6 You desire truth in the inward being;
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
Our Brother TKI has closed comments on one of his very long posts, suggesting that tatoos are a very reliable sign of ungodliness in women. He has a few hundred comments to moderate, including plenty that are mere insults. But he has done us a service. He went back and checked US surveys, and demonstrated that (at least in the last US family survey) there is empiric data to support his assertion.
And there is, at least in NZ, for piercing as well. So Ladies, if you want a godly man, lose the piercings and tattoos. Better still, save yourself some pain, money, and risk of the Hepatites — don’t get one in the first place.
Consider this part of being purged with hyssop, if you will. For you want to be as Ruth. Boaz redeemed her.
7Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging: to confirm a transaction, one party took off a sandal and gave it to the other; this was the manner of attesting in Israel. 8So when the next-of-kin said to Boaz, “Acquire it for yourself”, he took off his sandal. 9Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, “Today you are witnesses that I have acquired from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and Mahlon. 10I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, the wife of Mahlon, to be my wife, to maintain the dead man’s name on his inheritance, in order that the name of the dead may not be cut off from his kindred and from the gate of his native place; today you are witnesses.” 11Then all the people who were at the gate, along with the elders, said, “We are witnesses. May the LORD make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you produce children in Ephrathah and bestow a name in Bethlehem; 12and, through the children that the LORD will give you by this young woman, may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.”
Now, the Levirate law applies here. The reason Boaz was able to marry Ruth is that he could sustain running the land of her father in law, Elimelech, and her husband and brother in law. For her children were to be accounted as of her dead husband, so that the name of the famly would not be removed from Israel. Even the men who had moved out, who had left their land, were not to removed from the roll of the tribe, but to be redeemed.
This is of deep theological significance, for here Boaz is acting to redeem a gentile. And it a rebuke to these times, for this society valued men, so none would be lost. Instead of this, we allow for witch hunts, and destroy our leaders in our zeal to root out abuses and corruption, taking the consequences of such activities on the innocent, and the devastation it causes to families, all to casually.
17Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching; 18for the scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain”, and, “The laborer deserves to be paid.” 19Never accept any accusation against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. 20As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest also may stand in fear. 21In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels, I warn you to keep these instructions without prejudice, doing nothing on the basis of partiality. 22Do not ordain anyone hastily, and do not participate in the sins of others; keep yourself pure.
23No longer drink only water, but take a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.
24The sins of some people are conspicuous and precede them to judgment, while the sins of others follow them there. 25So also good works are conspicuous; and even when they are not, they cannot remain hidden.
I do like Paul’s advice here, which directly flows from the Mosaic law. You cannot condemn a man (or woman) on the word of one witness. And the witness better speak truly — bearing false witness is condemned in the 10 commandments, along with theft, murder and adultery. None are perfect. Wise men work on correcting the faults they have, but all can err and fall. It is better to restore and show mercy than condemn and cast out to the secular arm, for a court is a place where people are damaged, and this is accounted as a feature of the system, not a bug.
Within the church we may not have the external marks of perversion, (such as tattoos) but we have the damage of our own sins. We all need to pray, with David, that we are made clean.
My dermatologist has a “tattoo removal specialist” in his practice. I know this sounds mean, but I always get a kick-out of the middle aged women in the waiting room in the process of getting their tramp stamps lasered off.
On a serious note: I beleive there’s been a few studies linking multiple tattoos with mental illness. I know in Japan people typical assume a tattooed individual is off their rocker (alternatively, in the Yakuza).
In short, there is a correlation between tattoos and at risk behavour and this with mental illness. But the method of this is probably that getting a tattoo is a risk behaviour, and that is the factor that matters.