The Tattoo

When I was younger, the Tattoo was a precision military marching spectacle involving the massed pipes and drums of the Scottish Regiments set in Edinburgh Castle, and the sound would be guaranteed to find any hint of Scottish blood in your veins.

How things have changed. Now the tattoo is an image or words indelibly inked into the skin. This was once the domain of the old soldier or sailor returning from a foreign port. However for the ordinary man or woman either in the pew or the street, their view was that no self respecting person would do such a thing to their body. It wasn’t necessarily a religious thing, it was purely common sense and decency.

The celebrity community now proudly show off their many tattoos, and the more the better. Like sheep, the unthinking society follow and go astray. It starts with an innocent, small butterfly and progresses to more words and images, each one telling a meaningful story, or so we are told, until there is hardly any natural skin to be seen.

My question is simple. Why? In a strange kind of way, I can almost understand the faithless unchurched not responding to the whisper of a higher power, but I find it more difficult when a professing Christian is happily showing little or much body art, unless it was all done prior to their Damascus Road faith experience and couldn’t be avoided. I know what you might be thinking. There’s one of those old wrinklies having a go at something they know nothing about. On the other hand we keep hearing that the older, mature generation has something to give by way of wisdom and experience, but not on this subject? Maybe it doesn’t suit. Just giving my tuppence worth of experience based thought.

Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? 1Corinthians6:19NKJV

Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity. 1Timothy4:12NLT

Do not cut your bodies for the dead, and do not mark your skin with tattoos. I am the Lord. Leviticus19:28NLT

I desire therefore that the men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting; in like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but, which is proper for women professing godliness, with good works. 1Timothy2:8-10