This questions arises in an odd (IMO) context: That of a Pentecostal pastor who recently died - like his father before him - of rattlesnake bite while handling the snake.  USA Today has the story of "a belief in miracles that defies rational understanding" and poses the question.

Pastor Mack Wolford, the son of a snake-handling pastor who died from a rattler bite, lived by faith and died last Sunday the snake's bite.

Wolford, 44, "a flamboyant Pentecostal pastor from West Virginia," refused treatment for the snake bites and died within hours of a Sunday afternoon service in an isolated park.

The Washington Post Magazine profiled Wolford last year:

Mack Wolford was known all over Appalachia as a daring man of conviction.  He believed that the Bible mandates that Christians handle serpents to test their faith in God - and that, if they are bitten, they trust in God alone to heal them.

An earlier piece detailed how Woford had combed the backwoods of West Virginia for the snakes he kept in his back bedroom for his prayer events at the isolated, tiny Church of the Lord Jesus

... in an unincorporated hamlet of 1,191 souls has been world-famous for its death-defying handlers of serpents.  Reporters, researchers, photographers and TV crews have come here to track Pentecostals who brandish poisonous snakes, drink strychnine and play with fire as a testimony of their faith...

Mark 16:17-18 mandates that true Christians "take up serpents and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick and they will recover...

Wolford told the Magazine interviewer last year how the passion to believe survived the pain of his father's death:

Those who die from snakebites are never criticized for lack of adequate faith; it is believed that it was simply the deceased's time to die.  Still, Wolford says he went wild after his father's death, getting arrested for armed robbery and kidnapping when he was 18 and spending a year and a half in jail.  Booze destroyed his first marriage and was destroying his second when he repented at 30, and "God took the taste for alcohol away from me."  He quit his job as a loom technician in a North Carolina cotton factory and became a pastor.  But that was not enough to satisfy him.

Despite the way his father died, Wolford wanted to travel to the radical edges of Christianity, where life and death gaze at you every time you walk into a church and pick up a snake.

And so he died, surrounded by the prayers of family and believers.

So ... what about this snake-handling practice? And in terms of testing your faith, whose choice is it - yours or God's?

Jun 4, 2012 -- 6:40AM, jesusfreakgal wrote:

 I personally believe that OUR testing of God is wrong. To me, it suggests lack of faith, in that the person. In a way, it is like the person is saying that they have to do some dangerous thing and have God protect them and/ or heal them in order for them to know/ have security that God will do so. To me, there is a significant difference a person having something (such as cancer) occur to them, and that person having the faith that God will heal them, and quite another for someone to purposely bring things upon themselves (such as handling of snakes/ other poisonous creatures, walking across Niagara Falls, or other VERY dangerous things) believing that God will heal/ protect them. One suggests that we have faith, while the other (IMO) suggests that we need confirmation.  On the other hand, I believe that when WE are tested, God is trying to make a point of something. I also believe that God doesn’t give us more then we can handle, so when we are tested, it wouldn’t be a test so great that in the end we end up in despair and having killed ourselves.

JFG

I think these are really wise insights, JFG :-) 

Your comments about our testing God resonate with me.  There's a moment in Scripture in which Isaiah (I think) takes one of the kings to task for testing God - actually, for trying the patience of God.  It's a funny moment and quite sarcastic, but very wise.

I think your comments about snake-handling being the kind of reckless display of lack of faith and need for reassurance of God's love are also very well-taken. Apparently, this particular guy had a spare room full of poisonous snakes.  He used to lie down with them, dance with them and wrap them around his neck.  And this was in private - not in a worship service.

Jun 2, 2012 -- 4:55PM, Theo wrote:

In every school I know of, the teachers are the ones who give the tests. Likewise in the school of life - God tests our hearts and our faith by the adversities of life.

I like this point, Theo. 

I'm personally not sure how I feel about the notion of God testing us; I sometimes think a better paradigm would work for me.  But I still think your point is well-taken.