Man is not satisfied with how God has created Him and so man will recreate himself according to his own divine fiat word to be cast in a physical image that is consistent with his autonomous vision. The act of unnecessary cosmetic surgery, piercing, tattooing, and now the new piercing rage called corsetting are acts of defiance against being defined by God in our very physical appearance. It is a form of alienism in as much as the pursuit of body modifications indicates a alienation that exists between the person and their own physical appearance.
What modern man is doing to himself in his desire to remake himself physically is akin what happens when one enters into the military. Upon entry into the military the individual is stripped of all identifying marks: jewelry, individual clothing, distinctive scents, hair- facial & head, while covering visible tattoos in order to ‘reformat the individual hard-drive’. The recruit receives standardized grooming and uniform with distinctive ‘writing’ (patches & ensignia) and ‘action codes’ (UCMJ, General Orders etc.) bearing on all of life, which recreate the individual and identify him/her as a soldier/sailor. Now with that as a backdrop one should evaluate the contemporary ‘reformatting of youth’s hard-drives’ that we are seeing in the tattoo / piercing culture and the subsequent impact of this upon our youth’s behavior. Tattoos and piercings (as well as dress) have received renewed emphasis, and have historically been religiously derived.
Like the actions of the military the actions of the tattoo / piercing culture has the goal of stripping and remaking the individual according to a proscribed worldview. The individual hard drive is being reformatted with the goal of creating the new Alienist man.
Now further all this that piercing in the Scripture was, for men, a sign of submission. Rushdoony teaches in his lecture on “Dependence” that when piercing showed up in the West again it was initially done by Pirates and communicated that the one pierced was a subordinate in a homosexual relationship. Tattoos in the ancient world (and in biblical culture) were a sign either of slavery or allegiance to a pagan god. Tattooing is condemned in the Pentateuch.
It is my conclusion then that the tattooing – piercing phenomenon that we are finding in our current culture is merely the outward expression of a slave people’s inward beliefs. Because we have become slaves in our thinking, we are marking ourselves as slaves, all the while telling ourselves that this remaking of our physical appearance is the very essence of freedom. Remember, in an upside down world, slavery is freedom and freedom is slavery.
Interestingly enough, as recently as the 1950’s in America ear piercing was not something nice girls did, and girls being tattooed was virtually unheard.
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Hat Tip
R. J. Rushdoony
Jim Steed
Maggie Nola
Kevin Johnson
