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Why I love reading about terrible people in the Bible.
I grew up in the church and can so distinctly remember the feeling that I had to be perfect to be a Christian. Sadly, this was reinforced by the "Bible hero" mentality of Sunday school at the church I grew up in. Every Sunday morning, we would faithfully be at the church and I would listen to another story of a Biblical hero. Men and women who did incredible things with God's power behind them. David slew the giant and defended his sheep from lions and bears. He was courageous like no one else was. Moses was faithful because he led the people out of Egypt and was the one who brought forth the plagues onto the evil Pharaoh. The book of Judges was full of even more mythic level heroes. Samson took on armies by himself, while Gideon led a small group of men to take on an army with the odds against them.
These were the Biblical characters I was fed for years. These were the people that I was shown I ought to be like. These people are so far removed from reality that trying to be like them is simply impossible. They're recorded in history thousands of years later because of that fact. God did something in their lives that He has very rarely done since.
I haven't seen a news report saying, "Man splits sea in two, walks on dry ground". There's not even clickbait that could be similar to Bible stories. I've never seen something online, "Crazed man builds giant boat, why he did it is even crazier."
These kinds of Biblical events are recorded because they were so dependent on the supernatural.
And we force feed these events, exclusively, to people and expect them to have a grounded and realistic view of God and life itself.
Over the past few years, I've developed a real love for the other people in the Bible. I love the prostitutes, thieves, and idiots in the Bible. When I was in middle school, I had a porn addiction. It's something that plagued a large portion of my life. I thought that God could never use me, let alone love me. That's when I was first introduced to the story of Rahab the prostitute. Rahab was in every sense, a bad person. She was one of the "bad guys", and sold herself for sex. Not someone you'd want to highlight. And yet, she does incredible things for a couple of spies and honors God, and her family is saved from the oncoming destruction of her city. I can remember hearing this story and weeping because I thought, "If God can use a prostitute, then he can use a porn addict." This was the moment I felt my call to vocational ministry.
Since then, I've found a real joy in reading stories of people who were awful in the Bible. 2 Chronicles 33 tells the story of King Manasseh. He was known for building idols in the temple of God. The very place that God was literally on earth, Manasseh put up idols. After God understandably got pretty upset, Manasseh was captured as a POW. But, he realized what he had done wrong and God made him king again, and Manasseh did incredible things for his country Judah.
If you want to get a real picture of what a life with God is really like, go read about some of these terrible people in the Bible. Because it will help you see, you don't have to be perfect, often times, you don't even have to be good. You only have to be trusting, and trying to do better.