When I was younger I had no desire what so ever to get a tattoo. I probably even stereotyped the people who had them. Boy has my opinion changed. I love them and I appreciate the art behind them and the story that many of them tell. However, I have been challenged by many people that it is a sin to get a tattoo and that it goes against what God wants. After hearing this so much, I decided to study this and get my own outcome from this topic. I studied scripture, listened to podcasts and asked opinions of many; Christians with and without tattoos. This is the conclusion I came to.
One of the first things you hear people who are against tattoos say is Leviticus 19:28. In case you are not familiar with this verse, here it is: "Do not cut your bodies or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord". Of course at first glance it does very clearly state you should not get tattoos, but when you dig down into this verse it is not exactly how it appears. First of all, this is from the Old Testament, and this is the Laws from way back . Now, personally, I believe to live more accordingly to the New Testament, but you also need to realize that God was talking to the people of Israel and giving them laws. These were laws of the times and if you read more of Leviticus, you would also see many of the laws are outdated and you would not apply those laws to your life today. For example, it also says not to eat flesh with blood, therefore, any eating meat would not be right or it says do not eat any fruits or vegetables that have not been cultivated it is forbidden and you can not eat it for 3 years. Also, in verse 19, if you applied this literally, then ear piercing would be a sin as well. But, we need to realize when God was telling the people of Israel this, their neighbors were doing a lot of pagan worship. They would cut and mark their bodies to worship the dead and other gods. God did not want the people of Israel to be associated with this or to make people think they worshipped these other things, so God set that law in place. So when you look at Leviticus, I personally feel it becomes a wisdom issue verses sin issue. You have to learn how to take it in the right context. If we get a tattoo now, it does not mean we are worshipping other gods or the dead and people no longer associate tattoos with that.
I also have people throw 1 Corinthians 19 "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own". I agree here that our body is a temple, however, in the verse, He is actually talking about sexual immorality and how when you have sex outside of marriage, you are marking your body up internally, almost like you are put graffiti on the inside of your body. So this is a more of an internal issue verses external and again you need to look at the verse in the right context. And if you truly want to treat it as a temple, then you need to take good care of it and watch what harmful things you put in your body or things you subject your body to that could have negative effects.
Once verse that seems to stand out to me is 1 Samuel 16:7 "But the Lord said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart". This is when Samuel was going to chose the next king and Saul would be who many thought would be the one picked, because he was tall and handsome, but God warned on judging by appearance alone. When you look at appearance alone, you may overlook a quality someone has or lacks. Appearance does not reveal what people are really like or what their true value is.
We also see in Revelation 19 reference to Jesus's thigh saying "it is written on him", so we could stretch this even to say a little, and say this is like a tattoo. So no I do not think tattoos are a sin. I think they are a way to express yourself and to tell a story. For me personally, mine tell a story and as of right now, they do relate to God and they begin to tell my journey and walk with God, but this does not mean all mine will. I think we should not worry about things so trivial as tattoos in the grand scheme of things and it definitely is not our place to walk around condemning and judging others. I know this is hard, because by nature we are all judgmental creatures, but I feel there is so many more positive ways we could be using that energy instead of trying to prove tattoos are a sin!!!
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