Derek Flood > Quotes

“For Jesus, the correct interpretation of Scripture all comes down to how we love. The Bible was never intended to be our master, placing a burden on our back; it was intended to act as a servant, leading us to love God, others, and ourselves.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“Despite the fact that the Gospels are filled with page after page of Jesus confronting and rebuking the religious leaders of his day for their hurtful approach to Scripture, we have somehow adopted their approach to biblical interpretation characterized by unquestioning obedience, rather than the approach of Jesus characterized by a hermeneutic of faithful questioning.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“Scripture is only read right when it is read in a way that leads us to a Jesus-shaped life and a Jesus-shaped understanding of God’s heart.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“These moral conclusions are easy to make. The real problem is that many of us have been systematically taught in church to shut off our brains and conscience when we read the Bible. In fact, it is commonly taught that we are utterly incapable of making sound moral judgments on our own. Our hearts are “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9, KJV). We are therefore admonished to “lean not on thine own understanding” (Prov 3:5, KJV), because “God’s ways are higher than our ways” (Isa 55:9).41 These verses are all marshaled to appeal to the narrative of unquestioning obedience, and are used to get us to not question moral atrocity in the Bible and instead defend it. The Bible says so; that settles it. End of discussion, end of thought, end of conscience.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“We can of course argue over what the Bible says about homosexuality, but one thing is utterly clear: Jesus teaches us to love people, not to hate them, not to make them feel hated, and not to stand by while that is happening. From the perspective of the New Testament there simply is no room for doubt on this. We know exactly where Jesus stands in this regard. He stands on the side of the least, the condemned, the vulnerable.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“Of all sins, the sin of abusive authority is particularly dangerous because it masquerades as righteousness, claiming to speak for God.”
― Derek Flood, Healing the Gospel: A Radical Vision for Grace, Justice, and the Cross

“in faithfully acting to restore people, the Gospel writers tell us, Jesus continually appeared in the eyes of the religious leaders around him to be breaking God’s laws. Jesus was not particularly concerned with this, and instead was infinitely more concerned with caring for the least, even if this meant his reputation became one of a “blasphemer” and “law breaker” in the eyes of the religious authorities.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“There is frankly no other theme that made Jesus quite as furious as seeing people hurt in the name of religion.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“Learning to read the Bible like Jesus did means being empowered to faithfully question in the name of compassion. It likewise means learning to read the Bible as morally responsible adults, aware of our own limitations. Because in the final analysis, faith is not about certainty; faith is about humility and trust.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“The key difference between Jesus and the Pharisees described in the Gospel accounts is in which narratives they chose to embrace. Similarly, the question for us is not whether or not we will choose, but rather which narratives we choose to embrace, and how will we choose them?”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“Christ has come to redeem us from the curse of the retributive principle.”
― Derek Flood, Healing the Gospel: A Radical Vision for Grace, Justice, and the Cross

“The incarnation is God’s shocking “Yes!” to fallen humanity. The resurrection is God’s defiant “No!” to sin and death, both in term of the hurt done to us and the hurt we do.”
― Derek Flood, Healing the Gospel: A Radical Vision for Grace, Justice, and the Cross

“We as humans are not infallible. But for precisely this reason we need to continue to seek and continue to question. This is foundational to the scientific method itself which does not claim to have all the answers, but rather operates by a methodology that continually seeks to grow and ask and look. It is good to think. It is good to question in the name of compassion. It is good to have a morality rooted in life and our shared human experience. These are essential elements of a healthy faith.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“To continue on a course we know to be harmful, simply because “the Bible says so” is morally irresponsible. The way of faithful questioning, of looking at the fruits, is how we can ensure that Scripture is read in such a way as to lead us to love. That involves our always seeking, always reforming, always growing in Christ-shaped love. This is an approach to Scripture that is rooted in life, rather than rooted in a text. Scripture is not our master, Jesus is, and the role of Scripture is to serve a servant function leading us to Christ.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“Again, as stated above, if we recognize that our particular interpretation and application of Scripture is leading to observable harm, this necessarily means that we need to stop and reassess our course. Scripture, as Jesus read it, needs to lead us to love God, others, and ourselves. If we find that it is leading instead to causing harm then we are getting it wrong.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“To understand the New Testament we need to understand that religious past, in order to recognize what it is protesting against. Properly interpreting the New Testament - not as detached scholars but as followers of Jesus and his way - thus involves recognizing the redemptive trajectory it sets away from religious violence, and then continuing to develop and move forward along that same trajectory ourselves. In other words, we cannot stop at the place the New Testament got to, but must recognize where it was headed.

