The nice thing about having your own blog is that occasionally (for me more often than not) you get to write about stuff you really know very little about. The second benefit is that the act of writing while not bringing clarity to the reader it does provide the writer with an opportunity to define and clarify his own thoughts. Today is one of those times for me; today’s effort is more for me than you. I would venture that is true of most blogs, educating, enlightening the author more than the reader.
The headline that caught my attention this week was of the “Snake Handling” pastor who died of a snake bite. Granted this element of his faith seamed peculiar to me before his death, as do elements of faith found in some other Christian circles. Let me be clear at the start, I believe in a God that can and has performed miracles, I believe in a God that has protected some from harm. I believe in various “Gifts” if you want to use that term from teaching, tongues, to healing. But we live in a physical world with certain rules, with an order that this same God created. Among those rules, some snakes are deadly.
I also believe that moral people sometimes wish things to be a way they are not. We wish there was not death, we wish there was not poverty, and we wish that this world, this time, did not contain with in it what we recognize as evil or injustice. In our wishing we come to believe that certain rules may not apply to us or ours. Cancer won’t strike, healing will come, poverty won’t overtake and snakes won’t kill.
I can’t understand the belief that I should take up a snake and teach my children to do the same, but I do faithfully pray for those friends and family that are sick believing they can be healed. I can’t understand refusing treatment once bitten, but I ask God for rain when the land is parched. I don’t pretend to understand the cycle of life, death, and life again but I do believe.
If this man was what he claimed I can’t pretend to know why God allowed him, a man who professed unwavering faith, to die and so publically. But others that claimed such faith have also failed publically. I could ignorantly make excuses, charge that he was show boating. That somewhere in his faith he had made a wrong turn got off track. “He had a reality TV show, showing off his faith (or lack of judgment)” are things we will likely hear. Similar charges could be leveled at most of us faithful ones. How many times have I said ignorantly God will do this, how many times have preachers claimed “God will…” “Send me this handkerchief, send money, pray this special prayer, act like this and God will…”, only for him to not.
I also would not be hasty in claiming this man was punished. He simply got bit. The biggest danger I think we faithful face is when we claim to speak for God. That’s a job fit for only a few. When you hear someone claim they do be careful. When others tell you this is how you prove your faithfulness be extra careful.
I learned a few good things from Boy Scouts: how to treat others with respect, how to miraculously build a fire, how to help someone that is hurt, that sometime God wants me to stop the bleeding and not wait for him, and I learned that some snakes are poisonous.
It may be funny, I wasn’t surprised that a snake handler died of a snake bite, but it is funny that at the same time I would not have been surprised had he lived.
David
