Teachers and Tattoos
I sat down for a meal at a recent church meet-up and noticed the guy next to me had a relatively new tattoo on his forearm. The guy seemed to be about 30 and I think he has been in and around the Churches of God for most of his life. When I asked “what is that?” he responded by telling me the meaning of the shapes and what the tattoo meant to him. He is obviously proud of his body art.
I was a bit perplexed. I had (and have) no ill feeling at all toward the brother with the new tattoo but the first thought in my head was, “who’s running this guy’s home congregation?”
I’m no stranger to tattoos and it is only by the grace of God that I escaped the Navy and my youth without one. I could never find some image that I wanted to wear for the rest of my life. I even had an artistically talented friend of mine draw what I envisioned having tattooed on me. I ended up laminating it and saving it until I ever felt like having it put on me permanently. That never happened.
Just in case anyone is wondering, Torah does indeed prohibit tattoos and that can be found at Leviticus 19:28. Earrings and, strangely, nose rings aren’t prohibited by scripture.
Brethren, it sure is easy to fall into the habit of only teaching our most powerful doctrines. The Sabbath, the Ten Commandments, the Moedim, and the pagan roots of the false doctrines are common threads we like to preach. We must not forget to speak, teach and write on the common beliefs we share with traditional Christianity. Standards of personal conduct, ethics, dressing modestly, and other fundamentals need to be addressed periodically. I know it is easy to assume everyone already knows these things but please invest the time, even if the congregation is a seasoned one. James 3:1 shows that we teachers have a great burden of judgment, so when the congregation is resurrected, let’s have them resurrected as knowledgeable and prepared for that day as possible.
As a side note, when I started to write this blog I was certain that earrings and nose rings were also prohibited by Torah. They actually aren’t and if one reads Ezekiel 16, one can see Yahweh analogizing Jerusalem as a bride and placing earrings and nose rings on her to make her beautiful. That said, I still prefer my wife and my daughters to stay the way Yahweh made them. If He wishes to place rings in their ears, though, His will be done.
