Well, I'm glad this one's resolved.
I know I seem a little late on this one, but I figured I'd like to write something about it anyway, and it's better late than never, right?
Most of you probably heard about this. To sum up: a Belgian girl claimed she had gone to a tattoo parlour, asked for three stars on her face, and then fallen asleep. When she woke up, she had FIFTY SIX stars. Despite the fact that she thought that she looked "like a freak", for some reason she still paid for the tattoo. And why would the artist do something like this?
Doesn't quite add up, does it?
Well, that's because she was lying.
Apparently, she loved the tattoo, until her dad saw it and flew off the handle. She made up the sleeping story to appease his wrath. Not very fair on the artist, though, eh?
She has now admitted that she asked for the tattoo, confirming most peoples' suspicions. I feel a little sorry for her, but it does raise some interesting (and some obvious) points.
1. That was a stupid idea. If you're going to get a tattoo, think about it carefully first. It's not going to come off easily, you know?
2. I'm not sure that the artist should have agreed to the tattoo. Let's look at the facts: She is eighteen. Very young and at an age where she might make decisions that she regrets.
She doesn't seem to have any other tattoos at all. Had I been the artist, I don't think I'd have agreed to do her first tattoo covering one half of her face.
When she was first interviewed by the press after her father had gone to the police, she said "I cannot go out on to the street, I am so embarrassed."
I suspect that she might be a little more embarrassed now.
Lessons to be learned by all, methinks.
I received an email this week after I posted last. A friend of mine brought up the subject of Leviticus 19: 28.
"Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD." (NIV)
This is obviously a bit of a sticking point for Christians, because the Bible is apparently forbidding us to get tattoos. My friend's point was that, for many people in the Church, the issue would not be so much with the stereotypes of people that get tattoos, but more with the law forbidding them.
Personally, I don't feel like that verse is really an issue for me. There are two reasons for this:
1. I think that it is talking specifically to the Israelites at the time. They had just left a pagan land, and were about to enter another. The people living in those lands were in the habit of making marks on their bodies as part of their pagan rituals and worship. God was teaching his people that they were set apart from those nations, and this was one of the ways that he wanted them to demonstrate this.
2. Many of the laws in the Old Testament are considered irrelevant to us now. For example, Leviticus 19: 27 (the one just before this one) instructs the Israelites
"Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard." (NIV)
I certainly have no problem with cutting that hair. I sometimes have a beard, but it's got nothing to do with my conviction regarding this law.
Paul and the other New Testament writers constantly come back to the idea that Jesus completed the law. Without Jesus, there was a need for the law, but now it is irrelevant. So long as we put our faith in Jesus, we have relationship with the Father, so it doesn't matter whether we obey the law to the letter. That's not to say that God doesn't convict us when we disobey him, but there's a new covenant in place here.
I'm not going to write a sermon here, I just wanted to open up the debate. If you have a problem with tattoos, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, and that you should get one. But I am pretty certain on what I believe, and I believe that there's nothing wrong with me getting and receiving tattoos.
I'm not done on this topic - in fact, I'm fairly sure that it's going to be a recurring theme on this blog. I'll come back to what JLaw said in another post.
Thoughts?
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