Sometimes You Come Up Snake Eyes

Snake-handling preachers are still a thing here in Kentucky and the Appalachians, the National Geographic series "Snake Salvation" is all about Kentucky snake handler pastors Jamie Coots and Andrew Hamblin and their families, and it seems Jamie Coots diced with the devil one time too many this weekend.

Paramedics were called to Coots’ church about 8:30 p.m. Saturday to check on a report someone had been bitten by a snake.

By the time they arrived, Coots had gone to his home nearby. The ambulance crew and firefighters went to his home, where they found him suffering from a snakebite on his right hand, according to a news release from Middlesboro police.

The emergency responders told Coots about the danger of not going to the hospital, but he refused to go, police said.

The emergency crews left the house at 9:10 p.m. Authorities received a call less than an hour later indicating Coots had died, according to police. Coots was pronounced dead at his home.

Apparently Coots had survived snake bites before.  This time he wasn't so lucky.  Kentucky's had laws on the books against snake-handling in church for decades, but they never get enforced because of religious freedom reasons.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2014/02/16/3092068/jamie-coots-well-known-snake-handling.html#storylink=cpy

Seems to me a just and kind deity wouldn't make you risk you life with poisonous snakes, nor would they then require you to not seek medical treatment and then die painfully.  But then again, people will do a lot of things for faith, the truly good, the truly bad, and the outright dangerous.