There Will Always Be Snake Handlers

I read this story and had to share it with you all.

Andrew Hamblin is "certain" he has a "real faith"

When Christianity seems like a farce, and when there is no credibility to the doctrinal veracity of a given position since there is no principled method for sifting through the various opinions, men will go to extremes to make sure they are still alive. They will even put themselves in harm's way just to pulse-check their commitment to their belief system. Doubt will make you mad. Madness makes you doubt your existence.

As my last post noted, Protestantism cannot provide certainty for a believer. This lack of certainty forces man to live below the standard of what it means to truly be human. It might explain, in part, the death of natural law in our society (or maybe another unintended effect of the Reformation). Not sure. Either way, when man lives in this way, he will act in other ways below his humanity. When man has given up on religion that is in accord with reason, all options are on the table.

Copperheads included.

Let me just say, that to be fair, all religions have their kooks. However, one must ask themselves, "Is a religion's kook the fruit of the system or in spite of it?"

When one thinks of the kooks of Catholicism, one immediately can identify that such a person is abusing a given teaching or practice. The "world-view", so to speak, of the Catholic in no way births the snake-handler. The moment he picks up a snake, the Church says, "put that down silly", and the second time might sound a little more serious. In other words, there is a Matthew 18:17 "ecclesia", and even a Protestant will admit that the Catholic Church would lay the smack-down on the snake handler.

I will also admit that most Protestant communities would reject this practice. The question, nonetheless, is why? Why should we reject this practice? On what grounds? Because a particular Protestant denomination says so? The Bible says so? When Brother Dale of LaFollette, Tennessee "takes it to the ecclesia", Brother Dale finds Pastor Hamblin with a chest-full of rattlesnakes. He did what his Bible said, and the word was confirmed in the mouth of two or more witnesses. Let it be established, alleluia! Plus, Pastor Hamblin will just ask Brother Dale to look in his Bible:

"And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."-Mark 16:17-18

Delivered from heaven in 1611

In the hills of Tennessee, I do not think a discussion about textual variants, monastic additions, and alternative endings to the Gospel of Mark is going to go very far. "My sheep hear my voice", and no Bible scholar is going to tell a "true believer" that a part of their Bible, which God has given them as the holy oracle in their night-stand is irrelevant. In their mind, either you believe the Bible or you don't. If you don't, of course, you could just find another church in LaFollette.

The point is that either you pick up snakes and trust God, or you are simply playing church.

Pastor Hamblin isn't playing.

As Hamblin said in the article, "The same man that walked upon the water said, 'They shall take up serpents.' There's a realness in the signs of God."

Like Luther, Pastor Hamblin received his anointing directly from God, and he thinks he has the Bible on his side. He is a priest, prophet and king, and the signs and wonders that follow his ministry confirm his inclination that he is on a holy mission from the Holy One. He has the keys of the kingdom, and nobody is going to shout down the devil louder than him. If placed before the Diet of LaFollette, Pastor Hamblin would no doubt fail to recant, claiming that he was excommunicated by them because he believed in the "real" Gospel. They, not him, believe in something less than the fullness of the faith.

One problem is that Tennessee outlawed snake-handling in 1947. Bummer. However, it appears that Pastor Hamblin will not be giving up snake-handling. He is willing to die or be imprisoned for what he perceives is the "apostolic" faith. This mental state, I will argue, is the direct result of the Protestant Reformation. This, of course, will not make friends or influence people, but it sticks, and it sticks for three reasons:

1. The primacy of the individual conscience demands that Pastor Hamblin follow his conscience. The Protestant thinks the Catholic is a cultist because he "blindly" follows the Catholic Church. In reality, the Protestant is always and everywhere one step away from creating their own cult. Of course, we do not call them cults, we call them sects, but the personality-centric nature of many of them cannot help but cause pause for reflection.

2. This story brings to light the unworkability of Protestantism for the average folk. If Protestantism is True, then Christ clearly built an "ecclesia" for two classes of men: the learned and the unlearned. Not a gift from God, Christianity is a religion for the intelligent, and the dumb and simpleton should just fall in line

3. It blows up the notion of essentialism. As the saying goes, "In essentials unity, in non-essential liberty, in all thing charity." Is "snake-handling" an essential doctrine? If it isn't, then there is no reason we should reject it. It is just a part of living in the almost-not-yet kingdom of Protestant Christianity. Oh, how snakes have their way of ruining an Edenic view of this Protestant idea.

For another good take on the topic of snake handling, check out this post by F. Longnecker.