On the Prophets

Just past the second anniversary of my passage into the world of agnosticism, I took time over the weekend to reflect on a few of the things I was, and in some ways still am, supposed to be. While some kids were supposed to be lawyers, or politicians, or doctors…

I was supposed to be a missionary.

I was supposed to be ordained.

I wasn't just supposed to have a minister's license—I actually did.

And most of the things which appealed to me then about the ministry are still, two years later, stubbornly rooted deep in my identity. The humble minimalism, the call to peace and reflection, the craving to mediate and enable restoration, the silent burden of the wise—these flames still glow to beckon the capricious moth of my soul.


Of course, there were also the other attractions, the ones which burned down quietly and will not stir again. My sincere devotion to a story and Companion, as well as my confident advocacy of the authority of my religious worldview, are cold ashes; they have left no embers to claim.

As I was reflecting on all this, I began to wonder about the great names among the prophets and the saints. Long ago, before their souls were filtered by the lenses of politics and the threshing fork of history, who exactly were these people? Were they really the unfaltering demigods we admire and echo? If humanity is in the business of applying layers of bizarre interpretation to the lives of our traditions' heroes—what is one more? So…

What I found myself imagining was this lineage of savants: Intelligent, skeptical, passionate and compassionate, but above all, profoundly conscious of the traditions which shaped—in every tense—the world around them. Perhaps they took up the burden of Miguel de Unamuno's atheistic priest, tenderly bearing the truth which the flocks could not survive. Of course, I do find Unamuno's character rather patronizing, and I in no way suggest that anyone protect the world's so-called feeble minds from reality. But I like to think that maybe, in the course of one's work at reconciling our species, maybe there is an inescapable tickling in the subconscious with which each of the prophets made their peace. Maybe they didn't always find the faith within. Maybe they forged ahead with the best of their life's work, not because of their relation and proximity to the divine, but in spite of it.

Maybe, in some mission field out there, there's still a little corner of land and a few forlorn souls waiting for a prophet to wander along, be she agnostic or otherwise.