"Glorify God both in your body and in your soul, which are God's"
(1 Cor. 6:20).
Are Christians allowed to have images on their bodies? To understand this, let’s turn to the Bible and patristic writings, the dogmas of ecumenical councils, as well as literature for preparing for confession, because it usually lists all kinds of sins in great detail. For a Protestant, there is only the authority of the Bible. A Catholic should listen to the decrees of the Pope and councils.
The dogmas of the Orthodox Church and the writings of the Church Fathers say nothing about this. Let us then turn to the Bible, it contains only 1 verse that clearly speaks of impaled images. Here he is:
“For the sake of the dead, do not make cuts on your body and do not write on yourself. I am the Lord.”
(Leviticus 19, 28).
In this case, the line above says:
“Do not shave your head round, and do not spoil the edges of your beard” (Leviticus 19:27).
These Old Testament quotes speak of the inadmissibility of adopting pagan rituals, that is, performing these actions for the sake of the deceased and for glorification pagan gods. If we assume that tattooing is clearly prohibited here, then we must also recognize the prohibition of cutting a beard. Moreover, the Gospel has abolished many old norms, such as rituals involving the blood of animals.
The New Testament says about the Antichrist:
“And he will cause everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on right hand them or on their foreheads" (Rev. 13:16).
But it is also written:
“And it was said to it [the locust] that it should not harm the grass of the earth, or any green plant, or any tree, but only to people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads” (Rev. 9:4).
“And I looked, and behold, a Lamb stood on Mount Zion, and with Him an hundred and forty-four thousand, having the name of His Father written on their foreheads” (Rev. 14:1).
Does the mark or seal on the forehead have anything to do with a tattoo? It's impossible to say clearly. So, it appears that Scripture does not directly command anything for modern Christians regarding tattooing.
At the same time, we must remember that Christians live for the glory of God and strive with all their souls for the salvation of themselves and others. Following the words of the Apostle Paul, I will say that not everything that is permissible is useful, and not everything edifies. The concepts and morals of our time are already far from the covenants of Jesus Christ. People make body art to please people, to emphasize their beauty, to preserve the memory of worldly things. It’s not even worth putting the name of your loved one, because, firstly, God comes first, secondly, romance did not come from Christianity, but from the medieval military environment, and, finally, thirdly, real Christians love all sisters and brothers alike, they make no difference between relatives and step-brothers. Romantic love and Christian love are not the same thing.
You also cannot tattoo oriental symbols, that is, dragons, Japanese and Chinese characters, and the like. They express a completely different vision of the world, far removed from Christianity. So, a non-Christian tattoo for believers in Jesus is unacceptable. If salvation is the most important thing, then why just pay attention to worldly things?
In books for preparing for confession, there is no sin of tattooing, although such violations of God's law as dancing and crossing the road when the color is red are cited. In one of them, however, there is a phrase: “I sinned by following the godless customs of this world, and also wanting to please and seduce, I cut my hair and put on makeup (this violated God’s commandment about the appearance of a woman).” That is, any actions with unjust goals are condemned, and it is difficult to imagine Christian cosmetics.
According to the Orthodox faith, sacred images are needed, firstly, to remind us of God, sacred events, the instructive life of the Lord and the saints of God, secondly, to present the teachings of God, thirdly, to excite religious feelings in us, fourthly, to glorifying God with art, just as they glorify even people with all sorts of monuments, just as they glorify God with art - singing and music. (According to N.Yu. Varzhansky “Weapons of Truth”)
The Bible recognizes the possibility of correct sacred images:
“And thou shalt make the tabernacle of ten curtains of fine woven linen, and of blue, purple, and scarlet [wool], and thou shalt make cherubim on them with cunning work” (Ex. 26:1).
“Cherubim and palm trees were made: a palm tree between two cherubim, and each cherub had two faces. On one side the face of a man was turned to the palm tree, and on the other side to the palm tree was the face of a lion; this was done all around the temple” (Ezek. 41, 18-20).
Besides:
"Don't you know that your bodies essence temple the Holy Spirit living in you, which you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God and in your bodies and in your souls who are God's" (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
The temple has the correct images.
“Show them the appearance of the temple and its location... and all its images” (Ezek. 43:11).
Some argue that impaling is prohibited because it was used by pagans. If this is understood, then sacred images in general must be prohibited, because even before God’s command to make images of cherubim in the tabernacle, pagan peoples depicted their gods.
The Coptic tattoo is widely used in the Christian world. Orthodox Church(Egypt), after baptism a cross is made on the right wrist. Egyptian law requires showing your hand when applying for a job, because Copts are prohibited from leadership positions. Therefore, for example, men become loaders, and women become cleaners.
