Author: Michael Salsaa

We have been discussing love, and today I want us to talk about how love is essential in forming true community. Love and community are existentially important for us as humans. Without them, none of us could survive or flourish. So I want us to look at how community actually forms and how love shapes…

Last time, we looked at the theory of self-love. Today, I want us to consider the practice—how it works in action. I think we often fail to understand self-love because we lack role models who truly embody it. Today, I want us to look at Jesus as a model of self-love. Yes, Jesus—who gave His…

Matthew 22:34–40 — The Greatest Commandment34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with…

I would like us to move forward with attempting to find a definition of love. In that regard, I will invoke the help of Erich Fromm. The social psychologist Erich Fromm, writing in The Art of Loving, approached love not as a feeling but as an art to be learned. He believed that genuine love…

1 John 4:7–8 — “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Love is not innate. It is learned in the knowing of God. To know God, then, is to…

Today, we begin an exploration of love. Love is talked about everywhere—in our songs, our stories, our prayers, and our longings. Yet for all its mention around us, something about it still feels just out of reach. The more we talk about love, the more we seem to hunger for it. I think that’s a…

Michael: Today I’m going to read a class that Dr. Weaver gave on September 12, 2015. I looked through the comments on the blog post, and most of the people here today didn’t comment on it, so I don’t think many of you were present then. This might be new to you. I really liked…

Last week, we explored Jesus’ resurrection. The awesome light of Easter and Christ’s victory—“never to die again” (Romans 6:9)—mark a radical shift: God’s righteousness is now revealed in grace, not reserved for a final judgment at the end of time. This is the new covenant—the life of resurrection not simply for God alone, but for…

Excerpts from Jürgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God are interspersed throughout this essay. In previous classes, we talked about the crucifixion. In the Christian narrative, the crucifixion of Christ demonstrates the judgment of God. The death of Jesus on the cross is the wages he paid for our sins. The Lamb of God carried the sins…