In Defense of Snakes

ONE SUMMER AFTERNOON, as our kids played in our front yard in rural Georgia, a car stopped on the road; the driver got out, and we heard loud cracks. The children dashed inside as my husband, Michael, walked toward the stopped car. The driver, an older man, fired his handgun at something in the road. An older woman remained in the car. Michael asked the man what he was doing. The man said he stopped to kill a snake.

The wounded snake slithered into the grass across our road. “It’s just a black rat snake,” Michael said, “It’s not dangerous.” Michael told the man we didn’t want him shooting. The man seemed confused. He said he thought he was protecting our children from danger. Michael was firm. The greatest danger we perceived was the gun. “Well, we won’t help you anymore!” The woman said as they drove away.

The man with the gun, like many humans, has been conditioned to kill snakes. A small 1987 experiment in Kansas found that more drivers than not swerved to hit a fake snake in the road. Scientists are still trying to figure out whether humans have an innate fear of snakes or just a keen perception of them, rooted in survival instincts. Fear is often rooted in wisdom; some snakes can kill. But hatred of snakes in general, born of ignorance and reinforced by bad theology, can be unlearned.

Breaking the curse

“CHRIST HAS COME to end enmity,” Joseph Gordon, a herpetologist and professor of theology said when I asked him recently about his interpretation of Genesis 3:15, in which God names the snake and humans as perpetual enemies. Gordon teaches religion at Johnson University, a Christian college in Knoxville, Tenn., and he unpacks this and other biblical references to snakes and other critters in his Creaturely Theology course. In Jesus, Gordon explains, the curse is broken. He is tired of people using the Bible to cast snakes as the devil incarnate. “We should put the brakes on seeing this as a scriptural or divine justification for the destruction of snakes or for hatred of them.”

Gordon thinks God put him on this earth to “talk about snakes and Christian faith.” And snakes have a way of showing up at his classes, at least a half dozen times. Such as when a groundskeeper asked for help, and Gordon ended up teaching with a water snake wrapped over his shoulders. Or the time he was teaching the book of Romans, and someone alerted him to a snake outside—and before he could get to that one he noticed a baby black racer a foot from the classroom door. Or when a rat snake, stuck in erosion mesh, slithered by, and he helped to cut it free.

Then there was the day Gordon was preparing to discuss “human care for the more-than-human world” and he found a dead baby Northern water snake in a campus building. It must have gotten trapped inside. Finding no food, no water, and no way out, it likely died of dehydration, a common occurrence, Gordon explained, for baby snakes with the misfortune of hatching too close to buildings. Gordon cradled the dead snake in his hands and brought it to class, which was being held outside.

“I taught all the things that I was going to say about God equipping us to be like God and caring for even the sparrow. Every sparrow that falls is known by God,” Gordon said, referencing Jesus’ words from Matthew 10:29-31. “I closed class by saying, ‘No snake dies, no baby snake dies apart from God’s knowing. ... I dug a small grave in the mulch and put the snake down and covered it up.”

In this small eulogy and funeral for a snake, Gordon’s students were not just learning about creaturely theology, they were participating in it. A few months later, a student gave Gordon a drawing of Jesus’ nail-scarred wrists and hands holding a baby water snake; in her rendition, the snake was alive and well.

“If I can get you to ... see a snake is good and is loved by God, it’s not really too hard of a sell to get you to care about any and everything else in God’s creation,” Gordon explained.

Gordon pointed out places in the Bible where snakes are used as symbols of wisdom. Jesus urged his followers to be “wise as serpents, and gentle as doves.” Genesis 3:1 notes that of all the animals, the snake was the wisest. Arum, Gordon explained, the Hebrew word translated here as “wise,” is sometimes translated negatively as “crafty” or “cunning.” But “that word has positive connotations every time it’s used in Proverbs as a description for what humans should be.”

Referencing the writer of Proverbs 30:18-19, Gordon said, “he’s got this list of four things being too wonderful for him; one of the four is the way of a snake on a rock.” For Gordon, snakes are “too wonderful” for him too.

