- That's biblical...Jesus told the people to go into the world and preach the gospel and handle poisonous snakes...
Ah, so you're trolling the guy, are you?
Now it all makes sense. 
But I think the meaning of one of the scripture passages you must be alluding to was more along lines of a provisional "if" (such as when Paul was not deliberately handling a snake when a known-to-be venomous snake bit him while he was tending a fire, after a shipwreck, yet Paul simply shook the snake off his hand and went about his business like nothing happened) not that one should go out of their way to tempt snakes, more generally speaking.
Then again, some of the characters around this place can be like snakes --- slithering around, full of venom, searching always for a this, or that to sink fangs into. The heat of the fire --figuratively speaking-- makes them become heated, so then they strike at whatever movement is closest.
I seem to recall having been bitten numerous times by those critters. In the end, it only made me stronger, though if I didn't have within me faith that God Himself authored over a span of many years, and through more than a few miraculous encounters with Him, and instead my own be only a weaker kind of faith, I think it would have died by now...