Category: Culture

Republican Presumed Nominee Trump and Judge Curiel

I’m not voting for Donald Trump. I’ve made the reasons why clear on Iron Ink. Nothing has changed in that regard. However, since I don’t have a dog in the election fight, as it concerns the two major party candidates, it does give me a wee bit of dispassion when looking at the issues that are being tussled over in this election cycle.

The most recent caterwauling by the Media, the Democrats, The Republicans and the general Elite cognoscenti establishment has been Donald Trump’s daring to offer the politically incorrect statement that he doesn’t think he can get a fair hearing from a Obama appointed Judge of Mexican heritage who has remote but very real ties to THE LaRaza and has  served on a La Raza scholarship board that awarded scholarships to illegal immigrants, thus demonstrating his attitude towards U.S. law. I think this might be called, “Mestizo privilege.”

All of this phony outrage has been an attempt to stampede the electorate into discarding Trump as a vile evil racist. That the SJW media and SJW inside the beltway establishment are rather selective in their outrage against putative racists is seen by the way that other statements from cultural gate-keepers is met with a nonplussed and ho-hum response,

“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,”

Barack Obama
Identifying with a African-American against what was initially misreported as a black youth being slain by a White man.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Sonya Sotomayer
Puerto Riccan Supreme Court Justice

“The Cambridge police acted stupidly … there is a long history in this country of Arican-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”

Barack Obama
White House Press Conference
Complaining about a White Cop Arresting a Black Professor

So, given that there was little to no consternation or outrage over these statements quite similar to Trump one has to wonder why Trump is being excoriated.

Then there is the observation by Ann Coulter on this subject,

“Two weeks ago …  the (New York) Times published an op-ed by a federal appeals judge stating: ‘All-white juries risk undermining the perception of justice in minority communities, even if a mixed-race jury would have reached the same verdict or imposed the same sentence.'”

For how many decades have we been told that minorities cannot get justice from White judges or white juries and that has been perfectly OK and even has become enshrined in our “law?” But now Trump accuses an Obama appointed and LaRaza connected Judge of Mexican heritage of the very same thing and suddenly everybody is all outraged? Me thinketh the lady doth protest too much.

These observations, combined, inform us that the only reason that Trump is being slammed by the cultural gatekeepers about his recent Obama appointed and LaRaza connected “Mexican judge” statement is that Trump is white.  None of the above quotes are unlike Trump’s statement. The “problem” with Trump is that he, as a White Man, is holding Cultural Marxist non-Caucasians to the same standard that cultural Marxist non-Caucasians and their self-hating white liberal lap dogs use against whites.  Since World War II the cultural Marxists have worked to turn these united States into a nation of Tribal interests and now the SJW cultural elites want to scream ruddy hell when Trump acknowledges that Tribal reality? Physician heal thyself.

Speaker of the House, Rep. Paul Ryan told us that what Trump said was a textbook case of racism when Trump spoke concerning the Obama appointed and LaRaza connected Judge of Mexican heritage . Just count Ryan as one more leftist worshiper genuflecting at the  altar of political correctness and white hatred. What does one expect from a pig but a grunt?

That white people are guilted into believing and buying into this double standard tripe suggests that the real goal of all of this hypocritical guilt mongering is the complete subjugation of white people under the heels of a neo-Marxist multicultural, politically correct, anti-Christian agenda.  All this propaganda guilting works to the same end that was arrived at in the French revolution. During that time the Jacobins bombarded France with saturation guilt propaganda so effectively that even the French nobility and monarchy were left unable to defend themselves to themselves against it. A date with madame guillotine was the consequence for many in the the French Aristocracy because of this propaganda to which no response was forthcoming.  If Christian white people do not resist this demonization propaganda I see a similar future for Christian white people.

 

 

Sex Outside the Boundaries and Destruction

A social order trajectory that begins with unconstrained libidinous passion will end in social order horror that consumes individuals, families, and nations. For example the French intelligentsia philosophes embarked on the trajectory of emancipating the sexual impulse from the moral order and the end result was the tender strokes of Madame la’ Guillotine. What began as a loosening of sexual mores ended with the loosening of heads off of shoulders.

Consider also, as example, the Weimar Republic of the 1920’s. What began as the Sexual cabaret of Europe in the 1920’s where every kind of fetish and deviance possible could be had for the right price ended with unnamed tyranny and rampant death for the “fatherland.”

Consider also the Bolshevik Revolution. Alexandera Kollentai led the way in sexual freedom for women. Women, under communist rule, were considered as belonging to no man but as belonging to the state for purchase. Kollontai, with Lenin’s approval, sought to destroy the concept of marriage and families. The results of this sexual freedom was so disastrous that even the Communist realized that they had to reverse course lest they wipe themselves out by sexual freedom.

There is a nexus between the liberation of sex from God ordained expression and the consequent social order blood in the streets that naturally follows. We are witnessing that again in the West as we seek to eliminate any boundaries for sex. It almost seems that there is a principle at work here… a truism that demonstrates that unfettered sex guarantees unfettered death.

God’s Call For Virgin Skin … Baptism and Tattoos (#4)

Titus 3:5 He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

I Corinthians 12:13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body–whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free–and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

In teaching the covenant children on Baptism I often times will us the illustration that Baptism is like God’s branding us with His mark of ownership. I will tell them just as a Rancher might brand his cattle, so God brands us with the mark of Baptism that is indelible to His eyes. When He looks at us He sees that we are marked with His mark and so treats us as His own.

