Tattoos

Dear Victorious,

Our daughter is intent on getting a tattoo. She's saved her money and can pay for it herself. She's only 17, so technically we could forbid her to do it. But we think that forbidding her will only make it that more certain that she'll do it when she can. Somehow, having tattoos just doesn't seem the Christian thing to do. Are tattoos wrong, or should we just be more open minded? And if they're wrong, how do we convince her that they are? (She's already saying that there's nothing wrong with Christians having tattoos.)

Eleanor B. - Sugar Land, TX

Dear Eleanor,

If your daughter is a Christ-follower and if you've raised her with solid Christian values, that's where I would start. There may technically be "nothing wrong" with a Christian having a tattoo. But there's nothing right about it either. That's where you want this discussion to start. Christ-followers don't use the "nothing wrong" argument to make decisions. They look for God's will, the leading of the Holy Spirit, and even ask permission. So, for example, one might ask if your daughter has prayed and gotten permission from God to get a tattoo!

Leviticus 19:28 tells us, "Do not cut your bodies ... or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord." While one could argue that this is Old Testament, it is part of what some have called God's standards for holy living, outlined in Leviticus 18:1 - 27:34. These standards generally tell us how God wants us to live. They reveal God's will for our lives.

God calls His people (today's Christians) to be holy, set apart from the society around us. We are to look different, act different and be different than the culture in which we live. This is one place in the Bible where God talks specifically about how that looks.

I probably wouldn't forbid my daughter (or son) with regards to getting a tattoo. But I would certainly make sure they are educated about living a God-honoring life. I would allow them to make their own decisions at this age, but I wouldn't allow them to make such decisions in ignorance.