Who From History Would I Like to Talk To… if that was even remotely possible?

WordPress likes to keep bloggers… blogging. They do this in part by asking a new question every day. Almost never do I answer the question. Part of that is because I think they are primarily focusing on people who use their website like a diary, log, or scrapbook. Nevertheless, occasionally there is a question that I find interesting. A day or two ago the question was “Who from history would I want to have a conversation with?”

As a Christian, and a teacher of Christian missions, I am almost required to say, “Jesus.” That would be wonderful… exciting… kind of scary. And if I remove that obvious answer, I am still almost driven to choose a Biblical character. In the “Biblical character other than Jesus” category, I would suppose it would have to be Barnabas. After Jesus, he seems like the most awesome person in the New Testament.

BUT… if Bible Characters were crossed off of the list? Yesterday I was thinking about it. I decided it would be Justinian Welz (or Justinian Von Welz), born 1621, died around 1668. I have written about him a bit in the past. He was Protestant Missions strategist and practitioner back in the mid 17th century when almost all Protestants were disinterested in missions or even thought it was a complete waste of time.

I would I find him interesting for a few reasons:

It is rare to have a chance to talk to someone who was so forward thinking (visionary/dreamer) who was also surprisingly practical. It is rare to have a person who could embrace a course of action that was so countercultural.It is rare for someone to act on his beliefs with such conviction that he died for those beliefs. While the above three are rare, having all three qualities in the same person is especially rare.

The day after I had that thought, I got an email asking me questions about Justinian Welz (perhaps only the second one I have ever gotten). Then doing another search online, I found a new resource regarding Welz that I did not realize was online. I will be reading it over in the next few weeks.

Of course, it is entirely possible that I would NOT enjoy such a conversation (I am assuming that we could bridge the English/German language divide). Many of his compatriots appeared to consider him mad. I might feel the same. Visionaries are often not the easiest people to talk to.

But I would love to try. And I would love to be able to tell him what has happened after he died of malaria in Suriname, 350+ years ago.