Pierced ears and a tatoo (or two)?

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Ezekial 16 - God likens Israel to a woman and shows His care for her. God's care included giving of nose rings:


8Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness: yea, I sware unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord GOD, and thou becamest mine.

9Then washed I thee with water; yea, I throughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil.

10I clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with badgers' skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk.

11I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy hands, and a chain on thy neck.

12And I put a jewel on thy forehead, and earrings in thine ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine head.

13Thus wast thou decked with gold and silver; and thy raiment was of fine linen, and silk, and broidered work; thou didst eat fine flour, and honey, and oil: and thou wast exceeding beautiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom.

14And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord GOD.




Israel used these good things to play the whore, but we cannot blame God nor can we say that God did not know his own teachings about jewelry, piercings and the like.
 
Ezekial 16 - God likens Israel to a woman and shows His care for her. God's care included giving of nose rings:
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Was that to me? My first post, which is the first reply on this thread, points this out. That's why there has historically been no pattern of Jewish and Christian and Muslim resistance to earrings, at least in females, but there has been to tattoos in all three religions.
 
Tim:

Again, I believe that if the animistic environment is removed, then tattoes are okay (unless it is on the butt crack and accompanied by thong wearing and low shorts).

Jewelry is written about in a negative light as well often in Scripture due to associations with idolatry, and seduction - but it is also written about in a good light as symbols of authority (kings wore jewelry) and beauty. There are only a few mentions of tattoes in Scripture, in an environement of animism.

I mention piercings because a piercing cuts into the flesh as well, but is viewed as legitimate.
 
TIm:

Woe to them that trim their beards then too!
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It's more complicated that, and that's one of the reasons I mentioned differences between Christians of good will and individual views of continuity. What you are doing is claiming certain of the laws in those few verses as being binding, or at least optimum behavior, and others neither binding nor presently optimum behavior. Most everyone else here is doing the same, only we're picking different laws.

I could easily say to you, when you bring up the practice that both of us saw on that big island of cutting off fingers "Well, if it's wrong then wo to them who trim their beards" and I would be using the exact same argument that you are using.

I just asked you if the nose ring comment was made to me, since I'm the one who brought it up, and in a positive context. And I brought it up in a positive context because of verses in the Old Testament. As did you.

And I pointed out that historically billions of people of all three religions, over thousands of years, have held that those verses allowed piercings at least in women, and disallowed tattoos for both men and women. The modern view that tattoos are morally neutral may be the correct view, but it's a view that has been held by a very tiny minority of people. Again, not that this is final proof, but that the subject deserves a good deal of thought.

The subject quickly gets complicated because it is one of determining which category of laws these individual laws fall into.
 
The Big 3 religions were mostly in cultures that were culturally opposed to tattoes anyway. In other parts of the world and in SE Asia and Melanesia tattoes were more common and culturally accepted, and often mixed with animism (but not always). It should come as no surprise then that the early church and Islam and the Jews would oppose tattoes. I.e. they were children of their time and culture and tattoes were foreign and always to them associated with animism.

Just as the early church fathers opposed any form of theatre even though most people today believe that the theater is not per se evil but only worhty of special cautions, I believe that the BIg 3 religions could not fathom tattoes that were separate from animism. But in today;s West would you agree that tattoe-wearer are animistic or can people get tattoes for beauty motivations and not fo animistic ritualism?
 
lenflack said:
I'm not sure what the second prohibition Tim was refering to is, but the Leviticus one refers to a pagan death ritual and is in a passage that also prohibits cotton-polyester blend shirts, medium-rare steaks, and cleanshaven men. I don't belive that it prohibits us from getting tattoos.
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This is bare assertion; the cuts are related to the dead, the markings on the body are not. Also, the passage in question also says "I am the LORD"; therefore, by this ill fated logic, we should no longer believe that "He is the LORD" since it occurs within these "outdated" passages. Ceremonial, moral and judicial laws are not nicely separated within the Law, and to make such a blanket statement is short-sighted, at best.

Cheers,
 
Okay Adam, but your beard looks trimmed to me and I think you might be wearing a cotton and polyester blend. GASP, you might even eat lobster ever so often...
 
Pergamum said:
Okay Adam, but your beard looks trimmed to me and I think you might be wearing a cotton and polyester blend. GASP, you might even eat lobster ever so often...
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Pergs,

Read my previous post, and interact with it without your hillbilly Ozark goofiness :lol: By the way, my family are Okies and Arkies, so I jest because I care.

God bless you brother.
 
Adam:

I do think you are right to say that the 3 divisions of the law are not quite cut so neatly (pardon the pun).

And cutting the flesh for the dead is a moral violation of the law, not just a cremonial thing.

Without the intent to honor the dead, however, it merely becomes body mutilation - the same as an earing cuts the flesh or a nose ring, things which we say are legitimate even though they involve the mutilation of the flesh.

The motive is the main thing.

I propose that we can perform body modification even when it invovles cutting, if it is for beautification reasons and not for animistic ritualism.
 
Perg, you repeatedly bring up animism as one of the building blocks for your theory, yet before I went to bed last night I thought about the cultures Israel was surrounded with while that law was given, and I couldn't think of any that were animistic. Whom did you have in mind?
 
Ha, sorry to make it sound unattractive.

