I thought the
article
had some good points.
The fact is that lots of people have had tattoos and piercings done, for all
sorts of reasons and in all sorts of circumstances.
Many tattoos are indeed unpleasant and particularly inappropriate for a
Christian.
Some Christian men and women, before they were converted, had the names of an
unsuitable girlfriends / boyfriends tattooed on, say, their arms. Afterwards
some may have superimposed words like 'Lord Jesus' or similar on top of the
tattoo: while I might not recommend it, yet I would find it a bit hard to
criticize too much.
While I agree that some things are not suitable, my instinct is that people
could usefully back off just a bit.
There are piercings and piercings. Ears of course are very widespread and many
Chistians routinely wear them. Actually, the girl in my local Christian bookshop
has a ring in her tongue. It's not something I would recommend but I wouldn't
dream of raising the issue with her. It doesn't make me more or less likely to
buy books there.
As for the 'intimate' piercings, the question of whether Christians have any is
really a sort of rarefied subject. Honestly I don't want to know whether any of
my fellow Christians have any: how long have they had them, are they planning to
remove them? what do their husbands and wives think: to me such matters are ones
I just don't want to get involved with. I would even be reluctant to describe
them with any detail: the most 'unsuitable' piercings are the ones which
Christians wouldn't want to be explicit about anyhow.
I'm not really a Covenantal /Reformed sort of guy; I'm more of an independent
evangelical, I guess. I'm a guy who does a lot of tract evangelism and to me the
question of whether I happen to be wearing my little earring when giving out
tracts isn't a problem in either my mind, or the minds of the people I'm giving
them to, I guess.
So I guess the whole mindset of Schlissel, though he makes some valid points,
isn't the sort of direction that I'm coming from anyhow.
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