There is a trend, in the Church today, towards adopting the manner and dress of the world. For example, it is not uncommon to see tattooed and pierced people at the bank on Sunday. Often these are not new Christians recently saved from the kingdom of darkness, but second and third generation churchgoers, young (and not so young), people raised in Christian homes.

One way the Church has chosen to deal with this growing phenomenon is to downplay the meaning of these demonic symbols. That’s not because the older generation approves of tattoos and facial piercings; it’s because the older generation doesn’t really have a well-thought-out objection to the practices.

Most Christians who oppose “body art” do so simply because it is not “Christian.” They are right, but when a decorated young man attending church asks why he is not a Christian, the undecorated can only say that he is worldly and not a Christian. At that point, the hipster will ask what it is about body art that is worldly and not Christian. This usually leaves the naïve speechless. To the conservative Bible-believing Christian, tattoos and piercings1 are clearly contrary to the example of Christ and one’s identity as the temple of the Holy Spirit. However, he discovers that he can’t really articulate a convincing argument as to why. The reason conservative Christian Joe can’t articulate his belief is because in “modern rationalistic Western society, men don’t understand the power of nonverbal symbols and clothing.” him of the symbolism he cannot formulate an argument against the misuse of symbols

James Jordan has written that:

Symbolism, then, is not a secondary concern, a mere curiosity. In a very real sense, symbolism is more important than anything else to the life of man.3

Jordan’s thesis is that all creation is designed by God to tell us about Him and teach us about reality, through symbols. In other words, the world does not exist by itself or, ultimately, by man; but it was created to reveal God in the symbols of creation.

For example, God is a shepherd (Ps. 23:1), a fire (Heb. 12:29), like a lion, and like a flock of birds (Is. 31:4-5). He is an eagle (Deut. 32:11), a lamb (Is. 53:7, Rev. 5:6), a hen (Matt. 23:37), the morning star (Rev. 22:16) , food, drink and bread (Is. 55:1, John 6:35), a rock (Deut. 32:4), and a tower (Prov. 18:10). Therefore, the Christian view of the universe must be fundamentally symbolic.4 We look at a flower, a rock, or an eagle in flight and say, “here is wisdom, here is God on display.” These things are expressions or symbols that help us discover God and learn to see through God’s eyes, so to speak. Or to put it another way, the stuff of creation allows us to peer into the (ultimately incomprehensible) character of the Creator and teaches us to think in terms of symbols.

That is how Jesus thought. Take the time to reread the Gospels and you will remember that Jesus constantly used symbolic language and stories (parables) to convey the truth. If the symbols are not important, then nothing Jesus said is important. It seems that everything he taught he explained with symbols. Therefore, the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, a dragnet, and a precious pearl. His followers must take up the cross, take up his yoke and lay down their lives.

Since humanity is the special bearer of the image of God (a special symbol of God), it is also a symbol maker. Thus, when we invest something with a symbolic meaning, we are supposed to follow God’s direction (Ephesians 5:1). For example, God uses dragons to symbolize evil. In the same way, our use of dragons (in literature, art, etc.) should correspond to God’s symbolic use of dragons. This is not to say that Christians never use images of dragons in a positive way. God Himself speaks of the fire-breathing Leviathan in positive terms (Job 41). In fact, the Tannin, the great monsters of the deep, including Leviathan, were the special “pets” of God. Furthermore, God endows some symbols with multiple meanings. For example, there are both the Lion of Judah and Satan lying in wait like a lion (Rev. 5:5, 1 Peter 5:8); the righteous are as bold as a lion and the wicked ravage like a lion (Prov. 28:1, 15); a lion is God’s servant bringing judgment and is a wicked people in rebellion against Him (Jeremiah 4:7, 12:8). However, until we better understand God’s fluid use of symbols, we must stay within the obvious guidelines provided by Scripture.

