When I read letters and columns in newspapers that use sayings from the Old Testament to justify their arguments, I am often dismayed at the utter arrogance and manifest ignorance of the writers, in particular when those justifications completely ignore the message of Jesus and the meaning of the New Testament itself.

The subject of hanging is a case in point here.

No doubt, the God of the Old Testament was a God who demanded 'an eye for an eye' and counselled his people quite often that taking another's life was in some circumstances, granted, a well-justified and perhaps even righteous thing to do. Yet the God of the New Testament simply did not do any such thing.

Not the message

Such a conclusion is not merely my opinion even as a graduate of a well-credentialed, Protestant-associated, liberal arts college. It is simply obvious that any God who would send his only Son into the world to die at the hands of men for the sins of all mankind for all time, indeed for the very purpose of granting mankind through this act of grace a vehicle for salvation, simply has changed his mind about at least some of the laws that he would have people live under.

Isn't this change, then, from the old to the new a matter of wisdom and, indeed, do we not allow our God to grow, to change, to better himself as an example for us? Is it not the message and meaning of Christianity itself?

Moreover, in this case in particular, doesn't God's profound example, with that change of mind and even more so with this greatest of gifts and sacrifice, represent an example that we as human beings must learn the meaning of: That killing each other is no longer our right, nor should it ever again be taken to be so under any circumstance?

I am, etc.,

ED McCOY

mmhobo48@juno.com

Bokeelia, FL