Consequences

We've often noted the phenomenon of people's faith actually getting stronger in the face of evidence that it is false.  For example, when a cult leader predicts the end of the world, and it doesn't happen, his followers seem somehow to find a way to believe that this failure proves their belief was true.

Recently this sort of thinking had deadly consequences for one Mark Wolford, a "snake-handling" pastor from West Virginia.  Pastor Wolford died of a rattlesnake bite at age 44.  That outcome, of course, was more predictable than remarkable.  The remarkable thing about this case is that Mark Wolford saw his own father die of snakebite at the age of 39.

Now, the basis of the snake-handling religion is in Mark 16: 17-18, which says, among other things, that believers "shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them...."

After witnessing the death of another snake-handling pastor, the observer might believe that the Bible verse had been proven false; but again he or she could also believe that the bitten and deceased was not a true believer after all. Perhaps Mark Wolford believed that about his father.

In any case, in an interview he gave to the Washington Post Magazine a while back, Wolford said of his decision to pursue snake-handling himself, "I know it's real; it is the power of God.  If I didn't do it, if I'd never gotten back involved, it'd be the same as denying the power and saying it was not real."

We should not be surprised if other such cases follow.