I think almost everyone in Western culture knows verses like Matthew 5:39.
But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.
Less well known, but equally relevant, are verses like Matthew 26:52
“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”
From verses like that, modern American culture has created a picture of Jesus in which he abhors violence of any kind. But what are we to make of these other verses?
Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables.. –John 2:13-15 (NKJV)
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’”–Matthew 10:34-36
Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”
“Nothing,” they answered.
He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”
The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”
“That’s enough!” he replied. — Luke 22:35-38
None of those is a passage from the old Testament, so “Oh, it was different before the New Testament” won’t work here. Each one is a scriptural example of Jesus either advocating violence, carrying out violence, or advocating possession of the tools of violence.
I don’t know all the answers, but I know this: It’s way better to invest time in getting to know him than to just assume we know him.