Snakes in church aren’t a bright idea
A few thoughts on Rev. Coots and his serpents – related to the article “Pastor wants snakes confiscated in Tennessee.”
1. Snakes are simply some of God’s creatures trying to make their way in the world like all the others. They have enough problems without being dragged into church services. Leave ’em alone, or if you feel you must handle snakes, do something useful. Take the congregation on a retreat to the Everglades with its abundant, invasive Burmese pythons and handle them into crates.
2. Are there no rattlers and copperheads in Kentucky? Or parishioners with the courage and faith to catch them?
3. Examining the passage in Mark, it seems snake-handling is merely one step in proving a believer’s faith. It appears the next important step for the true believer is drinking cyanide-laced lye or such. Rev. Jim Jones and his congregation courageously took this step, but apparently their faith wasn’t strong.
4. The oldest copies of Mark doesn’t contain the last 10 or so verses that include the snake passage, and modern scholarship has determined they were added later to the original gospel.