There is this old seminary video I dimly recall from my youth in the late-’90s, a dramatization of a Cherokee folk-tale, as narrated by a certain Elder Robert B. Harbertson (1932-2014) of the Second Quorum of the Seventy back in the ’80s. It took me a little hunting to track down the original video on YouTube (VHS tracking lines and all), but text versions of the story can still be found online easily enough, which typically go something like this:

“A little boy was walking down a path and he came across a rattlesnake. The rattlesnake was getting old. He asked, ‘Please little boy, can you take me to the top of the mountain? I hope to see the sunset one last time before I die.’ The little boy answered, ‘No Mr. Rattlesnake. If I pick you up, you’ll bite me, and I’ll die.’ The rattlesnake said, ‘No, I promise. I won’t bite you. Just please take me up to the mountain.’ The little boy thought about it and finally picked up that rattlesnake and took it close to his chest and carried it up to the top of the mountain.

“They sat there and watched the sunset together. It was so beautiful. Then after sunset the rattlesnake turned to the little boy and asked, ‘Can I go home now? I am tired, and I am old.’ The little boy picked up the rattlesnake and again took it to his chest and held it tightly and safely. He came all the way down the mountain holding the snake carefully and took it to his home to give him some food and a place to sleep. The next day the rattlesnake turned to the boy and asked, ‘Please little boy, will you take me back to my home now? It is time for me to leave this world, and I would like to be at my home now.’ The little boy felt he had been safe all this time and the snake had kept his word, so he would take it home as asked.

“He carefully picked up the snake, took it close to his chest, and carried him back to the woods, to his home to die. Just before he laid the rattlesnake down, the rattlesnake turned and bit him in the chest. The little boy cried out and threw the snake upon the ground. ‘Mr. Snake, why did you do that? Now I will surely die!’ The rattlesnake looked up at him and grinned, ‘You knew what I was when you picked me up.'”

As a youth I hated that story and I hated that video. I hated how it seemed to deny the possibility of repentance and redemption (what, a rattlesnake can’t change, so neither can people?!); I hated how it seemed to directly contradict Christ’s own admonition to “love thine enemies;” I hated how it punished the Native boy for his compassion and charity, and blamed the victim for the snake’s own treachery; I hated how it seemed to teach only mistrust and suspicion of those different from us; I hated Elder Harbertson’s smug, condescending delivery; I hated how it ignored the fact that rattlesnakes only bite when they feel threatened, not out of any sort of anthropomorphic malice; I hated how it appropriated Native American discourse in order to guilt LDS kids for, I don’t know, enjoying Rap music or PG-13 movies or spaghetti-straps or whatever (at least that’s how my Seminary teachers taught it).

Now, I hated a lot of Seminary videos in high school (Cipher in the Snow and The Pump were also two that earned my ire), so that was nothing new. And as the ’90s became the 2000s and I went away on a mission and to college and grad school, I largely forgot all about those old videos; my faith was rooted in sterner stuff than a bunch of didactic old VHS cassettes, anyways. Nevertheless, over the course of the past decade, I have found myself (almost in spite of myself) increasingly ruminating on that old Seminary video, and coming to at long last begrudgingly acknowledge the wisdom of Elder Harbertson in recounting that Cherokee legend.

Because I read the recent WaPo profile about a laid off young U.S. Forest Service employee–the latest victim of all these Federal purges–who voted for DJT in ’24 because she thought the man who tried to kill the Affordable Care Act in 2017 was actually serious about making IVF (or any healthcare) free; and I read about the Florida Venezuelans–who proudly called themselves MAGAzuelans as they projected their own hatred of Chavez and Maduro onto the milquetoast Dems–stunned to find themselves targeted for mass-deportation no different from every other Latino group; and of the Michigan Muslims who voted for DJT as a protest against Biden’s handling of Gaza, only to somehow be surprised that the same man who famously banned all Muslim-travel as his first act in office in 2017 now appoint a cabinet full of Zionists, and propose a full-scale U.S. occupation of Gaza Strip to “clear them out;” and of the Right-leaning Police Officers union suddenly upset that he pardoned all the January 6th rioters that assaulted the capitol police in 2021; and of the elderly GOP voters shocked to find he was actually serious about cutting Medicaid and Social Security; and of all those livid about inflation elect the same man who crashed the economy in 2020, only to watch him promptly drive up inflation even further; and I also recall every Seminary teacher and Youth leader I had growing up, who taught us all to shun casinos and vulgarity and dishonesty and adultery and pornography and sexual immorality and to avoid even the appearance of evil, only to turn around and vote for every example of the same once it had an (R) after its name–and then somehow be shocked when so many of their children ceased to respect them or take their teachings seriously; and of many other examples besides, and many more and worse soon to come.

And in each of these examples, I cannot help but hear that little boy cry out in agony, “Mr. Snake, why did you do that? Now I will surely die!” And I then hear Elder Harbertson’s long-dead voice once again curl in contempt, as he declares: “You knew what I was when you picked me up…”