Many years ago I read the Book of Genesis in a college literature class and I thought of it primarily as mythology that influenced many writers throughout the ages. I had a secular explanation for why so many ancient civilizations have a story about a great flood. It was interesting to come back to the text after all these years and being willing to entertain that there is actual history in the words.
Coming from the Gospel to the books of Moses was a sharp contrast for me. I went from finding everything in the words extremely relatable to struggling to identify with the writers of the book.
For example, how am I supposed to relate with Abraham, a supposedly moral man whose people are chosen by God, that uses his wife (who is also his sister) to trick people into having to pay him restitution for inviting his wife into their house? How am I supposed to relate with Jews being the world's first ethnic supremacists? I'm going to be completely honest and admit that I just don't.
I really like Jesus Christ, who happened to be a Jew. But without him, I wouldn't look back on the God of these Hebrew people with any desire to be a part of it. That's just the blunt truth.
I kind of have to accept that these texts are even more ancient than the texts that come from the time of Jesus. They're from a remote part of the world and a people that are frankly foreign and alien in every way.
But then I stop to think, what would it have been like if my own people had documented their gods as well as the Jews documented their God? Would it have been any more relatable to me here and now in the 21st century to read about a month of sacrificing cattle to Woden? Maybe it would be very fascinating leisure reading and I do wish we had those texts, but am I not grateful that the culture Jesus Christ came from has a God who would eventually have a place for me, a wretched person who would have never had a place in the brutal Anglo-Saxon heathen world?
And the answer is just yes.
But I just want to be honest about what it's like to read the Old Testament sometimes as a Christian since I think it can be the parts people want to pretend don't exist.
It's kind of like when there is a teaching that you don't understand and the Catholic church teaches you to pray on why you don't understand it and ask God to help you make sense of it. With the Old Testament, you have to take the parts you enjoy with the parts that make you wrinkle your nose, and just be patient. There are going to be moments where you recognize, "This truly is God the Father, the one that I recognize from church and the Gospel." But there will be other times where it seems like it's not the same God.
Personally, I would suggest leaving the Old Testament for reading after you have developed some confidence in your faith with the New Testament. But once you have that confidence and once you're not going to cast everything away because so much is foreign to you, there is a lot to like about the Old Testament, too.