{"id":9640,"date":"2026-02-08T22:59:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T02:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9640"},"modified":"2026-02-08T23:00:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T03:00:26","slug":"mercy-to-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9640","title":{"rendered":"Mercy to All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Rohr60.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Rohr60.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"533\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9641\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Rohr60.jpg 400w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Rohr60-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>From that point on, poor Jonah is simultaneously angry, lamenting, and praising Yahweh for four full chapters.  His problem is that he cannot move beyond a dualistic reward-punishment worldview.  Jonah thinks only Israel deserves mercy, whereas God extends total mercy to Jonah, to the pagan Ninevites who persecuted Jonah&#8217;s people, and to those &#8220;who cannot tell their right hand from their left.&#8221;  To make the story complete, this mercy is even given to &#8220;all the animals&#8221; (Jonah 4:11)!  The world of predictable good guys and always-bad guys collapses into God&#8217;s unfathomable grace.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Richard Rohr, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/tears_of_things.html\">The Tears of Things<\/a><\/em>, p. 86<\/p>\n<p>Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 26, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From that point on, poor Jonah is simultaneously angry, lamenting, and praising Yahweh for four full chapters. His problem is that he cannot move beyond a dualistic reward-punishment worldview. Jonah thinks only Israel deserves mercy, whereas God extends total mercy to Jonah, to the pagan Ninevites who persecuted Jonah&#8217;s people, and to those &#8220;who cannot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13,57,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forgiveness","category-god","category-grace","category-healing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9640","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=9640"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9643,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9640\/revisions\/9643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}