Is Getting a Tattoo a Sin?

***

When I was younger, I used to think that tattoos were a work of the devil. Literally. I believed that tattoos were a horrid sin and that anybody who had a tattoo couldn’t possibly be a Christian.

    My viewpoint started to change after I met a young man checking our groceries at Costco. As I watched him slide items over the scanner, I noticed several sentences marked in black ink on his forearm. Being a young girl at the time, and a rather blunt one at that, I blurted out: “Why do you have a tattoo? Having tattoos is a sin.”

    Instead of glancing up at my mother to reprimand my rudeness, which most people would’ve done, the young man smiled. “I don’t believe it’s a sin,” he said gently. “After all, it’s an expression of my faith.” With those words, he lifted up his sleeve so I could fully see his tattoo. The words of a scripture passage in Isaiah were etched upon his arm, and I shrank back sheepishly. “Oh,” I said simply.

    As time has gone on, and I’ve been able to start to decide what is right and wrong for myself (with scripture as my guide, of course), my opinion on tattoos has changed even more. When I first started researching in my Bible if tattoos were really a sin, I came across a verse in Leviticus. It says, “ ‘Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.’” (Leviticus 19:28).

    So that was it then; tattoos were sinful.

    But then I started to think.

    The book of Leviticus is filled with laws and rules that the Israelites were commanded to follow as a people set-apart by God. They were to be different from the Gentiles, and tattooing themselves, along with several other things such as eating “unclean meat” (such as ham) was forbidden. But didn’t Jesus free us from the law of the Israelites when He died on the cross? This freedom is first declared when He tells Peter “What God has made clean, do not call unclean” in Acts 10:15b.

    With that being said, I do believe that tattoos can be sinful, just like anything can when we don’t have God at the center of our actions. For example, we are not forbidden from drinking wine, but we are commanded not to become drunk (Ephesians 5:18).

     One example of a tattoo becoming sinful is when we get a profane or obscene image permanently put on our skin. This is not drawing others to God through our actions as we are commanded to do in 1 Corinthians 10:31 (“...whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”) As Christians, it is our number one duty to bring others to God through our actions.

    Another time when tattoos can become sinful is when we get multiple tattoos. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about two or three. I believe that to be fine. But when our entire body is starting to be covered in ink, that starts to be a problem. God tells us in 1 Corinthians 6:19 that “...your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God. You do not belong to yourself.” Having our entire body covered in ink is not healthy nor is it making the best use of our body for the Lord.

    In conclusion, I believe that if we 1) have God at the center of our decision for a tattoo and 2) we take care where we are putting them on our bodies, tattoos are completely fine. I, myself, plan on getting a tattoo of a cross in the near future.

Hope I made you think a bit!

love you all:)

-em