In any case, the question of salvation depends on the human soul, images and objects; formal execution of the rules alone cannot do this. When choosing a tattoo, you should not completely trust catalogs in tattoo parlors, because who created them is unknown, and any image reflects inner world artist. It’s better to choose yourself and bring the finished sketch to the master. The master, performing a procedure with his own hand, unconsciously introduces a piece of his “I”. After all, only Christians, and not worldly artists, paint churches. Finding a truly religious tattoo artist in salons is not so easy. Today, most people perceive the owner of body painting as a thrill-seeker who lives for pleasure and satisfaction, and at the same time, a person who is firm enough to adhere to his rules. The images that are painted forever are looked upon as something mundane, but now it is almost a modern youth language. To bring other people to Christ, we must convey to them the lofty Christian truths of Orthodoxy in an accessible way.
Man, according to God's plan, is a two-part being. He has a spiritual immaterial substance - a soul and a material body. The body is also a joint heir of the soul in the Kingdom of God - in the new mountain city of Jerusalem (see Revelation of St. John the Theologian, Chapter 21).
After all, the present death, which separates the soul and body, is not the end. At the Last Judgment, when our Lord Jesus Christ, together with the angels and holy saints, will judge each of us, we will appear before God in the fullness of our nature, that is, not only spiritually - in soul, but also physically. The dead, for example, will be resurrected in such a way that their bodies and members will be collected, the soul will enter into them, and man in his full nature will appear before the Judgment of God (see Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, 37: 1-14). And also mentally and physically, after the final Last Judgment upon him, he will enter for all eternity either hell or heaven.
Therefore, the Church has always treated the body very carefully and reverently as a co-heir of the soul in the eternal future life eighth day. Hence such a reverent attitude towards the bodies of the dead in the Orthodox rite of burial of the dead. That is why the Church has such a negative attitude towards cremation.
Unnatural body decorations are also undesirable: tattoos, piercings, nail polish, makeup and hair dyeing. After all, man is the image and likeness of God. The Lord initially created it as a beautiful self-sufficient microcosm - the entire Universe. Therefore, excessively “modifying” your body is, of course, a dubious practice. It’s as if we don’t trust God and build our own in pride tower of babel, trying to correct the Creator. Such behavior cannot lead to anything good.
This does not exclude natural care looking after your body and treating illnesses such as disabilities.
In addition, often a young guy or girl does not understand the true meaning of tattoos - their historical significance. In the ancient pagan world, where there was no printing technology, tattoos could also be something like a seal or passport. They carried information about a person: belonging to a certain tribe, clan, clan, social status.
There is another subtext here. A modern young man sometimes imagines that a tattoo is a kind of symbol of his personal freedom. But in the pagan world (where its origins come from) it is the exact opposite symbol. There, a tattoo is often a symbol of submission, a sign of belonging to someone or something. This, for example, still happens in closed subcultures such as army units or gangster formations.
Sometimes a person, when applying a tattoo, does not even think about what informational meaning this or that symbol carries. After all, a tattoo is not just a decoration; it often has a philosophical or religious background. And a person running from reality into a fictional dreamy world (where he often tries to “drag” his body, including with the help of tattoos), can, without realizing it, revive neo-paganism, and after it (to name things by their own names) idolatry and service to demons.
This is especially scary for an Orthodox Christian. Since the holy supreme apostle Paul said about us, Orthodox Christians: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you? If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will punish him: for the temple of God is holy; and this temple is you” (1 Cor. 3:16). That is, we are a living church, a temple. Each of us.
An Orthodox Christian has one belonging - to Christ. And the symbol of this has long been pectoral cross on the neck. Such a person is blessed by God and protected by the holy angel. But for a tattooed person everything can be diametrically opposite. Those who have put openly pagan tattoos on their bodies, of course, should confess this sin, and the Lord will certainly forgive them and restore the lost spiritual-physical harmony.
Priest Andrey Chizhenko
Orthodox Life
Is it possible to get tattoos on the body?
Question:
In the Old Testament there is a place where it is said about the prohibition of applying images and inscriptions to the body (in the book of Leviticus). Can this passage be related to the current tattoo? That is, is it a sin? And are there other places in the Bible that talk about this?
Priest Afanasy Gumerov answers:
“For the sake of the deceased, do not make cuts on your body and do not write on yourself. I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:28). This prohibition is repeated twice more: Lev.21:5; Deut.14:1. In the above verse, it is indeed forbidden to apply images to the body by pricking or rubbing paint, as was common among pagan peoples. The attitude towards the body in the inspired Old Testament religion is fundamentally different from paganism. The wonderful connection of body, soul and spirit forms one person, created in the image of God.
