Stu. K.

Thanks for your honest engagement! I think your humility in engagement helps me to be more humble as well!

Now lets take a look at your example.

God sends bears to kill some kids because they call a man bald
vs.
God loves everyone.

The answer is going to be in two main places "man" in the first statement and "love" in the second.

We'll go in reverse order.

1. Love
I have found a common fallacy that is popular in current times which is what I am dubbing the "Benevolent Father Fallacy". This is the fallacy that states that the only attribute of God is love and that the only action a loving being can take is acceptance toward all. I do not know you but I'm going to make an assumption that may or may not be true: I think you are a nice and loving person. I make this claim on the basis of your raising a brow against the God of the Bible just killing off some innocent kids. In spite of this, I would suspect that if you were around in the 1940's or 50's you would have agreed to the war on Hitler and possibly even joined up to fight. Though you are a nice person you would have applied or agreed to apply lethal force against those who were doing a horrible injustice. If a human who is imperfectly loving and imperfectly just can make such a decision which you and I would deem as right on the basis of their imperfect attributes then certainly God who is perfect in his attributes can also make a decision to administer lethal punishment to actions are are so evil that they warrant it.

This brings us to our second point:

2. Man
Was the actions of the children in the Old Testament so evil that it warranted death?
If you and I insult each other on this thread there is very little consequence. If you insult your friend to his face there is very little consequence. Leaving it at this, there does seem to be contradiction in Gods actions until you consider the following. Its not that a man was insulted but who that man was.

If you insult your friend to his face, there is very little consequence. If you insult your boss to their face, or a police officer, because of who they are and who they represent there would potentially rightfully be a consequence. In some cultures if you insulted a King of a country you would warrent the death penalty because of what the title of King represents. If John doe from Russia punched two people: one Billy a farmer from texas and the second The President of the US, we would both be upset that an american was hit but hitting the president would infuriate us more because the President represents America. This person would face heavier consequence. Now if imperfect man can utilize this logic then certainly a perfect being can as well.

In your example you stated that they simply made fun of a man; however, they didn't just make fun of any man. They made fun of an Old Testament Prophet Elisha. That was an EXTREMELY serious offense. While a king represents a country, a prophet in the OT era represented God Himself. And to insult this person was to level a charge against the Almighty Himself. Next is the joke itself. This article done by a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary dives a bit deeper into it [https://carm.org/why-did-god-kill-42-lads-merely-saying-elisha-was-bald] But essentially this was not just a light hearted joke that was extremely disrespectful during a time when God applied lethal punishment to breakers of his law against a person who represented Him directly. An earthly king would not put up with such disrespect and therefore I think it logical that although God is loving that he is also just and at that instance did not put up with such an action against himself.

I agree that is a hard lesson but not an illogical one given the facts.

I look forward to your reply.