This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
by Shannon Archuletaon flickr (creative commons license)
Tattoos is a destructive trend quietly becoming more mainstream in our corrupt society, yet tattoos are almost never addressed in the church. Almost one-fourth of America’s population has tattoos, and over a third of young adults have gotten them, which shows how it is increasing in popularity with each younger generation. But unlike other vices, ink isn’t something we give Sunday School lessons on. It’s not something I much saw in the church growing up–other than the fun times my roommate and I had at BYU trying to sneak him into the testing center with his inked-up arm bare. But times are changing now. Many church members are unfortunately becoming comfortable with popular culture, and tattoos are becoming a much bigger issue. It’s time to think about the implications of tattoos, how they relate to chastity, and what we should do about them.
A Generation Of Snowflakes – The term ‘snowflake’ in internet lingo refers to a person who tries to be one-of-a-kind but ends up being just like everyone else–much like how every snowflake is different yet they all look alike. This certainly is nothing new, but with the modern communication revolution and the ability to instantly broadcast yourself to huge audiences, it has gotten worse than ever. Growing up in cookie-cutter HSA neighborhoods, we try desperately to be different. Tattoos used to be rebellious and unique. But when everyone joins a rebellion, of course it isn’t a rebellion anymore. It’s like that episode of the Simpsons where Bart becomes a popular celebrity, and when he goes to spit off the side of his favorite freeway overpass he is dismayed to see hundreds of people already there spitting. It takes all of the meaning out of it if it’s popular.
But not everyone gets the same tattoo. It could still be a unique expression! Well, no, not really. I sometimes see My Little Pony because my kids have it on (I swear! I’m not a brony!) and I noticed that each character has an individual marker on their hind leg that indicates their personality. This “cutie mark” is like a tattoo. Yes, each marker is different, but you know what is the same? That they have “cutie marks.” They are ponies with marks on their hind legs, and that makes them not unique. In farms, ponies get branded on their hind leg with a different number each so that their owner can tell them apart. That’s what it’s for. It’s like a baseball team uniform: each uniform has a different number but the fact that they have numbers unites them onto the same team. The brand burned onto the pony’s flesh is not a unique expression of their personality, but a number that makes them part of the same herd. You can try to attach whatever meaning you want to the number you have branded on your leg–it could be a work of art, written in a cute flowery font, or even turn it into a pretty image–but it is always just a herd marker. That’s the function of the tattoo, and that doesn’t make you more unique but less. It is a branding like cattle are branded.
Idolatry – When I was in school, my entire portfolio of art got tossed out by the art department. I was absolutely furious and set out to hold the school liable. But then I came across an account of Abraham in the Midrash that told of him destroying his father’s idols. It occurred to me that those idols were the artistic productions of his father’s hands, and though I may not be praying to my artwork, isn’t obsessing over them a form of worship? I remembered how Buddhist artists spend countless hours on elaborate colored sand artworks and then just brush them away when they were done. Everything is impermanent and it is vanity to try to construct anything you want to last. “Just make new art. Why even care?,” I concluded. I realized that there is a blurry line between art and idolatry, and that idolatry is very pervasive today. We may not pray to art or think that a statue is inhabited with a spirit, but when we attach meaning to art, isn’t that like making it a ‘spirit’ ? When we assign value to artworks, isn’t this essentially worship? I’m not talking so much about fine art in a museum, but TV shows, video games, nice cars, tattoos, or any form of communication that could become a vice or source of pride.
Lots of Christian websites out there meekly tell you to “just think about why you want to get a tattoo before you get it done. What is the real reason?” Just think about it? I’m going to say it like it is: vanity is almost ALWAYS the reason people get tattoos. Now, plenty of people get tattoos for medical reasons. My father got a tattoo during his cancer treatment to help the doctors with surgery. That’s a valid reason. People get tattoos to cover scarring. Or in some cultures it is a mark of the tribe or warrior status that celebrates their heritage, much like a uniform. I think these are all valid reasons and I’m not talking about these cases. I don’t think those tattoos affect spirituality. I’m talking about the young adult who wants an artistic expression of themselves to last. Unlike the artwork in my student portfolio, tattoos are most intimate and personal, and it’s not something anyone can ever throw away. It is an intimate communication of who you are, a part of your body, and thus becomes part of your personal temple.
Your Body Is Your Temple
Half of my readers clicked away just now. I’ve seen this a million times! Yes, I know my body is my temple! So what? Most people don’t fully know what this means because they don’t know fully what a temple means. Most people get that a temple should be a clean, pretty place. Okay, fine. We should be clean and pretty people. People who want to get a tattoo just tell me, “I think it looks nice. I think it makes me clean and pretty.” But the temple is also a means of communication and programming, and I think that’s more of what matters.
