Rage of the Age

  Tattooing is the rage of the age.  It used to be that only low-lifes or drunken sailors would get a tattoo because they were a shameful thing.  Obviously that is not true in the U.S. today.  People proudly display the marks on their bodies.  Some even turn their bodies into canvasses for tattooers, becoming living billboards.  Even Christians today get tattoos of crosses or Scripture verses.
  But as we saw in our last post, the Mosaic law forbids tattoos.  Who would have thought that tattoos had been around that long, but they have.  Leviticus 19:38 states, "Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves.  I am the Lord."  Some interpreters propose that this only applies to a mourning practice of getting tattoos in memory of a loved one. Others say that it applies to all tattoos. Still others that it has to do with cutting the body and not causing infections.  I was taught, as a child, simply not to deface the body that God gave you.  Our bodies are beautiful and precious because God made them and they are his gift to us.  
  When Jesus summarized the law as to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself, he summarized this part of the law also.  So cutting our bodies and getting tattoos fall under not loving ourselves.  We are God's handiwork.  We should be loved and appreciated.
  Let us pray.  "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.  But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night  He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.  Whatever he does prospers." (Psalm 1:1-3)

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