By Jim Nichols

Who plays the role of “priest” in your life? Who plays the role of “prophet” in your life? You may be confused by the questions and want to respond, “No one.” I suggest, however, that each of us has individuals in our life that come in and out and they play important parts in determining who we are.

Certain modern religious traditions have designated offices for “priest,” but that is not the point here. (I am not sure I have encountered a position officially referred to as a “prophet,” but I may just not have been in the right circles.) For the purposes of this article, however, the concern is non-official individuals that God uses to guide us.

If we investigate the two terms historically, we glimpse the roles each might play. Under the Old Covenant in scripture, for instance, we sense that the priests emphasized tradition and holding the system together; they were individuals who offered stability and predictability.

Prophets, on the other hand, frequently offered criticism (perhaps of the very systems the priests upheld.) Prophets were willing to adjust the playbook and re-direct faith to an extent.

Occasionally, we see an individual who plays both roles simultaneously. Moses, for example guides and gathers Israel, but he is also the most critical of the people. Jesus, similarly, strongly condemns the hypocrisy and error of the very people who he describes as his own.

Despite those couple of examples, I believe that most of my spiritual guidance comes from someone playing either one or the other role at a time. Strangely, it may be the same person leading me in wrestling with the conflict between defending the party line at one time and challenging it at another. A critical point, I believe, is that both emphases are necessary, only at contrasting times and situations.

Most logical is someone playing the “priest” role. In this case the confidante knows us well enough that he or she understands us and our life and what is important to us. The priest also carries a set of expectations and our communication with our priest is likely to be an attempt to move us toward those expectations. 

On the other hand, someone serving as a prophet for us should be able to see past our current situation and, perhaps, recommend adjustments to it. Do we need to be bolder in some relationship? Do we need to reconsider our habits or even our means of livelihood? Can our prophet help us sort through equally positive or equally negative decisions we need to make? This is clearly a situation in which we must have great trust in our prophet. 

It occurs to me that most of us would prefer to be dealing with a personal priest; a priest would be safer, or at least more predictable. A prophet, on the other hand, might challenge me in ways that could be uncomfortable. 

For instance, a prophet might point out that we have too much dedicated ourselves to what some call the “grind culture.” We feel that we must be busy and “productive” 100 percent of the time. This process might have begun when we were young, and we became indoctrinated that we should push ourselves to be hyper-productive and efficient. One of the deadly consequences of this is that we begin to lose our appreciation for beauty and the creativity related to it. In addition, we sacrifice the concept of rest and the rejuvenation it brings. We should think of rest as breathing and waking up; it is something that is natural. The prophet might propose that we remember that our worth is not based on how many items we can check off our to-do list.

Many of us today have a feeling of “numbness.” Things that should be unacceptable if not dastardly have fused into our acceptable category. Big corporations blind us to the costs of exploitation and poverty. Militarism blinds us to the awfulness of war. Ideologies of a culture of meanness cause us to be numb and bury the mutual goodwill God wishes us to have.

May our hearts be tender and open to the words of priests and, especially prophets that you, God have sent to us. 

Jim Nichols is a retired Abilene Christian University biology professor and current hospital chaplain