Transition To Holiness – Solomon prayed that he could “know how to go out or come in” to the Lord with the temple (1 Kings 3:7). Physical temples connect us to the spiriitual realm with a programming of increasing holiness. A building can either transition our behavior toward holiness or away from holiness, and the same goes for our physical body. Clothing, tattoos, piercings, make-up, and everything that is most intimately close to the body is our first layer of transition. They are like the reception desk at the temple where we walk from our cars into the building to show our temple recommends. These things take a leading role in programming what our behavior is going to be. Think about how a temple is formatted, with one space leading to another to make it convenient for people to perform an act of worship. Do tattoos help direct us worship and increase in holiness? Do they fit into a program that functions to makes us children of God? Do they lead us to a closer proximity with God?
Communication – The body was the first thing we were aware of as tiny babies and it will be the last thing we are aware of when we die. I think this is why more than just being about respecting our most precious gift from God, treatment of one’s body as a temple is about it being our first and final layer of communication with our environment. The body is our ultimate paintbrush. So if we defile it with greasy tattoos, shoddy clothing, or a ferocious countenance, that becomes the window through which we see the outside world and the outside world sees us. It becomes the pipes through which we get our drinking water or through which our waste water flows out. Our incomings and outgoings are defined by how we dress our temple, and this inevitably shapes our spirit and final identity. It also inevitably shapes how we influence others.
It is easy to dismiss the importance of our intimate artistic communications and say people shouldn’t judge. Yes, it is rude to criticize how someone presents themselves. But ultimately our bodies are the primary faculty for all civility and human behavior, and it should be recognized as such. We need to teach people to recognize this.
Curse Of Modernism – Tattoos are often compared to graffiti–like spray paint over a fine marble wall: “Now comes the craze of tattooing one’s body. I can not understand why any young man–or young woman, for that matter–would wish to undergo the painful process of disfiguring the skin with various multicolored representations of people, animals, and various symbols. With tattoos, the process is permanent, unless there is another painful and costly undertaking to remove it. Fathers, caution your sons against having their bodies tattooed. They may resist your talk now, but the time will come when they will thank you. A tattoo is graffiti on the temple of the body.” (Gordon B. Hinkley)
But what if someone sees their tattoo as gold trimming over a marble wall instead of graffiti. Isn’t it just a matter of perspective? No. Modern art often mixes beauty with the profane and tells us to accept the profane as beautiful. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” we are told. But this is not true. This is a false statement. It is something people who are not good at art came up with so they could make money.
Before Modernism, beauty was always defined in terms of something’s uplifting nature, its resemblance to the perfect ideal form, and its function of bringing people closer to perfection. It was always something positive, something helpful, and something that gave constructive vision. Today, we have negativity and degradation presented as art. Very rarely is there room in a modern art museum for art that is actually beautiful. Why is modern art ugly? Because it is about a different function. The function is not to uplift or instruct positively but… something else. I think this difference in function is behind the tattoo craze. Modernism has indoctrinated us to accept the ugly as beautiful, to think morality is relative, and to try to fit in while deluding ourselves into believing we are being unique. But nobody honestly equates scrawled graffiti with fine gold trimming. The false equivalency is a smokescreen for the true function of degrading art. In other words, people who get tattoos don’t fess up to why they really want them. Of course, I can’t assume what their reasons are, and I don’t honestly know. But I suspect the reasons are quite akin to the Modernists of the 20th century who covered up exquisite interiors of grand classical buildings with bland concrete walls.
Profane Language – A helpful way to debunk the false equivalency is to compare it to spoken language. We all agree on a certain language, right? We agree on what most words mean, and we all agree on which words are swear words, right? Would it be alright to write a bunch of swear words and tell people, “you can’t judge”? There is a standard for language despite the Modernist effort to call the profane beautiful. The same goes for visual language as well. There are visual swear words. The positivity or negativity of language depends on our conception of the ideal and what opposes the ideal. We in the church believe there is an ideal and that it is not relative. God is the ideal, He is the same for everyone, and we believe that as children of God our bodies were created in the likeness of God. The human body reflects the ideal, and thus a deviation from the human body is a swear word. Just as our speech reflects what we mean, our expression of the human body is a reflection of our conception of God. “A filthy mind expresses itself in filthy and profane language. A clean mind expresses itself in language that is positive and uplifting and in deeds that bring happiness to the heart. Be clean in body and dress and manner. Do not permit yourself to be tattooed. If you do, someday you will regret it. Only a painful and costly procedure can remove the tattoo. Be clean and neat and orderly. Sloppy dress leads to sloppy manners. I am not so concerned about what you wear as I am that it be neat and clean.” (Gordon B. Hinkley)
Mark Of Ownership
Tatoos Prohibited In Old Testament – My comparison of tattoos with cattle branding is close to how the scriptures treat tattoos. The law of Moses prohibited cutting the body to leave a print or mark: “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh … nor print any marks upon you” (Leviticus 19:28). Mainstream Christians who are soft on the issue of tattoos argue that the Law of Moses is no longer in effect. Indeed, there are things in the rest of this chapter which we no longer practice. But there are many things that were prohibited under the Law of Moses which are still prohibited today. Only those things which were revoked are defunct, and this is not one of those things. Furthermore, there is a doctrine behind every church policy, and while church policies may change doctrine never changes. The doctrine behind the tattoo ban still demands a similar kind of policy today.