I was trying to stress the link that many things that people do for beauty either scars or alters the body. My assertion is that we are allowed to scar, modify or alter the body for beauty, but not for tribal ritualism or animism.



Weight loss,
earings, nose rings, belly rings, lip piercings,
make up,
scarification,
plucking eyebrows,
and
tattoes

All of these things are body modifications and I think that these things are not sinful per se.


Though, I would say that Japanese foot binding made Japanese women very unhealthy in gait and this might be per se sinful as it cripples the body instead of merely scars or modifies it.
 
TimV said:
Perg, you repeatedly bring up animism as one of the building blocks for your theory, yet before I went to bed last night I thought about the cultures Israel was surrounded with while that law was given, and I couldn't think of any that were animistic. Whom did you have in mind?
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They worshipped the baals. And they performed rituals to try to control the spirit world. They believed in more than one gods and that these gods were active in the world and often needed to be appeased. They were pagan and probably animistic. If you delete and change every time I use the word animism and replace it with pagan, I don't think my theory suffers.

If there is a religious element to tattoes than a case could be made for them being sinful.





NOTE: One can even remember the dead perhaps with a tattoo by writing "Mom, 1955-2000" in sort of a perm. memorial. But this gets closer to the Leviticius passage and I am not arguing for this but only for regular butterfly tattoes, etc, that carry no religious meaning.
 
They worshipped the baals. And they performed rituals to try to control the spirit world. They believed in more than one gods and that these gods were active in the world and often needed to be appeased. They were pagan and probably animistic. If you delete and change every time I use the word animism and replace it with pagan, I don't think my theory suffers.
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The Egyptians, Philistines, Hittites and many others didn't worship the Baals as far as I know. They were polytheistic rather than animistic which is why you have statues of Marduk, Dagon, Set, etc..

And if you change animist to pagan, then you're talking about pretty much everyone in the world except for a few small tribes that seem to have remembered the Most High, so your theory seems to read that the prohibition against tattoos was to separate God's people from those surrounding them. Yet you also say
The Big 3 religions were mostly in cultures that were culturally opposed to tattoes anyway.
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Which seems to say the opposite.

You don't think it at all possible that the reason that the overwhelming majority of Christians, Muslims and Jews thought getting tattoos was wrong was because of those verses rather than
a) they were surround by people who got tattoos or
b) they were from cultures opposed to tattoos?
 
Marduk, Dagon and others were lower gods, i.e. demons, and this polytheistic religions were people can control their Gods through appeasement, offerings, etc has most of the traits of animism. The locals have names for their "gods" too, but they are still animistic.

Yes, I do think that many asian tribes, as well as Melanesian culture in general is more tattoe happy. And there are huge cultural variances that allow for tattoes minus animism to occur. The indians for instance like Henna and decorate hands for weddings, but this is temporary. If tattoes are wrong, then playing like you are getting tattoes is also wrong. And I am thus wrong because I just played with my son and gave him a "sticker tattoo" today (I am thus not "abstaining from all appearance of evil")..but my conscience is not troubling me.


Tim, if you suppport mutilating ears, noses, and maybe lips for rings, why would you not support other body modifications?
 
No, now you are grasping. You did not put a "stigma, a mark branded on the skin" on your son, which is the meaning of the Hebrew word.

Blue Letter Bible - Lexicon

And again, if animism means everything except monotheism, you use the word in a way the rest of us don't and communication becomes difficult!
 
maybe we should start another thread on the definition of animism then. Animism's traits include lower gods and trying to manipulate those lower gods rather than submitting to God. It appears that Christianity, Judaism and Islam (meanign submission) are unique in that they bow to God instead of try to use him to further their own aims. The ancient ner east Gods were manipulate by offerings.
 
I never got a tatoo because I didn't want any more identifying marks than I already have. Most here probably never went through the slightly unpleasant ordeal of booking deputies looking you over for such things while asking if you went by any aliases. Now everybody will be leery of me, won't they? Except for the few that remember my description of the circumstamces. Great thing to have in your past, thank you Alexandria City courts.

Any of those things I think fall under the old metric of lawful, unlawful, or indifferent. If lawful or indifferent, then are they necessary or unnecessary? If unnecessary, then are they edifying or offensive to your brethren? I would follow that rule in determining whether to do any of these things.

I know some older (and even not-so-old) christians that stumble when they see tatoos or culturally unusual piercings, so I find them unnecessary and possibly offensive to my brethren, so I don't have any, but I believe that to be a personal scruple.... kinda like long hair on a man.
 
I remember the first time I met the late Dr. Robert Rayburn. We were in Switzerland, were I worked at L'Abri. I told him that I was planning to attend Covenant Seminary, at which he was still a professor, having retired from the Presidency.
I had very long hair and beard, a pierced ear, and a tattoo (I still have that). He never mentioned any of them and treated me well.

When I next saw him, in the classroom in St. Louis, nothing had changed. I did, however, lose the earring after a few months at Covenant. I also cut my hair (no longer much of a necessity).

This proves nothing other than the graciousness of this man whom I remember fondly as a father in the faith.
 
This is an issue of conscience, and one of wisdom. If a tat can get in the way of ministry don't get one. If it bothers your conscience, don't get one.

Taking the passage from the law condemning a pagan ritual isn't a good application for the type of tats being talked about now. People like how they look and usually get them to commemorate something (like a bunch of my friends who are in the USMC)--- Anybody here eat any bacon lately?
 
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