I wasn’t going to address this, but a few people raised the question about whether or not tattoos are sinful after I posted about the new contest. I talked about it in the Stuff Christians Like Facebook group but didn’t think it was worth getting into here. But then someone commented “Tats are wrong if you read your scriptures and they are not cool and they do not make you a more effective Christian and its sad to see people having no standards.” So I thought it might be good to talk about this one.
Here is the verse that people use when it comes to being against tattoos, Leviticus 19:28: “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD.”
That’s an interesting statement but I think it might be good to see what else chapter 19 of Leviticus says:
32 ‘Rise in the presence of the aged,
19 ‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
27 ‘Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.
So if we are to take the tattoo rule seriously, and we do not feel we are equipped to pick and choose which laws we will or will not follow like items from a menu o’ God, it is safe to assume that we will all have really long side hair, huge beards, constantly get up and down when we see old folks at McDonald’s and be super sweaty from wearing clothing woven of solid wool.
That’s an absurd take and to tell you the truth, despite my personal opinion that tattoos are fine, I don’t have the answer. But all of this does beg the larger question – which rules do we follow? When Christ came and overcame the old law, what did that mean? And perhaps most importantly, do my pants really need to be 100% wool?
p.s. some people also note that Revelation 19:16 describes Jesus as having a tattoo “On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.”
p.p.s. I edited out a sentence that I think was way too judgmental of me. It was a jerk sentence on my part and had to go.
