Author: Michael Salsaa
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Divine Sarcasm
Is God funny? Does God tell jokes? Have you ever considered whether God has a sense of humor? This may not be a topic that you’ve heard a preacher talk about during a church sermon, but is there something we can learn about God’s sense of humor? I think God does have a sense of…
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Grace: The Existential Answer
I have always searched for answers, for the truth. Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living”. If I knew what is important from what isn’t, I reasoned, then I can live a better life, a life worth living. It annoyed me but also amused me that most people didn’t seem to contemplate or…
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Experiencing Awe Through the Symbols
I would like to both acknowledge and dedicate this class to my friend Debora who has been instrumental in bringing this to life. Last week I received a message from Alice. It was quite obvious from her message that she had experienced a moment of awe. When Moses asked God for His name, God…
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The Awe of God is the Beginning of Wisdom
Last week the question was: “Do you see this world, this life, as essentially good or as essentially evil?” Perhaps what we were missing from this discussion is that the designation of what is good and what is evil is relative. It is based on the observer. It comes from a human centric vision. When…
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Blindness II: the blinding judgment of Grace
It seems that a large portion of what God tried to get us to see is His grace. We tend to be blind to it, because grace is very different from our natural knowledge, which arises from our vision into how humans and the world function around us. We look for cause and effect, we…
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Blindness I: From Vision to Insight
What do you see? This is one of the existential questions that God asks of each of us. Vision and light are some of the most occurring themes in the bible, and for an important reason. It seems as if God takes us on a spiritual journey of sight and blindness, light and darkness, insight…
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Grace as God’s True Light
Today, we will start a three-part discussion on light and blindness. It seems as if God takes us on a spiritual journey of sight and blindness, light and darkness, insight and ignorance. In the very first chapter of the bible the Creation and the manifestation of Light together convey a certain truth about God. Let…
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Death and Grace
I have been fascinated by the topic of death for years now. Mystics and sages say that the only way to live life fully is to accept our deaths. That’s easy, you may say, I’m fully aware that I’m going to die, I’m just a human after all. But Ernest Becker begs to differ with…
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The Judgment of Grace, or the Transformative Power of Grace?
We previously discussed the parables of the kingdom of heaven that Jesus spoke to the people during his ministry. When we substitute “Grace” for the “kingdom of Heaven (KOH)”, many of these parables take on a fascinating new perspective and even offer a coherent understanding of what Jesus was trying to teach us about. Take…