Symbols are powerful; they are more than the expression of ideas, they actually give direction to life: “for God, symbols to create reality, for man, symbols structure reality.”5 To suggest that we can arbitrarily redefine the meaning of symbols is nonsense. for the Idaho State Veterans Home in Lewiston or being the pastor of Cottonwood Community Church. Why? Because the Nazi swastika is universally understood as a satanic symbol of evil and death. But what if I protest and I claim that I am rehabilitating the symbol for Christian use? What if I said I see the swastika as a symbol of giving everything for the sake of Christ and His kingdom? It wouldn’t matter. The symbols are too powerful to play with. Although The swastika has ancient origins that have nothing to do with Nazism, I have no doubt that it will always be associated with the horrors of unbridled power, brutality and death. swastika structures reality. It defined a vision of the world and served as a spur to action. in bringing to light the hair-raising barbarism of a pagan Germanic people. The same goes for many of the symbols used in the body art subculture. Skulls, bones, bats, etc., are still symbols of bad luck, death, magic and evil 6

Which brings us back to the topic of tattoos and piercings. The real reason they are inappropriate for Christians is that those things symbolize evil. Tattoos and piercings are symbols of a worldview that opposes God and his kingdom. In the Bible, marking or cutting meat was forbidden because it was part of the Canaanite culture, specifically a ritual to honor or mourn the dead. In Leviticus 19:28 we read: “You shall not make cuts of the dead on your flesh, nor tattoo any sign on yourself: I am the Lord” (cf. 21:5, Deut. 14:1)7

Pagan thought has long embraced chaos as a regenerative source; bestiality, homosexuality, self-mutilation, etc., are delivered in an attempt to measure the supernatural power of chaos.8 In fact, there are many today who regard their participation in self-mutilation as a spiritual experience. They believe that enduring the pain of tattoos or piercings develops control and allows them to discover a deeper sense of self.9 Indeed it is. it is a spiritual experience; a descent into the realm of the occult. Thus, the tattooed and pierced wear the uniform in the most massive way of paganism, whether they realize it or not.

Furthermore, tattoos and piercings have also been endowed with negative symbolism in our age. Even today, with such widespread practices, tattoos and piercings are still equated with criminals and the lower class.10 And yet modern Christian youth apparently believe that they break new ground by joining the ranks of the tattooed and pierced. Part of the deception is the belief that the lower-class lifestyle (and the uniform of paganism) is somehow more real than a life lived in the likeness of Christ. Theodore Dalrymple writes that those who adopt the norms of the underclass are;

…under the influence of the idea that some aspects of reality are more real than others; that the seedy side of life is more genuine, more authentic than the refined and cultured side, and certainly more glamorous than the bourgeois and respectable side. This idea could be said to be the fundamental premise of modern popular culture.eleven

Whether the church tattoos and pierces admit it or not, “body art” is still the uniform of the criminal element and the occult; it is associated with rebellion and youthful foolishness, all defined as sinful by God. The tattooed and pierced have the short-term view of the self-centered worldly man rather than the long-term view of the born-again, sacrificial kingdom believer. Instead of seeing the rise of body art in the church as a sign that its symbolic value is undergoing a positive transformation, we should recognize it as a progressive influence on the church by the world and the kingdom of darkness.

____________________

1. In this essay I define “piercings” as facial piercings, nose piercings, multiple ear piercings, and body piercings. Simply put, anything other than a single or perhaps double ear piercing (by a female). I know I’m bracing myself for the charge of inconsistency, but right now I don’t see a single (or double) ear piercing from a woman that is in the same category of face, nose, and body piercing.

2.James Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical Worldview(Brentwood: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, Publishers Inc., 1988), 35.

3. Jordan, new eyes30. See also, James Jordan, Creation in Six Days: A Defense of the Traditional Reading of Genesis One(Moscow: Canon Press, 1999).

4. Jordan, Creation.

5. Jordan, new eyes32.

6. Iona Opie and Moira Tatem, eds., A dictionary of superstitions (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)

7. See my essay, Another Hole in Your Head.

8. R.J. Rushdoony, The one and the many(Fairfax: Thoburn Press, 1978), 104f.

9. David Kupelian, the marketing of evil(Nashville: WND Books, 2005), 72.

10. Theodore Dalrymple, Life in the background: the worldview that makes the underclass(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), 48f.

11. Dalrymple, 119.