Kids and religious violence

I haven't written much about my kids in a while. Ok, I haven't written much about anything in a while. And yes, the word "kids" is plural--we have a son now too!

I've been thinking about how we teach kids stories from the Bible and what to do with the violent ones.

Our three-year-old has heard the story of David and Goliath--a shorter, toned down version anyway. One day, she wanted to play David and Goliath. She was David and I was Goliath. Fortunately, she didn't sling a rock at my head; it was just pretend. But after a few times acting out that scenario, she wanted to switch places.

So when I was David I paraphrased a few lines that I remembered from the Bible. When she said I couldn't defeat her, I said, "I have God's help!" Then after I defeated her we switched places again.

This time she said "I have God's help!" before defeating me. And it got me thinking...

I want to teach her to trust God. But how will she understand what that means, especially when some important stories of God's people involve God-ordained violence? When she thinks about trusting God, I certainly don't want her first thought to be, "God will help me succeed at violence." So how do we respect scriptures and not sanitize them too much, while guiding her away from this kind of thinking?