Even venom holds the power to heal.

Awe and fear

AFTER MY DAUGHTER Phoebe inherited Woody, a ball python, from her biology teacher, I felt like a real “snake person,” watching and holding him with awe and wonder. Woody lived in an enclosure in our dining room for a while, but I noticed that for some of our friends, especially those from countries where deaths from snake bites are more prevalent, a snake in the house is not a comforting sight. Learning to be good neighbors means balancing our love of snakes with our friends’ earnest fears.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 5 people a year in the U.S. die from venomous snake bites. A study published on August 25 in PLOS Medicine estimates that up to 7 million people are bitten annually by venomous snakes with between 274,000-513,000 deaths a year.

My friend Prei Mo hasn’t met Woody, who is not venomous; she probably won’t because she is afraid of snakes. I can understand why. In September 2012 she walked to her mother’s house in the refugee camp where they lived in western Thailand. As Karenni people, they had fled ethnic cleansing and war in Myanmar and were awaiting acceptance to another country as refugees. She tied her youngest son on her back and walked without a flashlight since the moon was so bright. As she crested a small hill, she felt a sudden coolness on her ankle. It didn’t hurt but felt kind of “like water.” Then she saw what bit her: a black cobra.

She ran about two minutes to her mom’s house, then walked 30 minutes to a clinic where she received a shot and walked back home. The next day her leg was so swollen that she couldn’t walk. Her sister had to carry her to the clinic. Prei Mo stayed there two weeks, with her condition worsening, when she received news that her family was invited to resettle in the United States. But she couldn’t walk. She was transferred to a Thai hospital where she stayed for a full month and received skin grafts to restore the skin which had been destroyed by necrosis. Though their resettlement was delayed, she and her family moved to the U.S. after her time in the hospital. Prei Mo believes she would have lost her leg if she hadn’t been transferred. Other people in her community lost limbs and died from snake bites.

I keep a large garden, as do Prei Mo and her mom, in a habitat where black rat snakes, king snakes, and copperheads dwell. When Michael and I first moved to Georgia, I asked Michael to kill a copperhead because I thought that was the thing to do. He felt bad about it, and we both agreed it was better to just be careful. When Prei Mo started her garden, she asked a friend to kill a black snake near her chili plants. But she realized she couldn’t keep calling on friends to kill every snake she sees. She laughs nervously to admit that she is still, and probably always will be, afraid of snakes, whether they are venomous or not, and she has taught her children to fear them, too.

Phoebe and I bring Woody to the annual pet show at our local farmers market, and it is interesting to gauge people’s reactions. Some pull away and others draw near. Inviting children and adults to pet a snake with gentle fingers feels like a small sliver of peace-building work. I understand if some people do not become snake people. But I hope for a deeper appreciation of snakes as part of God’s good creation as we work to restore balance.

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Power in the blood

RESEARCHERS CLAIM THAT the high number of global snake bite deaths are a result of the hidden “disease of poverty,” since envenomation is less likely to be fatal with access to the right care. Antivenom is currently extremely expensive. In the U.S., costs are astronomical. Antivenom is unique to the toxins in a particular species and is usually developed by injecting a horse with venom and harvesting the antibodies. Sometimes people have allergic reactions to horse-derived antibodies. A man named Tim Friede may just have a new solution running through his veins.

Friede was bitten by a (nonvenomous) garter snake when he was 5. That experience deepened into a lifetime of fascination. The snake enthusiast and collector has been bitten more than 200 times by venomous snakes, and he has injected himself more than 700 times with venom in an effort to build immunity. His blood might contain what the scientific community has lacked up to this point: enough antibodies from a human donor to create a general anti-venom that could save countless lives. He’s not religiously motivated. In an interview with podcaster Anna Sales, Friede, who grew up in a religiously conservative home, said “religion is stupid and God doesn’t exist.” But he carries the mark of a prophet: People thought he was crazy; he’s an outsider with no advanced degrees; he almost died; he lost his marriage and a home; he almost gave up.

