Guests at a Dinner Party

Heidi over at Redemption Junkie was tagged to post a list of the six people that she would like to invite to a dinner party at her home, along with her reasons for including them. Although I wasn't tagged, I thought this would be a fun and interesting thing to do and decided to post my own dinner party invitation list here. If you'd like to play along, please feel free; the only guidelines are that the person -- while they can be living or deceased -- cannot be a fictional character, and that language barriers shouldn't be taken into consideration. Finally, as Heidi said, you can't list Jesus as one of the six -- because if it's a dinner party where two or three are gathered, he is already there!

So, with the rules out of the way, here is my list of the six people I would invite to dinner.

Gandhi: I've always been fascinated by the lawyer from India who became one of the most remarkable men in history. He completely transformed his region of the world, helped his country obtain independence, and fought against both internal divisions and the British Empire -- and all by doing nothing more than advocating peace and non-violence.

C. S. Lewis: One of the greatest Christian apologists in history. I'd really be curious to discuss with him a wide range of issues facing the church today, and the way that religion and politics have become so intertwined as to in some instances be indistinguishable.

Desmond Tutu: Similar to Gandhi, a man who helped to lead his nation out of the shadow of an oppressive and often brutal regime, and who continues to fight against oppression around the world. A true champion for human rights who puts his faith and Christian beliefs into action every hour of every day.

Johann Sebastian Bach: The man who defines one of the greatest periods of musical accomplishment in history. I'd want to know his secret to such an unending stream of creativity, although I'm sure that -- based on the "Soli deo Gloria" he wrote on each composition -- the first and only answer out of his mouth would be God.

Elie Wiesel: Despite surviving one of the most tragic periods in human history and events that most people would be expected to try and put as far out of their mind as possible, Wiesel has instead waged a lifelong campaign to ensure that people never forget the Holocaust, the indignity and atrocities suffered by the victims -- living and dead -- and the fact that such horrible crimes still continue to this day in all corners of the globe. Even after having read the first part of his autobiography and listened to many interviews with him, I still have this need to ask him -- even though I think I know the answer -- what it is that keeps him going in this crusade of remembrance.

St. Peter: Here's a man who questioned everything (even those obvious things that were right there in front of him), who made mistake after mistake, and who often spoke without first thinking about what he was saying -- and yet Jesus never wavered in his patience with him or his faith in his abilities. I think the first two questions out of my mouth would be "What were you thinking?" followed by "How did you do it?"