fantasies. So our modern lives are increasingly being lived in disembodied ways. And when we do actually try to embody our internet fantasies--as in the storming of the capitol--it’s just weird. And bad. And unsustain...

What does the North Pole have to do with Bethlehem? Why do I have a reindeer and an angel in my front yard right now? Why does the radio play “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” and “Away In A Manger” back to back? What is the meaning of the magic of our secular Christmas? Why do children everywhere find it hard to sleep on Christmas Eve? What are they anticipating? The coming of Santa or the coming of Jesus? The answer is...yes. In this (weird) episode, we do a deep dive into the unexpected...

Why doesn't God just show himself? Why is he so un-straightforward? Why would Jesus say, "Ask and you shall receive?" if he didn't mean it in a straightforward way? Why did God tell Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Didn't they at least deserve a clear explanation before they ruined the world? And besides, wouldn't he have wanted their eyes to be opened?Is Christianity a religion of clarity or confusion?Which is easier, to say to the paralytic "Your sins a...

How do we make sense of the 'deconstruction' phenomenon we're seeing right now? In short, people's worlds are getting bigger and the Christian faith of their teenage years is staying the same size. So...something's gotta give. What happens when the Christian story we received when we were younger turns out to be too small--too small for the complexities of everyday life, too small for the complexities of our own hearts? We have two obvious options: 1. Shrink your world so it fits yo...

Why did Jesus tell us to be perfect? Was the Garden of Eden perfect? What is meant by the word perfect? How much better can we actually get? What's to keep us from sinning in the New Jerusalem? In this podcast, Ross makes the unpopular case for (a kind of) perfectionism. Please send your comments and questions to rossebyrd(at)gmail.com.

A story by George MacDonald, adapted and abridged by Ross Byrd. In fairy tales, what is the nature of a curse and how is it broken? Is a curse placed upon someone against their will or is it willingly embraced from within? In order to be free, does the change have to come from within or must deliverance come from outside? In Christian terms, did our redemption happen "on the cross" or does it happen "in our hearts" when we repent and believe? This is an adaptation of George MacDonald's The Li...