As he documented his work with snake venom, the media and, later, the scientific community started paying attention. A study published in 2025 detailed how a single antivenom developed from a sample of Friede’s blood could offer full or partial treatment for the venom of 19 species of snakes. This research may prove useful around the world as climate change is expanding the ranges of several venomous snakes, suggesting that snake bites will increase globally. Venomous snakes may become neighbors to more of us.

It would be cruel and unnecessary to attempt to eradicate every dangerous snake from our ecosystem, but humans can work on eradicating the human-made systems that create poverty, limited access to health care, and climate change.

Even so, sometimes snakes, like the invasive Burmese pythons in Florida, must be killed. Their presence threatens to destroy local native and endangered species. Professor Gordon spoke with reverence and grief about the 15-foot, 60-pound female python he recently captured in Florida as part of a controlled program to cull the python population. The snake fiercely guarded her eggs, which Gordon destroyed after capturing her.

“It is not the pythons’ fault that they are in Florida.” Gordon explains. He describes Florida as “an ecological nightmare,” pointing out the damage caused by irresponsible releases of pet pythons and rampant development “in a state that effectively was a river until we came and channelized it.” Gordon, who is writing a book about his love for snakes and theology, did not delight in this snake’s death. “I ultimately was not the one to euthanize the snake; they do it humanely.” He then acknowledged the question of whether killing can ever be humane. “I believe Jesus when he said, ‘I’ve come to bring life and bring it to the full.’ And I think that that’s what humans are for, is bringing the fullness of life, not dealing death.” But when it comes to culling the Burmese python population in Florida, or even hunting and fishing, which Gordon believes can fit “within an orthodox, faithful, responsible, Christian ethic of stewardship of creation,” sometimes a kill is “to the good of the whole.”

“For those who think the only good snake is a dead snake,” writes Stephen S. Hall in Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate our World, “perhaps they’re still alive to harbor such ungenerous thoughts precisely because of a snake.” My husband Michael is among the 76 million U.S. adults with a prescription for lisinopril, a blood pressure medicine in a family of drugs called ACE inhibitors. In the 1940s, scientists observed how the venom of the South American pit viper (Bothrops jararaca) causes bite victims’ blood pressure to drop precipitously. After decades of research, that peptide was synthesized and packaged into small lifesaving doses for blood pressure management. Even venom holds the power to heal.

Be not afraid

GORDON’S FAVORITE SNAKE text is from Isaiah 11, the vision of the peaceable kingdom, where “the nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord” (verses 8-9). Here our spiritual imaginations are stretched. Can we imagine a new heaven and new earth in which all are reconciled?

Musambwa Island, in Lake Victoria, Uganda, is a 5-acre microhabitat on which humans and venomous forest cobras peacefully coexists. Snakes are revered on Musambwa as manifestations of the divine. Due to custom, only men stay on the island, and they do not hurt or harm the cobras. There are no documented cases of the cobras biting the men. A Ugandan fisherman and born-again Christian named Enoch Ntale told the Spooked podcast how he went from fearing snakes and believing they were evil based on the teachings of his church, to sleeping on the ground while a cobra slid over him. Over time, the people and snakes on Musambwa (which means “spirit”) have learned to trust and not attack one another. Maybe there’s hope for the rest of us.

Jesus teaches us to love our enemies, even snakes.

The only time I know I killed a snake was more than 25 years ago and it was an accident. I was mowing my parents’ yard when the blades cut a garter snake into many writhing pieces. (Snake body parts can keep moving even after death; many snake bites occur from people handling the dead body or even the decapitated head of the snake!) I had trouble sleeping that night, replaying the scene in my head.

The next morning at Quaker meeting, I felt compelled to speak from the silence about the Genesis 3 passage declaring enmity between snakes and humans. I felt no enmity, only empathy. I said something along the lines that Jesus teaches us to love our enemies, even snakes. If we can love snakes, we can learn to love the people we’ve been conditioned to perceive as our enemies—even if that love means keeping an appropriate, healthy distance.

Editor’s note: This article was updated on Sept. 9 to reflect new data from PLOS Medicine on the number of people who are impacted by venomous snake bites.