The subjects of contention in MWR’s Letters & Comments section leave me in a quandary. Having been a Mennonite Church member for 60 years, and on its payroll for 15, I treasure the love that emanates from within the Mennonite family. But letters indicating the great divide as to the church’s focus and ethics are wide of the target. It is time to reassess the church’s essence and issues.

When one is constantly faced with the horrors of innocent suffering and death from natural disasters (landslides, tsunamis, famine, starvation, Ebola, kidnappings, militarism) it is evident that the God of the Bible is not involved in mercy missions and that the religious communities, including Mennonites, don’t prioritize it either.

From my perspective, it is clear God is not in the prayer answering or rescuing business. There is no indisputable evidence whatsoever — from personal observation or science — that the biblical God is involved with anything done on Earth. The Bible is too contradictory to be believed, and its God is too “ungodly” to be worshiped.

Devoid of any expectation of supernatural intervention, I have opted to be a humanist, committed to a philosophy of and responsibility toward a life of mutual good, relying on critical thinking and evidence to direct me toward that end.

B. Harry Dyck
Elkhart, Ind.