{"id":9173,"date":"2022-07-06T22:27:02","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T02:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9173"},"modified":"2022-07-06T22:27:02","modified_gmt":"2022-07-07T02:27:02","slug":"avoiding-exclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9173","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding Exclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Rohr-32.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Rohr-32.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"531\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9177\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Rohr-32.jpg 800w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Rohr-32-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Rohr-32-768x510.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Rohr-32-640x425.jpg 640w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/Rohr-32-400x266.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The church was meant to be that group that constantly went to the edges, to the least of the brothers and sisters, and even to the enemy.  Jesus was not just a theological genius; he was also a psychological and sociological genius.  Therefore, <em>when any church defines itself by exclusion of anybody, it is always wrong.<\/em>  It is avoiding its only vocation, which is to be the Christ.  The only groups that Jesus seriously critiques are those who include themselves and exclude others from the always-given grace of God.<\/p>\n<p>Only as the People of God receive the stranger, the sinner, and the immigrant, those who don&#8217;t play our game our way, do we discover not only the hidden, feared, and hated parts of our own souls, but also the fullness of Jesus himself.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Richard Rohr, <em>Yes, And&#8230;<\/em>, p. 186.<\/p>\n<p>Photo: Urquhart Castle, Loch Ness, Ireland, July 2001<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The church was meant to be that group that constantly went to the edges, to the least of the brothers and sisters, and even to the enemy. Jesus was not just a theological genius; he was also a psychological and sociological genius. Therefore, when any church defines itself by exclusion of anybody, it is always [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,17,57,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-compassion","category-grace","category-jesus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9178,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9173\/revisions\/9178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}