Mainstream Christian apologists argue that the prohibition in the Law of Moses had to do with idol worship. Heathens would mark themselves as an act of devotion to a god. “By cutting themselves they showed that they were willing to sacrifice their own bodies and shed their blood for their gods.” A person who gets a tattoo isn’t doing it as devotion to anyone, right? Well other than Kelsy Karter, not usually. But isn’t such a drastic form of expression–as to make it permanent on your skin–in and of itself an act of devotion? It’s not devotion to any person necessarily but to whatever is so important that you need to brand it on your skin. Again, it’s vanity. The ancient heathen practices that were addressed by the Law of Moses were also acts of expression: “The physical pain they caused themselves on the outside was a reflection of the great emotional pain they felt inside.” That sounds like a depressed goth who cuts himself in order to physically express his emotions. This goes back to the issue of the physical reaching the spiritual in the temple and the question of what our functional program is to reach it. The body is who we are, and any alteration from a permanent tattoo is a reflection of who we really consider ourselves inside. It could also be a form of penance to illustrate the inner imperfection inside we are trying to come to terms with. The modern tattoo is therefore not much different than the Baal worshipper who marked himself to identify with a god.
Mark Of Satan Or God – The Hebrew word used in that Leviticus verse for “print” is very similar to the Greek word used in Revelation to talk about the 666 mark of the beast, and of the saints who had God marked on their foreheads. The mark that brands us as either belonging to God or to Satan can therefore be compared to a tattoo. In the Book of Mormon we read of apostates who marked themselves as a sign of their apostate identity: “And the Amlicites were distinguished from the Nephites, for they had marked themselves with red in their foreheads after the manner of the Lamanites… Now the Amlicites knew not that they were fulfilling the words of God when they began to mark themselves in their foreheads; nevertheless they had come out in open rebellion against God; therefore it was expedient that the curse should fall upon them. Now I would that ye should see that they brought upon themselves the curse; and even so doth every man that is cursed bring upon himself his own condemnation.” (Alma 3)
Wicked people bring curses upon themselves, and a “mark” is a natural result or indicator of the curse they are experiencing. The Amlicite mark could have been a unique form–a cute butterfly, a Chinese letter, or perhaps a cool flying dragon–but it functioned like a number on the back of a uniform for a team. Again, a branding. It functioned to identify them with those who rebelled against God. I’ll bet lots of teenage Nephites who weren’t even rebellious got the red mark because they thought it was edgy and cool, but did that change the function of the mark? No. A tattoo is the most intimate marker of our identity and is part of our temple, and it therefore is either the mark of God–or anything else is of Satan.
We know that Jesus has engraven us upon the palms of his hands. This uses the same Hebrew word as the Leviticus verse and can be compared to a tattoo. The fulfilling of this prophecy, of course, was the driving of nails into his hands when he was crucified. It was a scar. But it is treated like an identity. He identifies with us because of it. Those who are adopted into the house of Israel have the name of the Lord engraven or tattooed upon their flesh, the scriptures say. Indeed, it is a uniform, a marker of our identity, either with God or Satan. Who do we identify with?
Financial Irresponsibility – Another thing about tattoos is the irresponsibility of it. Anything that looks halfways decent will cost over $1,000. This money could be spent on something much more productive, like education, charity, or preparing for your family’s future. There are many kinds of sins that add up to a lot of money wasted–we also see this with the word of wisdom–and thus these sin adversely affect us temporally. They are a money pit.
The permanence of tattoos is another thing we see in many modern crazes which secular culture warriors are currently trying to turn mainstream. I don’t have to say what they are. I think you can guess. Satan and his operatives are trying to convince us to alter ourselves and our identity in a way that is very hard to reverse, and they are trying to make it happen at a younger and younger age. They want to brand us as soon as they can, because fundamental identity is very hard to change later. It becomes a lot easier to move on to one of these other things once you have gotten a tattoo. You feel empowered to take control over who you really are, but the truth is people change over time. You will feel very different about a lot of things ten years from now, and once you have made the ink mark, or the operation, or whatever it is that you are permanently altering, you are stuck with it and it’s very hard to come back. You will regret it. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” (1 Corinthians 3:16–17)
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