Thursday, June 24, 2010

Tattoos and the Body of Christ

Following on from my previous post, one of the obvious markers of social class (round here at least) is tattoos.

Working class men, especially of my age, tend to have obvious tattoos. Middle class men don't. I don't live in an especially rough area, it's certainly a lot nicer than some places I've lived. But it's a fairly traditional working class housing estate, and I'm conscious that I'm about as middle class as it is possible to be, and I don't really fit in.

Q. What proportion of men aged between 25 and 60 have noticeable tattoos?
A. According to this US page, 40% of people aged between 25 and 40 have tattoos. I can't find stats for Britain. I'd guess at least 50% of men on this estate do... There are 3 or 4 guys in the congregation with noticeable tattoos, and a few women as well.

Q. What proportion of male clergy aged between 25 and 60 have noticeable tattoos?
A. I'd guess very low. I know hundreds of male clergy in that age bracket, and I can hardly think of any with noticeable tattoos. Isn't there a question there about being incarnational?

Because of the way the C of E works, I only get three years here. If I knew I was spending my life trying to reach this sort of estate, I'd seriously consider getting a tattoo, maybe like Pete Postlethwaite's in Romeo + Juliet (see above). Don't know what my wife would say though!

Theologically, tattoos were banned for Israelites in the OT Law (Lev 19:28). But we're not Israelites, and in the NT, we're told Jesus has a tattoo (Rev 19:16), which is probably symbolic rather than literal.

4 comments:

Daniel Hill said...

No wonder Mark Driscoll is so successful. (And I suppose you have also seen pictures of Todd Bentley?) But how do we know that Lev. 19:28 doesn't apply today?

John said...

We know it doesn't apply directly today because it is in the OT Law, which was given to the nation of Israel to show them how to respond to God rescuing them from Egypt to be a religious and political entity.

Does it "carry over" to those who are not under the OT law, but are under the Law of Christ? No reason to see that it should - it's not picked up at all in the NT, except possibly in Revelation as mentioned above.

Evidence is that it's a ritual superstition thing that's being forbidden - the whole verse is "Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD."

I'm pretty sure the reaction against tattoos in many church circles is no more than middle-class prejudice.

Daniel Hill said...

Thanks, Custard. I believe that Don Carson's son has lots of tattoos. I don't know whether the son is a Christian, but I know that Don is, and that he doesn't mind his son's tattoos -- since the son is in the US Marines, it's a case of fitting in with one's surrounding culture, says Don.

little2u said...

After my Dark Night of the Soul, I got tattoos. I was a 40 year old mother of 3. Not exactly your typical "tattoo wearer". LOL
So I did research on it and for some of us....it is a rite of passage. We live in a ritualistic society but for some events, there just is not a ritual to mark the passage.