Is the God of the Old Testament different?

It is an old objection: the God of the Old Testament seems harsh—wars, punishments, strange laws—and the God of the New, all mercy. Did God change his character? The Church answered this back in the second century: it is the same God. What exists is not two gods, but a pedagogy: God educating a concrete people, step by step, from where they were. As in all education, you do not ask the same of a child as of an adult. Moreover, read as a whole, the Old Testament overflows with the tenderness denied to it: the God who draws "with bands of love" (Hosea), the shepherd of Psalm 23, the one who forgives Nineveh. The tenderest saints always prayed with these texts. And the crowning touch is set by Jesus: he did not cross out the Old Testament, he fulfilled it. The patience God had with Israel is the same patience he is having with you.