{"id":9821,"date":"2026-07-17T22:39:02","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T02:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9821"},"modified":"2026-07-17T22:39:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T02:39:02","slug":"the-image-of-god-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/?p=9821","title":{"rendered":"The Image of God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Hoard4.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Hoard4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9822\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Hoard4.jpg 800w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Hoard4-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Hoard4-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Hoard4-640x480.jpg 640w, https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Hoard4-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>First, the church needs to stand as a counter-witness to all dehumanizing and nauseating propaganda.  Jesus spoke powerfully and directly to this calling as his central message in the Sermon on the Mount: we are taught to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us.  The vocation of every Christian and of the church as a whole is to stand always against the dehumanization of any person or group.  Even when we rightly understand a group or person to be a legitimate threat or to be engaging in active harm, we are tasked with never losing sight of their humanity, their possession of the <em>imago Dei<\/em>, and the unconditional and undying love that God has for them.  Beyond that, the church has been taught to embrace an &#8220;upside down&#8221; view of the social order wherein those that our community deems least worthy of honor and dignity &#8211; the oppressed, poor, and marginalized &#8211; are understood to be the very people whom we are most honored to count as members of our body.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Paul Hoard and Billie Hoard, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/eucontamination.html\">Eucontamination<\/a><\/em>, p. 192-193<\/p>\n<p>Photo:  Cloister, Mont Saint-Michel, France, June 18, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First, the church needs to stand as a counter-witness to all dehumanizing and nauseating propaganda. Jesus spoke powerfully and directly to this calling as his central message in the Sermon on the Mount: we are taught to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. The vocation of every Christian and of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,25,13,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-core-value","category-god","category-love"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9821","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=9821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9823,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9821\/revisions\/9823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}