Hello, I struggle to accept the bible and parts of it that seem terrible, cruel and evil to me. There are several parts in the bible referring to the ownership of slaves, having multiple wives and sacrificing (killing in the name of God)
I'm sure if we acted like this today we would end up in Jail so can someone please explain to me why these things are accepted as holy scripture?
What you are saying about scripture is why the Lord brought the dead sea scrolls to our attention, now. They were hidden in plain sight many hundred years.
The bible uses people to explain His principle who lived as much as 4,000 years before us. People who lived only 500 years ago had different thoughts, it was a different culture. This is 4,000! Imagine some of the writing we do today, talking of the man in the moon, go fly a kite, or pie in the sky. Do you think people 4,000 years from now would understand? Yet there are comparable saying in OT scripture. Through men who have studied these findings, they are learning the principles of our God and that those principles are true for us today.
When we understand, we learn that any time man sins, such as having multiple wives, there is a payment for the sin. We also learn that God always offers grace. If we look at David, we can see it clearly. He would fall into sin and suffer terribly, but through repentance and faith in the Lord he was given grace.
You can now learn that blood sacrifice was a shadow of Christ to stop as soon as Christ was crucified. A shadow is a reflection of something real. You learn that under God, slaves became part of the family. You learn that nothing God orders is done outside of love for God's people, for their eternal life and for their welfare.