Pastor, Help! My son wants to get a tattoo!

This is a common scenario across the nation - especially in our more Evanjellycal circles. When dealing w/ this situation, we've got to get a bit of perspective. The strongest argument against your teenager getting a tattoo is that it's a really dumb idea ... and that pretty much settles it. Getting into a hermeneutical tangle over "cuttings and markings for the dead" in Leviticus probably won't prove to be the most productive way to argue, at least not at the beginning [So are you telling me I'm not allowed to wear shirts that are a cotton/poly blend now too? Or maybe you want me to stop shaving the corners of my beard?]. The principle contained in the passage should eventually be understood.  The fact that your body is not your own does eventually need to be addressed.  Gnostic assumptions about the faith and misguided attempts at "relevance" should all be dealt with.  But really, the bottom line here is the 'folly factor'.  Because the issue really boils down to aesthetics, we should cut to the chase and go straight there. Here's a helpful - if pragmatic - counterexample:


Imagine that - instead of the tattoo thing - all of your friends were rushing out to buy the same kind of custom-printed graphic tee shirts ...

What I've been Reading Lately [Book List] ...

You are what your mind eats ...

May 21, 2011 ... just another day, actually

But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction.  And many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed.

- St Peter

[the actual reference is 2 Peter 2.2 - look!  The #2 appears 3 times in succession!  And if you multiply 2 and 3 you get 6!  And that number three times in succession is 666! And if you ... oh nevermind.]

And Provoke them not to Wrath ...

"By withholding affection to children when they were young, but also then endeavoring to control their behavior well into adulthood, Victorians were in the very odd position of simultaneously trying to suppress childhood and make it last forever. It is perhaps little wonder that the end of Victorianism almost exactly coincided with the invention of psychoanalysis."

- Bill Bryson, At Home

Another droll quote from another kill-joy Puritan

Games may be divided into three sorts: games of wit or industry, games of hazard, and a mixture of both. Games of wit or industry are such as are ordered by the skill and industry of man. Of this sort are shooting in the longbow, shooting in the caliver, running, wrestling, fencing, music, and the games of chess and draughts...These, and all of this kind, wherein the industry of the mind and body hath the chiefest stroke, are very commendable, and not to be disliked.

- William Perkins

Taste and See ...

"I can tell you at once that nothing you touch today will have more suffering, bloodshed, and woe attached to it than the innocuous twin pillars of your salt and pepper set."

- Bill Bryson, from his chapter on the history of the Western diet in At Home

Having Faithful Children: The Standard [please don't forget to pray for my family]

"Not only must a minister's children not be dissolute and rebellious, they must be faithful (Tit. 1:6). Whether or not that last word is rendered as faithful or as believers amounts to the same thing. A minister's children are his first parishioners, and they are the canary in the mine...

When the Protestant world cries out for reformation and revival, as it does, this would include the Protestant ministers. Guys who like fat books more than their wives, and committee meetings more than their kid's ball game, to hear their own golden tones flowing out from the pulpit more than to hear their little girl's chatter on a weekly date, are men who will find themselves caricatured in cartoons when the reformation comes."
 
-Doug Wilson