Skip to main content

I was angry about the blood and violence

My Bible: reasons to believe in the power of the Bible

Previous Next

'I was angry about the blood and violence in the Bible for many years. After my initial enthusiasm for the Bible, when I was 19, I felt that I had to defend it. But I felt that it was misogynistic, patriarchal, stuff worse than I believed before I knew Christ.

After a while I was just reading the Gospels and then just the Sermon on the Mount. That became my little sanctuary of Jesus where I could feel safe. The thing that brought me up with a start was seeing how Jesus, and then Paul, read the texts of horror.

In Romans 15.10-13 Paul is really saying that there is no more violence, no more blood lust. There is peace. For Jesus and Paul, there was a way of coming to terms with that horrific stuff, rather than backing away from it as I had done for decades.

I moved in 2002. It was a chance to start again. One of the things on my mind was whether I was going to go to church and go through the motions of Christianity. I was seeing contradictions between the life of Jesus and the life of the Church. I felt I wasn’t going to bother with Christianity.

But I was reading through Romans and it was this passage that tilted me back towards a way of reading the Bible with Jesus, of him taking me into the texts of terror, of seeing his compassion for the villagers and townspeople conquered by Joshua, of seeing him weeping with Hagar. That made the difference, and still does.'

Do you have a story to share? Email [email protected]

More Stories

Whenever I get confused, or my faith seems to be wavering, the passage that I remember is in John 4

Whenever I get confused, or my faith seems to be wavering, the passage that I remember is in John 4 when Jesus is talking to the woman at the well, and he says, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit...

I was about 19. Somebody had given me a book about people’s testimonies.

I was about 19. Somebody had given me a book about people’s testimonies. All of them had talked about the Holy Spirit coming into their lives and the difference that it made. I didn’t know how the Holy Spirit came into...

My dad died when I was 19

My dad died when I was 19. He got ill the week I went to uni and died the week after the first year. It was crazy. You don’t think you’re going to be in that situation.

I love the psalms and particularly Psalm 121

‘I love the psalms and particularly Psalm 121.1 which says, “I lift my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth.”

I had some dark times in my life when I lacked certainty

I had some dark times in my life when I lacked certainty and John 6.37 gave me the thought that I didn’t have to be perfect. I realised that, lo and behold, I wasn’t perfect.

I went through a period in the pandemic of quite poor mental health

I went through a period in the pandemic of quite poor mental health. I had previously been diagnosed with OCD and general anxiety. They were well-managed, but in the job I was in and with things at home, I became quite poorly...

Want to share how the Bible has impacted your life? Email [email protected]

Read the Bible icon Read the Bible