Virtues bring benefit not only to the soul, but also to the body: “A gentle heart is life for the body, but envy is rottenness for the bones” (Proverbs 14:30). The human body testifies to the wisdom and omnipotence of the Creator. The Bible speaks about the damage of human nature by sin, but does not express a single disparaging word about the body, as a creation of God. Plato called the body “the prison of the soul,” and St. the apostle Paul speaks of “the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23). Therefore, the Mosaic Law prohibited the adoption of pagan customs. Special mutilation of the body created by God is an insult to God. “For you were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God both in your body and in your soul, which are God’s” (1 Cor. 6:20).
Pravoslavie.Ru
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Priest's answer:
As an answer, I offer this article:
Fashion for tattoos: a seal of progress or a symbol of primitive savagery?
Today it is difficult to find a person who has not seen a tattoo. But few people know what this word means, how it appeared in our everyday life and what meaning it carried and carries in itself. We will also try to understand these issues. So, the word “tatoo” is derived from the Tahitian word “tatau” and the Marquesan “ta-tu”, which means “sign”, “wound”, “mark”. According to one of the most common versions, tattoos appeared by accident. Having noticed that if a dye, such as soot, got under damaged skin (wounds, cuts), then bizarre, indelible patterns were formed on its surface, people began to cause damage intentionally.
The first examples of tattoos were found during excavations of the Egyptian pyramids. On the mummies discovered there, which according to experts are at least 4 thousand years old, tattoos are clearly visible.
It is believed that the body marks of ancient people were more informative (indicating the sign of the tribe, clan, social status owner), protective (against diseases, troubles, misfortunes) and magical functions than decorative. The location, pattern, and size of the tattoo were determined by the customs and traditions of the tribe. Tattoos were also applied by the ancient Slavs, Greeks, Gauls and Germans - but only to perform magical rituals ancient cult. On the pages of the Old Testament, tattoos are clearly associated with pagan cults; their application to the body is condemned and considered a sin. In particular, the biblical texts clearly speak about this: “You shall not make any cuts in your flesh, nor write on yourselves any writing” (Leviticus 19:28), “You are the sons of the Lord your God; You shall not make any cuts on your flesh or cut off the hair above your eyes” (Deuteronomy 14:1).
The theme of “marks on the body” was continued in the New Testament. Thus, in the Revelation of John the Theologian it is said: “They who worship the beast and his image and those who receive the mark of his name will have no rest, day or night” (Bible, Revelation 14:11). Obviously, the rejection of tattoos in Christian culture was associated not only with their “pagan” genesis, but also with the concept of man as the “image and likeness of God,” who is desecrated by applying any signs to the body.
“Decoration” of convicts condemned to the galleys
After the Christian religion established itself in Europe, tattoos practically disappeared - except for the tradition of branding criminals. For example, sharpers were given a sign in the form of a hexagon on their bodies, those sentenced to the galleys were given the inscription “GAL”, vicious women had a lily impaled on their shoulder. The last episode, for example, became one of the elements of intrigue in the novel “The Three Musketeers” by Alexandre Dumas, where such a sign caused many problems for the main anti-heroine, Lady Winter.
Decorative tattoos in Europe were remembered again many centuries later, when the navigator James Cook discovered islands in Polynesia and Melanesia, previously unknown to the inhabitants of the Old World. Having visited Tahiti in 1773, he was surprised to discover that the inhabitants of the island use tattoos to decorate their appearance.
However, no one could have imagined that someday they would become an element of youth fashion. In the 19th century, the famous Italian doctor and one of the founders of forensic science, Cesare Lambroso, considered tattooing as a manifestation of atavism and as a sign of the moral inferiority of their bearers. Lambroso believed that tattoos were most often found on natural-born criminals - prostitutes.
The topic of tattoos was also touched upon in Jules Verne’s famous novel “The Children of Captain Grant,” when the characters, traveling around New Zealand, heard about the warlike Maoris, tattooed from head to toe. Let us remember that the Maori constantly waged wars among themselves. The winners cut off the heads of the vanquished and put the skulls on a shelf in their homes, and also practiced cannibalism. It was believed that a person who ate the heart of a defeated enemy would inherit part of his vital force.
Demonstration of superiority or inferiority complex?
Reality seemed to confirm his words: tattoo long time was the most important attribute criminal subculture. And in our time, at law faculties and in police schools, students and cadets can study entire atlases devoted to the meaning of this or that drawing from representatives of the criminal world. So, for example, a tattoo “Sailboat” indicates that its owner is a touring thief, and a “skull”, “money” or “rose branch” inscribed on the chest means that the person has been involved in thefts, robberies, robberies for a long time, has been repeatedly convicted, or is a thief in law.
