Line upon Line

I Stared It in the Eyes

Our first pre-school in India for children of leprosy-affected families was next door to a large nursery. There were many snakes lurking in the nursery. One night when I talked to Gopi, our director, on the phone he said, “Oh, my gosh, Becky! We had a six-foot-long cobra come up to the home today.” This was one of my greatest fears! “Oh no, what happened?” He said, “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. It won’t hurt any of our children. I stared it in the eyes.”

I said, “What?? What are you talking about?”  He said, “No, I stared in his eyes. It will not bite any of our children.” As I was shaking my head in disbelief, I said, “Okay, well that’s really comforting to know. Thank-you, Gopi.”

There have been other snakes, huge snakes, that have crawled up from the little nursery next door, but no one’s ever been hurt. Gopi has killed a couple of the other snakes, but he didn’t kill the cobra. He stared it in the eyes. You can’t kill a cobra in India, because they are a god in the Hindu Pantheon. They are revered. You’re expected to relocate them.

There are people whose whole jobs are to catch and relocate cobras, which basically means they take them across the street. Then the cobras crawl back again, and you have pay the cobra catchers once again, to come get them one more time. I think they are supposed to send them to Mumbai to the snake institute, but I have my doubts about how many of the snakes actually make it there.

But just to be clear, I wouldn’t want to stare a cobra in the eyes because they spit, and if they spit in your eyes, they blind you. It’s like those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Because of this, the people that chase cobras usually wear dark glasses.

Cobras and Children

I sat next to an Indian doctor on the plane once on my way to India. I asked him what was the best thing to do if you come face to face with a cobra? “We’d like to train the children at our school.” He said, “Oh, the children don’t have to worry. Cobras don’t bite children.”

I kid you not. He said that with total soberness to me. I protested, “Oh, come on.”  He insisted, “No, no, no. Cobras do not bite children.”

When I got to India I asked the doctor in our clinic, “Is it true that cobras don’t bite children?” He said, “What are you talking about? I treat children that have been bitten by cobras, all the time.” The doctor on the plane was an American doctor that was Indian. He sat there and with total sobriety told me that cobras don’t bite children.

A BBC report gives the real facts: In India, over 64,000 people die of snake bites each year—the highest globally. Most of these deaths are from cobras or krait snakes. – (The Indian Express Journal).

An estimated 1.2 million people have died from snake bites in India in the past 20 years, a new study has found. Nearly half of the victims were between 30 and 69 years old, and a quarter of them were children, the study says. – (India’s Million Death Study)

 The Cobra Charmer

Our volunteers seem fascinated by cobras and look forward to the trip they take to New Delhi at the end of their service, where they can find the famous Delhi snake charmers. On one trip two of our volunteers got quite a surprise. They were excited to find a snake charmer on the street with a sign next to him reading in English, Snake charming 100 rupees. They quickly paid their 100 rupees, got out their cameras and anticipated a remarkable phenomenon. However, when the charmer played his flute, nothing happened. The cobra stayed in the basket. The flute charmer played a livelier tune. Still, nothing happened. Our volunteers were beginning to think that there wasn’t really a cobra in the basket at all, that the guy was just ripping them off.

The snake charmer could sense their distrust, so he did an unexpected thing. He grabbed the top off the basket, thrust his hand into the basket, grabbed the cobra by the neck, shook it back and forth a few times, then stuffed it back into the basket and put the lid back on.

This time when he played the cobra came dancing up just like it was supposed to!

The Two-Step Snake

 One night our two directors in India, Amy Antonelli and Tagg Grant were watching a PBS program on the 10 most dangerous snakes in world.  After telling about one snake the expert on the program would say, “Okay, back to India for #7, #6, #5, #4, #3, #2,” They finally said, “Okay, now let’s go back to India for the #1 most dangerous snake in the world.” It was a krait snake. Some call it the two-step snake because there is no antivenom for it—its venom works too quickly to get a shot. Once you’re bit, you basically can take two steps before falling down dead. On the show, they put a drop of its venom into a large vial of blood. They immediately turned the vial upside down and the blood was already congealed!

