Perhaps you’ve heard about Pastor Randy “Mack” Wolford’s death. He was a second-generation “serpent handler” – a Pastor who believes that Christians are called upon to handle poisonous snakes. Not only do they believe they should handle them, but they also believe that if they are bitten, it is up to God to heal them… Not modern medicine.
It’s hard to swallow, isn’t it? The idea that God would call on mankind to do something incredibly dangerous in His name, and then ask His followers to ignore the modern medicine that most Christians believe God helped create.
But it was Mack Wolford’s faith, and as people say, faith is belief in the absence of evidence.
Wolford knew the risks, his own father died of a rattlesnake bite. Perhaps Mack Wolford believed it was his destiny. Regardless, it was his fate.
The most compelling report of the story of the younger Pastor Wolford’s death, however, is that of photojournalist Lauren Pond. In her Washington Post Lifestyle post, Why I Watched a Snake-Handling Pastor Die for His Faith, Pond looks back at the man who was not just her subject, but also her friend, whom she chose to watch die.
The Post piece has a photo gallery of images of Wolford handling the snake soon after he was bitten, sweat on his collar and down his chest, another roy Wolford collapsing and being carried by two men into a vehicle, and another, which is the most heartbreaking, of his mother stroking his feet just before he passed away.
At first glance, one may think Pond was a voyeuristic onlooker to a horrific tragedy. But Pond’s intention in photographing that day was not to capture a death. She went down to capture images of a man and a congregation she’d gotten to know during the last year. She was invited along to photograph the passing of the pastor as well.
What she was met with changed her forever:
Some of the people who attended last Sunday’s service have struggled with Mack’s death, as I have. “Sometimes, I feel like we’re all guilty of negligent homicide,” one man wrote to me in a Facebook message following Mack’s death. “I went down there a ‘believer.’ That faith has seriously been called into question. I was face-to-face with him and watched him die a gruesome death. . . . Is this really what God wants?”
That’s a good question.
I know many photojournalists have been in situations similar to mine. Pulitzer Prize winner Kevin Carter photographed an emaciated Sudanese child struggling to reach a food center during a famine — as a vulture waited nearby. He was roundly criticized for not helping the child, which, along with the disturbing memories of the events he had covered and other factors, may have contributed to his suicide. As photojournalists, we have a unique responsibility to record history and share stories in as unbiased and unobtrusive a way as possible. But when someone is hurt and suffering, we have to balance our instincts as professionals with basic human decency and care.
It all brings up so many questions. What would you do in this situation? Would you photograph this event or refuse? Bond states that the family was very clearly not against her taking the photographs or sharing them.
Would you sneak away and call 911 or try to honor the man’s faith?
View Lauren Bond’s moving photo gallery at The Washington Post
Photo of Rattlesnake courtesy of Shutterstock
It’s venomous, not poisonous.
got it! what’s funny is we have a ton of rattlesnakes where i live (i mean a TON) and people say “poisonous” all the time. but i know you’re right now that you say it!
There is no cure for stupidity.
Every Memorial Day thousands of soldiers are honored for dying for a cause they believe in. The only difference is the cause.
His body, his choice, so long as he wasn’t harming anyone else non-consensually.
I have such a poor attitude regarding Fundamentalists that I’m afraid I’d let him die for his stupidity and consider it a net improvement in the gene pool.
“as people say, faith is belief in the absence of evidence.”
Funny thing about this statement, the bible says the opposite. It says real faith requires evidence Hebrews 11:1.
Anyways, I would call 911. If I get any complaints, I slap them with Luke 4:12 where even Jesus said you don’t put God to the test after the Devil challenged him to risk his life
Yeah, and you know, in the Old Testament, if the donkey falls in the well on Sabbath you can do the work to get him out. Common sense and survival and God will understand.
(Was it a donkey? Or a cow? I feel like I remember “ass” but I’m clearly no theologian).
It says Bull or an ass, but the verses don’t really say anything with regards to Sabbath. In your defense Jesus did seem to have these verses in mind when he cured a man on the sabbath and the Pharisees wanted to accuse the act of “working”
Religious beliefs are diverse, if those are his beliefs then it’s a little pointless to say that they’re wrong.
I really don’t see what this has to do with anything I said
This wasn’t a spur of the moment decision, they guy wasn’t drunk. He’d actually decided that he wanted to risk his life for his faith. Given that he walked into it with open eyes I’m not sure I’d be doing him a favour by going against his wishes.