Day 42: Jesus Doesn’t Play With Snakes

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” MATTHEW 23:13 NIV

LATE ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON several summers ago as I was ferrying luggage inside from a weekend trip, I went to the restroom in the middle of unloading. Moments later I was washing my hands and noticed movement out of the corner of my eye in the doorway between my bathroom and bedroom. I glanced over and then screamed because there was a huge snake with about a third of its body reared up in the air, lunging toward me and striking repeatedly. I immediately began backing up and then panicked when I realized I was pretty much trapped in the bathroom because what appeared to be a hostile five- to six-foot rattlesnake was blocking my way out!

I’ve been in several car accidents, have swum with sharks off the coast of Belize, and stand on a scale in the doctor’s office at least once a year, yet I’ve never felt such sheer terror. I could feel the blood pounding in my ears, and it felt like there was a band tightening around my chest. I cried, “Jesus, help me!” out loud several times, and tried to control my racing mind. But before I could calm down, the snake started slithering toward me and all I could think to do was snatch the plunger from under the sink and try to joust him away. Things went from bad to worse when he sank his fangs into the black rubber and got stuck. I hurled the whole nightmarish heap back toward the doorway, and as Mr. Wiggly laid still, momentarily stunned, I jerked open the linen closet, grabbed a giant beach towel, threw it on top of him, vaulted over the wriggling horror scene like an Olympic hurdler, and raced out of the house.

Fortunately, a chivalrous male friend soon came to my rescue and captured the beast in a Home Depot bucket (but only after being lunged at twice himself, which sort of justified me breathing into a paper bag), then chopped it up in pieces with a shovel in the backyard. He mused that the snake had likely slithered up through the chimney from the crawl space under the house to escape from the extreme summer temperatures. He assured me that while it was over five feet in length, it wasn’t poisonous after all (it was a rat snake, not a rattlesnake!) and went on to explain that it was probably so aggressive because I’d unwittingly stepped on it when I walked into the restroom, as evidenced by the big footprint indention on his back. In other words, that nasty creature was simply protecting itself from being stomped again or plunged by a big, shrieking human. However, I didn’t feel too bad about scaring it and didn’t shed a tear during its dissection ceremony.

And while that might sound insensitive, I’m sticking to my guns/plunger because I’m convinced our Savior didn’t like slithery things with fangs much either. Which is evidenced by His scathing rebukes of Pharisees who were posing as God’s chosen ambassadors but were secretly doing everything in their power to keep seekers from salvation:

“Brood of vipers! How can you speak good things when you are evil?” (Matt. 12:34a, emphasis mine)

“Snakes! Brood of vipers! How can you escape being condemned to hell?” (Matt. 23:33, emphasis mine)

Of course, the point here isn’t about reptiles—they’re merely a metaphor—it’s about not messing around with poisonous people who try to block our way to Jesus. Furthermore, the notion that Jesus was a nonconfrontational doormat is not remotely biblically defensible! Our Savior didn’t put up a fight during His betrayal, arrest, bogus trial, and crucifixion (although He could’ve annihilated the entire Roman army with a flick of His pinky) because Easter is why He came at Christmas in the first place. It was His divine mission to lay down His life and atone for sinners so that through faith in Him we can be reconciled into a right relationship with God (Mark 10:45). But Jesus didn’t hesitate from shoving dangerous predators away from His beloved sheep. He didn’t play around with two-footed snakes, and we shouldn’t either.

• READ 1 TIMOTHY 6:20–21. How would you apply Paul’s counsel to modern-day entertainment (for example, overtly anti-Christian podcasts, television shows, Internet content, and people you follow on social media)?
• READ ROMANS 16:17. How would you communicate this to a kid who’s being bullied by classmates in school for being a Christian?
• READ 1 PETER 3:15–16. Since this passage (and many, many more throughout the entirety of Scripture) clearly calls Christians to share the living hope of Jesus Christ with the lost and lonely world around us, how can we do so while simultaneously avoiding “snakes”? (Remember, a lost person may very well seek salvation, while a snake tries to block seekers from salvation or lead them astray on purpose. This distinction helps us in our discernment with different types of people!)