OT Observation/Thoughts: A sort of “open letter” post regarding the recently deceased pastor of a snake handling Pentecostal church in Kentucky came in via my Google alerts this morning. I don’t know if you guys will find it interesting, but I did even though I don’t believe as he does.

I guess we can all find justification for our beliefs, how outlandish they seem to others, and no matter how many times logic needs to be bent like a pretzel to make it work. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t find it something to sneer at or ridicule, but rather… I dunno, there is a lot of human… I guess just humanity, the quality of being human—not all good or all bad, and certainly not always logical, but just human—demonstrated in it.

Faith — 0, rattlesnake — 1 is the scorecard for just one of the many mean-spirited comments I’ve read after the passing away of my beloved dad, Pastor Woodrow A. Fields. I say dad instead of father as another testament to our devotion to the scriptures as it teaches us to call no man Father because we only have one, which is in Heaven. It is no way meant to be a slight to the man that taught me to work and provide for my family and to love EVERYBODY, regardless of creed, religious affiliation or whether or not that same love was returned. Those things are only a sampling of the plethora of lessons the old man — as I often called him in jest — taught me in order to make me the man I am today and the better man I hope to be in the future. I may not do everything to perfection but besides the religious aspects of lessons taught, he taught me to be a productive, honest citizen in a heartless and callous society in which we live today. […]

middlesborodailynews.com

Here’s the first paragraph of the obituary of the pastor:

EVARTS — Reverend Woodrow A. “Woody” Fields, 52, of Evarts, went home to be with his Lord and Savior, Friday night, November 28, 2014, at the Evarts Free Pentecostal Holiness Church, where he was the Pastor, doing what he loved best, worshipping the Lord. Born June 3, 1962 in Harlan County, he had lived here most of his life. Woody was a retired coal miner with Manalapan Mining Company and was an avid fisherman. […]

legacy.com

Anyway… that is all.