This is my first experience with your content, and I must say I loved it (“Jesus and the New Testament on killing,” by Ronald J. Sider, from Mennonite World Review, Nov. 25, 2019, archived on the AW website, along with content from AW ’s other predecessor, The Mennonite). Sider [who died July 27, 2022] is open-minded to questions without dismissing them dogmatically. 

I have struggled, as Sider does, with the Old Testament God not measuring up to the loving God Jesus represents. Look at the flood. I know it was a bunch of evil people who died, just like when the Israelites were ordered to kill the Canaanites.

An unsatisfactory theory to me is that God allowed these things to happen to prevent what would happen if he didn’t intervene. The whole world (except for Noah and family) had turned evil, so God’s new plan was to destroy evil (genocide) that would have infected God’s people and destroyed his plan of redemption. It is still a bit unsatisfactory, but God was contending with his creatures who had defied his plan. God had to work within the parameters of the power Satan has in this world — and to show that God was right about us: that we could be made perfect, in a fellowship of suffering of sorts in this world, by following Christ.

Tim Dory, Sterling Heights, Mich.