One day in India we had a volunteer bring us a baby krait snake in a Ziplock bag! She was all excited about this cute baby snake she had found. She had found it on the ground and coaxed it into the Ziplock. We went nuts. “That’s a krait snake—most dangerous snake in the world!” She protested, “but this is just a cute little one.” What she didn’t know is that baby snakes are the most dangerous of all because they haven’t yet learned to judge how much venom to release in relationship to the animal they’re biting. They just release the full load. Amazing she wasn’t killed!

Cobras Don’t Come Out at Night

Speaking of our volunteers, we had two volunteers who sneaked out one night to go find a nightclub. We told them this was extremely dangerous on several levels; one is cobras hiding in the dark. They laughed and said, “Oh no, cobras don’t come out at night.”

The following internet article entitled 10 Snakes That Come Out to Hunt Only at Night, by Rachel Sumner clarifies this idea:

“Despite its fearsome reputation, the King Cobra snake exhibits a stealthy grace during its nocturnal hunts. It tracks its prey, often other snakes, with unmatched precision. Its impressive size doesn’t hinder its ability to move silently through dense underbrush. This serpent’s nighttime activity is driven by a combination of temperature regulation and prey availability. It stands as a symbol of power and mystery, capturing the imagination of all who encounter its path. Observing the king cobra is to witness the art of nighttime predation.”

Once they learned this, there was no more sneaking out at night!

The one thing these stories all have in common is that actions were based on false assumptions. Staring a cobra in the eye will not keep it from biting children, but it might blind you! Cobras do bite children. Snake charmers are not risking death to charm their snakes—because they’ve all been defanged! Baby snakes may be cute, but they are NOT harmless. They are, in fact, the most dangerous of all. And yes, cobras do hunt at night!

Knowledge is power. Truth is power—power to organize and conduct our lives with principles that will not only ennoble and strengthen us, but more importantly, will lead us back to our Heavenly Parents.

There are many voices in the world today declaring things to be true, but like the cobra stories, are absolutely based on false principles. In this day of YouTube videos, Snapchat, TikTok and other social media sites you can find all kinds of crazy ideas being pitched passionately by people: how to lose weight, how to clean stains, how to gain weight, how to cure cancer, how to invest to make millions, etc. the list is endless. Some are silly, some are absurd, some are dangerous. A few are true. Sites will have “testimonials” from many people that “prove” their theory. Most are phony. Many cite bogus statistics with great fervor and enthusiasm. All claim their idea is “life-changing”.

How can you know who to trust?

We each have the Gift of the Holy Ghost, which is the key to our discernment. We also have the precious gift of having the leadership of a Prophet of God to help guide us. But it only works if we listen to him.

I thought it was fascinating during the recent Covid pandemic when the Prophet came out encouraging members to be vaccinated. A friend of mine, also a member of the Church, decided not to follow the prophet’s advice because of the “convincing things she read on the internet about the covid vaccinations.” I was so surprised that she would value the advice of people she didn’t know at all and had no idea of their agendas, over the counsel of a living prophet. If we could just find the answers to all our questions online, why do we even need a prophet?

Just for fun, I decided to ask Chat GPT about death rates of vaccinated people vs. unvaccinated people. Turns out, the prophet was right. This is what I got:

 During the COVID-19 pandemic, various studies and reports indicated significant differences in death rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. Generally, vaccinated individuals had lower death rates compared to those who were unvaccinated, particularly among older adults and those with underlying health conditions.

1. 1. Vaccination Impact: Vaccines were shown to be effective in reducing severe illness, hospitalization, and death. For example, studies indicated that fully vaccinated individuals had a significantly lower risk of dying from COVID-19 compared to unvaccinated individuals.
   2. Data Variability: The exact death rates varied by region, the specific vaccines used, the time period of the study, and the emergence of different variants of the virus. For instance, during the Delta variant surge, unvaccinated individuals faced a higher risk of severe outcomes compared to those vaccinated.
   3. Statistics: In many studies, unvaccinated individuals were found to be several times more likely to die from COVID-19 than vaccinated individuals. Some reports suggested that unvaccinated individuals had death rates that were 10 to 20 times higher than those who were fully vaccinated.

