Time for a little thought provoking passage.
You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the Lord.
Leviticus 19:28 (NASB)
King James (which may be a more accurate translation): Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.
I was reading about this today, and there is some research to support that what was being forbidden was the practice of cutting yourself and rubbing ash into the cuts as an act of mourning. Also, Egyptians tattooed themselves so to forbid it set the Israelites apart, which seems to be a recurrent theme in Leviticus.
I am a Christian and I have tattoos. I love my tattoos. I think they're beautiful and they make ME feel beautiful after years of suffering with eczema and feeling ugly most of the time. (side note - the eczema probably would've branded me a leper according to Leviticus) To me, God doesn't care if I have tattoos. He loves me anyways. I think that the main purpose of Leviticus 19:28 was to set the Israelites apart from the others that they were surrounded by and I don't think the prohibition applies today. Of course then you could argue that no prohibitions in the Old Testament should matter, but honestly the only other one I have an issue with so far is not eating pork. Every thing else kinda makes sense.
So what if I have tattoos? No one but God can judge me anyways.
And to paraphrase my tattoo artist and dear friend, my body is a temple, I'm just choosing to have some stained glass windows installed for decoration.
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