How You Can Make God Work For You In 2022

It was 2007. I was in Kentucky. With a woman I was dating at the time. We were with some distant acquaintances of hers to go caving. There are old mountains in Kentucky and the earth is all hollowed out. These acquaintances were Tom and Linda, and their teenage kids, Will and Jessica. They were Christian folk. Kind and vanilla. We put on full one piece work suits, duct taped the ankles tight so the mud wouldn’t get up our legs. Strapped on hardhats with headlamps, hiked into the damp forest, and repelled down into a shallow pool of water that lay at the foot of a vast yawning cavern. In we hiked.

We creeped and crawled through a tunnel network, old as time, gnarly, twisting, decrepit. Like God had built an underground jungle gym for all creatures to play in. But you can interpret the natural world as many things: dead scientific matter (fucking atheists), or full of spirits and forces, or a magnificent, infinite expression of a single consciousness. Christians never miss a good opportunity to let you know their interpretation, so deep inside a part of the cave where the walls opened up into a large domed cavern with a stream running at the base of a bank we stood on, Tom had us all cut off our lights so that we were standing in utter blackness. Scary. Then he began a sermon. One about how God’s light shines into this world, illuminates our way through the blackness, trust God will be there to show us the way, and so on. I was annoyed. I had been enjoying myself until the message was foisted upon my mind and I didn’t really care. Let’s keep exploring the cave.

Anyway we hiked along the stream until finally we rounded a bend and light poured through a cave opening and we were in a creek bed back in the forest. We stripped off our muddy clothes and rode back to their little country acre in the back of Tom’s pick up.

This is where the real spiritual lesson actually starts. Because, after we said our goodbyes, we went looking for a bar. In Kentucky, in that time, alcohol was legal by the county. So in one county you might find a bar, and in the next it would be totally dry.

We stopped at a little convenience store and asked the clerk which way to go to find a bar. This young man said he had something better for us than alcohol. We were intrigued. He gave us directions down a series of roads that got narrower, less paved, and bumpier, until we were essentially driving on a single lane path, rocking around in potholes of mud. Until we came to basically a very large cabin type structure, with a fucking cross on the roof. Goddamnit.

But we had come all this way and actually there was raucous noise coming from inside the building so we decided to take a chance and see what was going on.

My fear and anxiety were already heightened. Anything could be on the other side of that door. When we peeped in, nobody noticed two strangers enter. They were all fixated on something in the center of the crowd, like they were watching a cock fight. What the hell kind of church was this? At first I froze with horror. What if this was an illegal cock fighting ring, posing as a church, and the kid sent us her to fuck with us, and now we’re in deep shit because we’ve seen something we shouldn’t. My friend and I both had a look of “maybe we shouldn’t be here” when a woman turned around and noticed us. And then smiled at us and waved us forward. So we crept up on the tight crowd of people, and this woman with her open arm pushed us into the crowd, and craning above the backs of people, in the center, I saw a man, kneeling, with an agitated snake resting on the length of his forearm. He and the snake were eye to eye, and then the snake lunged and bit him right on the brow. Holy shit. Everyone started shouting. The man got up, and another man kneeled in his place. And the crowd got quiet, and the new man took deep breaths, and everything was dead calm, except the palpable tension in the air, as another snake was presented to him.

This new man was old: big white bushy beard and eyebrows. Tears in his flannel shirt. Gnarly knuckled hands. I remember all these details because the snake was so smooth and lithe in contrast. And he brought the snake right up to his face, where it kissed those bushy hairs, with its little slithering tongue. I didn’t know it then, but apparently he was so good at this, he would go in first to soothe the snake before the next panicked person would wind up kneeling there in the center of the circle. And before I knew it, the crowd shifted and I was on the edge of the inner ring, and the old man was inviting the next person to come kneel before the snake. Then his eyes landed on me.

Now, I didn’t have long to make this decision. My heart was pounding in my ears. And I could have easily withdrawn back to the shadows. But some force inside my body–perhaps it was the hand of God pushing me forward–some power was saying to me “kneel before the snake.” And with shaking knees and shivering with nervous tension I stepped forward. The old man moved aside and I knelt just like I had seen the others do. The man showed me how to hold my hand out, and told me to breath deep and slow. When I seemed to him to be ready, he gave the sign to the snake handler, who then laid the snake out on my arm. And right there, it was like I was looking down the barrel of a gun, or surfing in the barrel of a wave. Total calm came over all of us. The room went silent. The snake and I looked each other in the eyes. My fear, which had been so thick I had been choking on it a moment ago, cleared like a fresh breeze had blown it away, and I knew a sort of peace and stillness that sometimes I get when I’m standing all alone in the woods, miles from anyone. It was so beautiful, to be staring danger in the face, and feeling an imperturbable peace in my heart.

Then, the snake, perhaps curious to make acquaintances with me, moved its head towards me and when it did that, the fear clutched at my ribs again, my breathing tensed, I winced, and the snake lunged and bit me right on the cheek. And the whole scene erupted again. I staggered to my feet and silently we made our way out without really staying to see the end of the service. And that struck me as profound as well. No sermons (that I witnessed in any case), no preaching; they just put a snake in front of my face and let God speak for themself.

And if you ask me, that’s how you can make church work for you in 2022. Find something that sends vitality coursing through your nerves and let that awaken your spirit. Then you’ll see plenty of God in a lot of places.