| If God is so loving, why does He kill people in the Old Testament? (for example, Noah's flood) |
| The problem with a non-believer's approach to this question is that he
doesn't believe that God created life, but believes (at least in terms of
the stories) that God ended the lives of these people. Therefore, the
non-believer looks at it as if God had nothing to do with their life, but
had a lot to do with their death.
The first thing to keep in mind is that God created the very lives of those who died. They wouldn't have even lived in the first place if it wasn't for Him. So the end result of God's work with them was that He granted them some time to live, overall a net gain on their part. Also keep in mind that while mankind usually considers what's best in the short run, God's major concern is what's best in the long run. In that early civilization, everyone was already perishing except for Noah and his family. They would have died eventually anyways, and their deaths served to remind later generations of what would happen to those who refused to follow God, that their sins would eventually cause them to perish. And also, it's obvious that those in Noah's civilization knew what Noah was doing, and could have asked Noah for permission to come aboard the ark, but apparently none of them did. |