Tramp Stamp at Church Camp

Tattoos as an Expression of Christian Worship

I wrote on the message board a few years ago how our 12 year old neighbor attended a Word of Faith summer camp where the counselors drew tattoos on the children.  Some counselor had actually drawn a tattoo at the base of this young girl's spine (what the world calls a "tramp stamp")...and the Christian parents where fine with it.

“Restrictive Christians go too far and name everything a universal sin, forbidding some cultural activities that the Bible does not, such as listening to certain music styles, getting tattoos, watching movies, smoking cigarettes, consuming alcohol, and body piercing.” Page 103 of the Radical Reformission by Mark Driscoll

“You are free in Christ to be weird… How about this one, tattoos? How many of you grew up in that fundamentalist church where they told you about the one verse on tattoos?  Where is it? What book? Leviticus! All these dudes in the front are twitching! Dudes with tattoos! Leviticus, Leviticus! Because a youth pastor said don’t get a tattoo.  It's right here in Leviticus: don’t get a tattoo.  OK. But the thing is if you read the whole context it actually doesn’t apply—it's old covenant, not new covenant, so Jesus has fulfilled the law. Additionally it’s talking about priests marking their body thereby identifying themselves with paganism, so I don’t think it really applies. You can disagree with me that’s fine… Let me just say our position is that tattoos are not a sin, right. Jesus Christ is going to have a tattoo—Revelation says on his second coming. It says that down his right leg will be written King of Kings and Lord of Lords, which will be really freakish for all for the fundamentalists to see Jesus all tattooed up. I can’t wait for that day… Make sure you go to a good tattoo parlor, two of the best in Seattle are actually members of Mars Hill… go in there for a biblical new covenant tattoo, is what we would recommend.” Mark Driscoll sermon entitled The Weaker Christian

Now I have never before quoted Mark Driscoll (and likely will never again).  However, his false statements support a lot of what people believe in the area of body mutilation (i.e., tattoos).

The following videos review whether such practices are biblical or Godly.  I will say that the beginning of the first video threw me off; largely because I had no idea what LeCrae (a Christian hip hop artist) looks like.  I thought it was someone Bro. David was endorsing.  So this is a heads-up that the first video from Pastor David Williams starts with an intro from LeCrae endorsing tattooing.   The next video is an overview of the book "What's Behind the Ink?" by Min. William Sudduth.