 I also began to read the articles that came up when I put this question into my browser. A zillion articles came up with varying percentages of protection offered by vaccinations, but all the percentages were significant. I read about a dozen of the articles; all with the same conclusion: vaccinated people had much lower death rates than unvaccinated people. As they say, hindsight is always better than current wisdom! In this case it happened to be a life and death difference. That’s why we have a prophet!

One sinister idea is that there really is not any hard truth. In a BYU Devotional, Elder Quentin L. Cook, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said: “One of the most cunning aspects of the adversary’s efforts to thwart our Father in Heaven’s plan of happiness is his deceitful teaching that there is no evil influence or devil (2 Nephi 28:22) and his attempt to redefine evil as good and good as evil, darkness as light and light as darkness, and bitter as sweet and sweet as bitter! (2 Nephi 15:20)

This is sometimes called a paradigm shift—when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way, thus portraying things to be exactly the opposite of what they really are. In his classic novel The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis wrote from a senior devil’s point of view. Lewis inverted traditional values using irony and satire to make evil appear good and good appear evil. (BYU Devotional, Feb. 7, 2017)

Just this morning I read an article in the NYTimes about an actress who was attacked online after accusing a co-actor of sexual harassment. Suddenly there were thousands of references online worldwide accusing the woman of being horrible and the evil one. Many of these appeared to have been spearheaded by the actor’s attorney and a PR agent using a playbook called DARVO, which stands for “Deny, Attack, Reverse, Victim, and Offender” The term was coined by trauma psychologist Jennifer Freyd in 1997 to describe the way abusive individuals deflect blame onto their victims. The global assault on (this woman’s) credibility was an example of collective DARVO.” (NYTimes, July 9, 2025, Blake Lively vs. the Misogyny Slop Ecosystem)

Years ago, I read a book called, Brainwashed, which detailed the scientific methods used during the Vietnam and Korean wars to brainwash prisoners. One of the tools used was to convince the prisoner that nothing they believed in was real; in essence, that there was no such thing as absolute truth, or absolute right or wrong. The purpose of this was to weaken the prisoner’s resolve not to give their captors classified information when tortured.

One example the interrogators gave was asking a prisoner what color a metal bar was. When the prisoner said, “Black”, the interrogator would say, “But what happens if it’s left out in the rain and it rusts—then what is the color of the bar? Is it not red? And then what happens if it is left out in the sun and the paint fades, is it not gray?  In truth, there is no color that correctly defines that bar, because at any given moment of time, it could be a different color.”

The book told the story of one prisoner who was confined to solitary confinement for refusing to buy into the brainwashing, that all “truth” was relative. After the war, they found scratched on the wall of his confinement these words: Black is black and white is white and no amount of torture can ever make me say otherwise. In other words, truth is truth. Satan wants us all to believe that truth is relative, that there is no constant, that it constantly changes.

In our day and age, there are those who would convince us that black cannot only be red or gray, but that in our day, black is white and white is black. This was prophesied as a sign of the last days: in 2 Tim 3:1-5, 13 Paul wrote, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For people will be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. (Avoid such people.)”

 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.

Isaiah also warned about this: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20 & 2 Ne 15:20. This is a frequent theme in the scriptures. A few examples follow.

Proverbs 16:25 There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

John 3:19  And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.

1 Corinthians 15:33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.”

2 Corinthians 11:14 ESV And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

In light of these prophesies the Lord counsels us, “But my disciples shall stand in holy places, and shall not be moved; but among the wicked, men shall lift up their voices and curse God and die” (D&C 45:32)

Greg R. on the blog, Mormon Beliefs, wrote: I connect my desire to receive light and knowledge with the prerequisite of living worthy to enter the temple and the constant striving to keep temple covenants, filling my heart and mind with the Holy Spirit on a daily basis. I can’t expect to receive the mysteries of the kingdom just for the asking if I don’t put them to practice in my life. I will receive what I am ready to act on. – (Mormon Beliefs, The Holy Spirit; discerning between good and evil spirits.)

 Getting information wrong about cobras can be deadly. Getting information wrong about God’s truth can be even more deadly because the consequences are eternal. Let’s all live so that the Holy Spirit can speak to our spirits clearly and we can hear and understand. And let’s all follow our beloved prophet who speaks for God in our day!