Last week, Mercer County pastor Mack Randall Wolford died as a result of a bite he received from a rattlesnake during a religious service. Wolford, who led the Full Gospel Apostolic House of the Lord Jesus, was one of a tiny group of Pentecostals who take literally Mark 16:18:
“And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues. They will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”
Most Christians find ways around the challenging verse. They say it’s part of the “false ending” of Mark that’s not found in the earliest New Testament manuscripts. Or they say it is overridden by Jesus’ command that you shall not put God to the test.
Wolford, with his view of the King James text as inerrant,, handled the dangerous snakes as a living sacrament. Naturally, snake handlers hope (and perhaps pray) they will not be bitten, but God is in control and they are spiritually ready to receive the consequences.
That’s hard for the vast majority of Christians to understand, but it makes perfect sense to the few who exercise their faith in such literal ways.
It’s too easy to dismiss Wolford as a risk-taking zealot. Kate Fowler, a non-believer who was making a documentary featuring Wolford said, “I don’t have this faith, but I was instantly intrigued and inspired by his passion and his energy and his sincerity.”
Snake handling is clearly at the far end of the spectrum as an expression of the Christian religion, but how are the faithful to know which passages of the Bible to follow literally, which to take as allegorical and which to ignore completely? Scholars, as well as lay persons, often struggle with biblical hermeneutics,
The Old Testament is filled with life’s “regulations” as delivered by God. I’ve talked with many devout Christians who use Leviticus 18:22 as justification against homosexuality, but conveniently ignore 19:19 and wear clothes made of more than two kinds of material.
But I’m also reminded that Jesus delivered the new law, the Good News of the birth, death and resurrection that provided a pathway for people to restore their relationship with God. That made the Old Testament more about history than lifestyle.
Still, even that history is subject to intense debate. Get a group of Christians in a room and ask them for the age of the earth. You’ll hear everything from 6,000 years to 4.5 billion years.
“We all pick and choose,” says Wake Forest School of Divinity professor Bill Leonard. “The Bible is a vast collection of texts that often go in multiple directions.”
As such, Leonard says, we struggle to cut deals with our faith and ourselves about what we believe. And faith, being so personal, drives us to, at times, recoil from or even denounce, what doesn’t fit for us.
“All of us who read the Bible have theological stigmatisms,” Leonard told me on Metronews Talkline last Thursday “All of us wear our own set of glasses.”
The way Pastor Wolford practiced his faith was far different that most Christians. It was so extreme it cost him his life. But in another way, he was like every other person of faith who takes the Bible seriously and makes choices about its meanings.