tattoos are....

not evil. Bet you couldn't see that coming. I was inspired to write this post by a co-worker who was designing her tattoo the other day (after deadline when there was no work left to do).
We were talking about our parent's reactions to our respective tattoos(yes I have a tattoo). Hers don't mind the actual act of getting a tattoo, but want her to be careful at this time of her life to a) not spend unecessary money and b)make sure she puts them in places that she won't regret later. Mine had more of a "why did you ruin your body" sort of reaction, though probably more graceful than mine would be if my just-barely-out-of-teenage-years-daughter got a tattoo. Different perspectives from both sides. I noted that my parents are both conservative because of their generation and because of their faith, two things I admire but on occassion disagree with.
She asked why their faith has anything to do with tattoos. I explained that in the Old Testament, its very clearly marked as something that followers of God did not do. This often mentioned along with braiding their hair, wearing gold jewlery, etc. Things that we don't really frown upon in today's culture (in most contexts, anyway).
Her immidiate question was "why?" which is a very good question that I figured she alerady knew.
So i then went on to quickly summarize that in that time, particularly with the incredibly numerous religions and gods/godesses to worship, followers of different icons would mark themselves with tattoos. Similar to how native americans often marked that tribe they belonged to. It was a basic symbol of their identity. Also going into some detail of ancient preistesses and acolites (sp?) often beign very, very decked out with too much makeup, jewlery, braided hair, etc. forerunners of our modern-day prostitutes.
And then it struck me. God didn't call us just to be different, you know, a heart tattoo instead of a lion, but He called us to be entirely other. He didn't say, hey, this is what these guys over there are doing, we'll do it kinda the same with just a few tricky little twists. Nope. He removed them entirely from the practices of the day. they didn't have idols in their homes and sacrifice humans, they went to one central place and sacrificed the best of their labors. They didn't have ceremonies for each god, they had a life dedicated to one God. they didn't have control, they had miracles.

So I have a tattoo. In today's society, its arguable what that means. But I'd like to strive to live for what God called his children to thousands of years ago: to be entirely other.