Since the early 1960s, tattoos have come into use among youth groups operating on the edge of the law, and often crossing it. It became widespread among bikers, among whom neo-Nazi ideas were often circulated in the United States. The fashion for tattoos came to Russia only in the mid-1990s. This period became a time of romanticization and glorification of everything that was once called antisocial behavior. It was then that the process of tattooing itself acquired particular significance as an indicator of a person’s familiarization with the group values of a non-traditional culture. Decisive factor motivating people to get a tattoo was the influence social environment. In the new conditions, tattooing began to play a decorative and demonstrative function. Their bearers believed and still believe that they are demonstrating their superiority, strength, originality, and uniqueness. However, psychologists believe that a tattoo often hides inherent in man inferiority complex or aggression.
What are the dangers of tattoos: harm to health and spiritual risks
Today, the incentive for law-abiding citizens to get a tattoo can be a tribute to fashion, or it can be the result of pressure, tradition, imitation, mental infection, or a consequence of a rash act. However, there are closed statistical research, according to which the proportion of tattooed youth from disadvantaged families is higher than from prosperous ones.
It’s not surprising that when they get a tattoo, they don’t even think about the fact that it could be downright dangerous. Both in the physical and spiritual sense.
Let's start with the risks for physical health. Many people do not know that, as a result of numerous studies, it has been found that some tattoo inks contain a dye that is a very strong allergen. Its entry into the human body provokes the development of lifelong allergies to sunscreens, painkillers, as well as on clothing and eye shadow that contain this substance. This dye can lead to the development of a number of dermatological diseases. Biotattoos performed with henna also pose a danger. The chemical ingredient paraphenylenediamine, which is often used in patterning to create darker patterns on the skin, can cause skin diseases (dermatitis).
Now about the risks of the spiritual plan. Many people, especially young people, being unfamiliar with the meaning of a particular symbol, apply it to their skin simply because they like it. However, most tattoo lovers do not suspect that the symbols have a spiritual meaning. For example, there are so-called runic tattoos, which modern neo-pagans attribute magical powers. You may not believe in magic, but to a person familiar with history, it immediately becomes clear: the one who puts such symbols on his body “dedicates” it to the dark elements of antiquity, associates himself with the far from harmless bloody rituals that accompanied the practice of pagan cults. Hieroglyph tattoos also have a very ambiguous character, the semantic load of which is also not always harmless.
It is curious that among some African tribes that adhere to pagan beliefs, to this day the absence of a tattoo is a sign of inferiority. It is believed that a man without a body sign will not become a successful hunter, and a woman will not be able to start a family. Our ancestors parted with such ideological attitudes more than a thousand years ago, since Rus' was baptized. Should we now return to the world of aggressive pagan archaism, turning our body into a decorated amulet?
Christian tattoos primarily mean Orthodox faith man into God. Historically they are strong amulets that help in life. Now Christian body painting is incredibly popular because of its unambiguous meaning, which is simply deciphered and says a lot about a person.
Christian tattoos and their types
Such tattoos are valued not only for their meaning, but also for their appearance - the modern execution of body designs, stylish and varied, allows you to immortalize a one-of-a-kind image on your body that will attract attention and make the owner of the tattoo stand out from the crowd.
There are many various types Orthodox tattoos for men and women, and each of them has its own sacred meaning and unique appearance.
Faces of saints in a Christian tattoo
The most popular images are Archangel Michael and Jesus Christ. The face of the latter on the body characterizes the person as having repented of a past sinful life. However, a more popular and meaningful meaning for tattoo wearers is to expose the desire to help one’s neighbor. Such a design will make it clear that its wearer is a kind and sympathetic person, and is also distinguished by unique taste and style: the faces of saints can be printed in a modern design, which will make them look impressive and attract all eyes.
Angels and Archangels
Christian tattoos for men have a wide choice, and one of the most popular designs is the image of angels and archangels. Such tattoos are made in black and gray tones and symbolize inner strength, purity of thoughts. The Archangel is the protector and arbiter of destinies. Such a drawing will show how strong the faith of its owner is. Modern execution allows you to get a tattoo on your entire back, complementing it with patterns and ornaments - such an image will look original without losing its appearance and meaning.
Orthodox tattoo and crosses
The Christian cross is one of the most common symbols in tattoos, which sometimes may not even have anything to do with religion. From an Orthodox point of view, the cross symbolizes the desire to get closer to God, symbolizes the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the removal from sin. The places for getting such a tattoo are very variable - there are such Orthodox tattoos for men on the arm, on the chest, on the back and on other parts of the body. Orthodox tattoos on the arm depicting a cross are the most popular - such designs are always noticeable, they make their wearer stand out from the crowd and say a lot about him.