can I edit these bits out?

It's confession time: I'd like to edit out parts of the Bible.

I don't suppose that's the "right" point of view, certainly not orthodox, but honestly, there are just bits I don't like and don't line up with my images of God.

When I pray, I tend to focus on the mercy and love of God, on God's demands that we live with justice, humility and mercy, on the grace of Jesus Christ and the open invitation to all to come and leave their burdens. This morning's lectionary readings bump right up against that comfortable imagery and confuse me greatly. I'd like to be a pacifist and am mostly so, fighting against my own tendencies to use words as weapons.

But then I read from Jeremiah 1, where God summons all the northern kingdoms to come and "pronounce judgement" on the people through war. And Psalm 58, in which the writer asks God to break the teeth of the wicked:

"Like a slug melting away as it moves along, like a stillborn child, may they not see the sun." "The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked. Then men will say, 'Surely the righteous still are rewarded; surely there is a God who judges the earth.'"

This makes me so uncomfortable. How can I reconcile these passages, these images of God with Jesus telling the disciples to turn the other cheek? Certainly both are valid images of God if we take the Bible to be normative for the Christian faith?

I fully realize that we need the entirety of the Bible to help us hear the whole story of God's people, and that we need the entirety of the Bible to help us know what we can of God (as little as that may be), but I have to say, I'd rather not have the war bits, the violence against enemies and such. I also realize that the uncomfortable parts are probably where God is teaching me and stretching my mind and heart, but sheesh. Isn't there an easier way? Perhaps I should do my personal devotional time at the theology school library, with a stack of commentaries by my side to help process things!