Elie Wiesel speech

I just posted about how we're going to do a series on The Big Questions, and a friend forwarded this. This is Elie Wiesel speaking at Buchenwald the other day. He talks about what the world has learned from Buchenwald, what it has not learned, and about hope. Worth a look.

The Big Questions

Yesterday we started a new sermon series called "The Big Questions." It is what it sounds like. We're going to look at The Big Questions, such as 'Why Is There Evil?' and 'Why Do We Suffer?' and 'What Is the Meaning of Life?'. To be honest, I can't believe it took me this long to do this series. After all, people have been asking these questions for gazillions of years. You'd think I would have done this a long time ago. Heck, once I thought of it I figured every pastor, everywhere would have done a sermon series to answer them.

To my knowledge, no one has.

Obviously, someone has. I'm definitely not the first. There has got to be plenty of churches where these questions have been answered. But I don't know of any, and I think in most churches they have not been answered. Not directly, anyway. Not this bluntly. As I've prepared for this series, I've wondered why. Why do pastors shy away from answering these difficult questions? Why have I myself waited so long to do a series like this? Unfortunately, I am at a loss to explain either of these. I don't know why churches shy away from The Big Questions, and I don't know why I am only now answering them in a sermon series.

I suspect, though, that somewhere in the back of my mind is fear that these questions really are unanswerable. That the reason they have existed for so long is because we cannot offer an answer. I can't back this up with any paperwork, but it makes sense. Why would anyone try to answer the unanswerable?

In my prayer and my meditation in preparation for this series, I've come to the conclusion that these questions are answerable. I don't think I have the perfect, whole, complete answers to them. You'll have to ask God for that. But I do think that there are answers available if we open our mind to what God says. That means filtering out what God does not say, which can be the harder task because of so many things folks take for granted that are not biblical. So we're going to plunge into this series and I'm going to offer what God has shared with me about the answers to these questions. Hopefully we can video the sermons and post them on YouTube. Assuming, of course, that I don't completely blow it. Which is possible, but I'm not worried about it. I'm going to study, listen, and try my best to say what God tells me to say. The answers won't be perfect because I'm not, but I think they will be helpful to folks wherever they are on their journey.

So here come The Big Questions! Visit our website for upcoming topics.

Be careful with this one

I'm warning you now, if you click on this link, you could very well spend hours here and laugh a lot.

http://stufffchristianslike.blogspot.com/

The author does a wonderful job of poking fun at Christians and their churches in insightful and funny ways. His bit about here worship leader hair product and Rob Bell glasses made me laugh so hard Coke came out my nose. You might not get all of the jokes, but hopefully you'll get enough to see the wisdom in his humor. And if your spouse doesn't see you for days because you're looking through this site, remember: you were warned. :-)