A clear example of this can be seen in the institution of slavery: The New Testament takes major steps away from slavery, encouraging slaves to gain their freedom if possible (1 Cor 7:21), counseling masters to treat their slaves as Christ treats them (Eph 6:9), and, most significantly, declaring that in Christ there is “no slave or free,” that is, no concept of class or superiority (Gal 3:28).

While we can recognize here a movement away from slavery that set a trajectory which would eventually lead to the complete abolition of the institution of slavery centuries later, we do not see the New Testament directly condemning slavery or calling for its abolishment. Masters are not told to give up their slaves as Christians, but simply to treat them well. Slaves are not encouraged to participate in an “underground railroad” to gain their freedom, but instead are told to submit - even in the face of the cruelty, oppression, and violence that characterized slavery in the ancient Greco-Roman world at the time.

If we read the New Testament as a storehouse of eternal principles, representing a “frozen in time” ethic, where we can simply flip open a page and find what the timeless “biblical” view on any particular issue is - as so many people read the Bible today - then we would need to conclude that the institution of slavery has God’s approval in the New Testament, and that we should therefore support and maintain it today. This is in fact exactly how many American slave-owning Christians did read the Bible in the past. Yet all of us would agree today that slavery is immoral.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“For Jesus, questioning religious violence in ourselves, in our faith, and in our sacred text is a moral imperative. Compassion and character compel us to question, and that questioning in the name of love is modeled for us in Scripture itself. As Old Testament scholar Terence Fretheim puts it, “An inner-biblical warrant exists for the people of God to raise questions.”19”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“the priority of Jesus was instead focused on loving and caring for people in need. That is, the way Jesus understood faithfulness to Scripture was that it should lead to love.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“There is nothing wrong with correctly understanding what a text is saying. The problem is when this focus on correct interpretation becomes primary, and love takes a backseat, the focus being placed on “being right” and “orthodox” at the expense of love.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“The Bible was never intended to be our master, placing a burden on our back; it was intended to act as a servant, leading us to love God, others, and ourselves. When we read it in a way that leads to the opposite of this, we get it wrong.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“The primary way Jesus taught was by dramatic provocation. He speaks in ironic riddles that tell us to do seemingly absurd things like dying in order to live, and loving the people we hate. Jesus is constantly pulling the rug out from under us—saying things that are intended to shock, to throw us off balance.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“Suffering is not to be affirmed as God’s will, it is to be opposed in the name of love.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“Reading on a trajectory thus means recognizing that what we find in the New Testament is not a final unchangeable eternal ethic, but rather the first major concrete steps away from the dominant religious and political narrative which understood oppression and violence as virtuous, and towards a better way rooted in compassion.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“The central aim of Scripture, as Jesus saw it, was to lead us to love.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“Many, if not most first-century Jews expected the messiah to be a man of war, and for the liberation to come through violent force. We see this reflected in the disciples’ own expectations for Jesus. Jesus, however, did not come to take life, but to give his own life. The gospel is indeed about the messiah’s “victory” over evil and injustice, but that messianic victory does not come through violent conquest and military force, but through restoration and healing.”
― Derek Flood, Healing the Gospel: A Radical Vision for Grace, Justice, and the Cross

“The priority of Jesus was not on defending a text, it was on defending people—in particular defending the victims of religious violence and abuse. Jesus did this even though it meant coming into direct conflict with the religious leaders of his day and their interpretation of Scripture.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“The simple fact is, all the so-called “heresies” throughout history pale in comparison to the hurtful ways that people have been ostracized, threatened, and wounded by those who act as the champions of so-called orthodoxy. The fact that this continues today in this country (albeit without physical violence) is a sad testament to the deadly grip of the authoritarian narrative of unquestioning obedience that still drives much of religious belief in America.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“So while it is true that he is thus fulfilling the law in the sense of bringing it to its ultimate goal, the way he is doing this is by overturning the very system of retributive justice embodied in the law, and replacing it with the superior way of God’s restorative justice rooted in the enemy love that Jesus came to demonstrate with his teaching and life.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did

“In other words, it is not the death of Jesus in itself, but rather the obedience of Jesus—his faithfulness to love—that acts to make us holy.”
― Derek Flood, Healing the Gospel: A Radical Vision for Grace, Justice, and the Cross

“likes hearing a message of grace toward ourselves, but we don’t so much like hearing a message of grace for our enemies.”
― Derek Flood, Disarming Scripture: Cherry-Picking Liberals, Violence-Loving Conservatives, and Why We All Need to Learn to Read the Bible Like Jesus Did