Is it wrong to get a tattoo?
Hi, welcome to Little Lessons, thanks of joining me.
Today's question is one that might be considered to be in the less significant question category.
However, tattoos are becoming very popular, they have been over the last several years
in particular and a lot of people are getting them.
They're a fashion statement and so it's no surprise that Christians might be wondering,
"Should I get a tattoo?
Is it okay?"
I wanna commend you for asking that question wondering because before we do anything, we
ought to ask the question, what does the Lord think about what I'm thinking about doing?
So, way to go.
Let's see if we can come up with an answer from the Bible.
If you search the Bible, you're only gonna find the word tattoo one time, and that's
in the New American Standard Version.
In other versions, maybe you won't even find it a single time.
But, that single time, it's found in the Old Testament in Leviticus Chapter 19, in the
Law of Moses.
Now, if you have been watching Little Lessons or if you've been reading your Bible, you
know that Christians are not under the Law of Moses.
Law of Moses was given to a specific group of people for a specific length of time and
that is, it was given to the descendants of Israel after God delivered them out of Egyptian
bondage and it lasted only until Jesus' death on the cross.
That was the end of the Old Covenant, the end of the Mosaic Law.
Christians are not obligated to keep the Law of Moses.
We are however, obligated to keep the law of Christ that's very, very plain.
I might as well add this, we are obligated to keep the parts of the Law of Moses that
were carried over into the Law of Christ, but for the most part, those that were carried
over are the big time moral laws like don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't murder,
love your neighbor as yourself.
Those are laws form the Mosaic Law and also laws under the Law of Christ.
But if you read the Gospels, you're not gonna find Jesus saying anything prohibiting tattoos.
You're not gonna find anything in the Epistles written by the apostles forbidding tattoos.
From that standpoint, we don't have to be concerned that if we read a prohibition in
the Old Covenant, that it's not moral in nature.
That we have to be feeling we're obligated under the New Covenant.
[inaudible 00:02:51], it doesn't seem to be moral in nature.
We're gonna read it here in a second.
It doesn't affect our relationships with others.
We're not harming other people.
You can get a tattoo and still love your neighbor as yourself.
Well, actually I will qualify that at the very end so stay with me.
Let's read from the Law of Moses, Leviticus 19:28.
God says, "You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead."
That's the first half.
We're gonna read the second half shortly what covers tattoos but apparently, that was a
practice of some pagan culture in Canaan's land.
God said, "I don't want you doing like they're doing," and they were cutting their bodies
when somebody died, perhaps showing their sorrow for them.
This is practice in some tribal culture today in parts of the world where somebody dies,
to show your sorrow you cut yourself and then you do what you can to prevent it from healing
up real nice so that there's always a scar there as a memorial to that dead person.
It's a way of showing your sorrow and reminding you of that person.
But God said to Israel, "Don't be doing that."
He didn't say why they shouldn't that, so I don't I know.
I can speculate why, perhaps it's because we're created in God's image and God doesn't
think it's right for us to be marring what looks like Him.
Maybe, or maybe it was offensive to God because it was kind of borderline idolatry, like ancestor
worship type thinking and God said, "No, I don't want you to be focused on the dead.
I want you to be focused on me and getting ready to stand before me one day, not thinking
about people that have already died."
But again, I don't know.
But within the context of remembering the dead of doing something for the dead, we keep
on reading here, "Nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves."
The implication is, also you'll be doing that to remember the dead or to show your sorrows
so you'll burn yourself or you'll do something to put some kind of an imprint or mark on
you.
The word tattoo is how the New American Standard translates it.
That may not even be the best possible translated word.
Regardless, God said don't do either of those things.
And so first of all in principle, I don't think many people today are getting tattoos
to remember the dead, although I guess back years ago guys put tattoos on the side of
their arm, mother, with a big heart there.
But often times the mother was still alive.
I don't think that that's something we have to consider but nevertheless, if in fact there's
some principle here that makes this offensive to God, it's not said, but if there is, well
that's something to think about and something that maybe you ought to pray about.
But again, we're not under the Law of Moses and so you can rest at least in that.
As we consider whether it's right or wrong to get a tattoo, I'd just like to present
a couple of thoughts to think about on a level that's not just necessarily quoting Bible
verses.
I think first of all if you've got a tattoo, you can't change that very easily now.
But if you're thinking about getting a tattoo, you might wanna ask yourself the question,
how have my tastes changed over the last 10 or 20 years, and are they likely to change
in the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years?
Because, what's fashionable to you right now may not seem fashionable in a few decades.
I think that's fairly reasonable to think that way.
If you were gonna go buy a coat and the sales person said, "If you buy this particular coat,
you have to sign a contract that you're gonna wear that coat for the rest of your life and
be buried in that coat."
You might wanna think a little bit before you bought that coat because you might like
it now, but you might not like it 10, 20, or 30 years from now.
On another level, I'd ask you to think about if there's something you could do that would
be a better use of your money than getting that tattoo.
You could lay up treasure in heaven with that money.
And then last but not least, I think people get tattoos because they feel in some ways
it makes them more attractive to other people.
You might wanna ask yourself within your heart, "Why am I trying to make myself attractive
in this way?
Does it reveal anything about me that needs to adjust?"
You could ask that question about many things.
"Why am I doing this?
Why am I buying those clothes instead of these clothes?"
Why do we want people to be looking at us and liking us?
That's a much bigger lesson that we can't cover in this little lesson, but I try to
give you some of the salient points to think about when it comes to tattoos.
All right, Thanks so much for joining me.
Hope to see you next time.
God bless.