In Baptism we are marked with God’s mark. It is the mark wherein we find our identity. It is the only mark that we need have placed upon us. Indeed, by marking ourselves with other permanent marks it could be easily argued that we are putting marks on ourselves that are in identity competition with God’s mark of Baptism.

In this vein it is interesting that historically tattoos have been used as an identifying mark that one belongs to this or that god. The gods were thought to have required that their people be marked with their mark. Of course, today no one in the modern West would, upon receiving a tattoo, think that they were doing so as a mark of belonging to some ancient tribal deity but perhaps worse yet what being tatted today demonstrates and signals is the god-like power one seizes over one’s own body.  If one views themselves as autonomous beings then they will mark themselves with their own marks. This is understandable but the Christian who has been marked with God’s mark of Baptism should not want to be marked with any other mark.

Not only should they not want to be marked with any other mark they are forbidden to be marked out with any other mark. The Priest class in the Old Testament was not allowed to be tattooed, like the pagans around them,

Leviticus 21:5 They (the Priests) shall not make bald patches on their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts on their body.

This is relevant to those who profess Christ today who resolve to be tattooed because in the New Testament it is the Church and Christians who are identified as God’s Priest class.

I Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

All God’s people today are prophets, priests, and kings under sovereign God, and so all God’s people today, as God’s Priests, are proscribed by God from making any cuts on their body. And why should they want any other marks on their bodies since they’ve been marked by their God in Baptism?

Why this desire, by professing Christians, for a further marking besides God’s mark of Baptism? One wonders if the increase of tattooing isn’t due to God’s people not understanding their identity in Christ. In so many ways Westerners have been separated and stripped from, and of, their Christian history — and so their identity — that perhaps, at some level, the reason body modification is being pursued by Christians so intently is because they are trying to find a meaning that has eluded them. The modern Western man has been deracinated to the point that he no longer is even sure about gender, and is now treated as a interchangeable cog in a vast impersonal machine culture. Given that, it is not a wonder that the modern Western man, be he Christian or non Christian, is exploring all avenues, including tattooing, to imbue his life with some possible meaning.

Of course modern Western man does not speak to himself in such terms. He probably couldn’t and wouldn’t articulate his thinking (if he even thinks about it at all) in such a way. For modern man tattooing one’s self is just what people do. Modern man would insist that tattooing doesn’t mean anything except, “it’s cool and it’s pretty and my peers are doing it and I want to fit in.”

However, if Christians who are also Moderns, had explained to them what God’s mark of Baptism means then just possibly they would see that pursuing any other mark, besides the mark of Baptism, would be a pursuing of a counter claim by a different god.

God’s Call for Virgin Skin … A Few Sociological Observations

Now, that I’ve set the table regarding tattoos, demonstrating from Scripture that tattoos are not biblical in and of themselves (#1 in the series), nor does tatting up reflect the teleological end to which Christians are called (#2 in series), I’d like to take some time looking at a few sociological implications of tattoos, particularly on beautiful women. Some of this analysis owes its insights into what today is called the “manosphere.” This is a sociological movement, that is seldom Christian, but does sometimes offer some interesting insights into what current male – female relationships have devolved into given this current culture of feminism. I’ve read a couple of their books and I keep my finger on the pulse of some of their better known blogs.

It needs to be remembered that these are general observations which means that they are posited as generally true. There is no doubt that exceptions will exist to these general observations. As such this is a case of, “if the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t wear it.”

1.) Tattoos on a single woman tilts the “I-am-easy-meter” needle towards full on easy.   Women with Tatts signal to men on the lower end of the social scale … “Come see about me.”

A comment left on one of the “manosphere sites,” read,

Someone already mentioned that tattoos are a tell-tale indicator of impulsive behavior, and short-sightedness. Most likely will be an easy score on the first date.

2.) Beautiful women subconsciously, as impressed upon them by the culture, are guilt ridden over their beauty. One means of reducing that guilt is to reduce their beauty by tramp stamping themselves with tatts.

Heartsite Chateau adds on this score,

“Tattoos in the current year could be seen as a sort of “maimgeld” (i.e. – self-uglifying): the tribute that white women pay in self-disfigurement to a growing Diversitopia they live in that both covets the white women’s exquisite natural looks and hates it to the verge of eliminationist rage.”

3.) Beautiful women with tatts is one means by which they contribute to the Babel melange where equality is the measurement of virtue. If they can’t change their beauty to an acceptable base line ugliness that doesn’t clearly place them in the above average class, they can at least lower themselves into the undifferentiated bricolage culture by tatting up and so be found acceptable according to egalitarian cultural standards.

Remember, this culture is all about sinking itself into a un-diversified egalitarian garbage scow where each human cog is equal to each other human cog. This requires, from beautiful women, a disintegration downward into ugliness. Tatts are one means to accomplish this goal.

4.) Beautiful women with tattoos no longer stand out as advantaged or privileged by that beauty. The greatest crime in this culture, for guilt ridden beauties, is to be consumers of what we might call “attraction privilege.” By tatting up, beautiful women negate the loathed “attraction privilege” they would otherwise carry.

5.) In this fame culture where it seems that everyone wants to be noticed, tattoos are one way women can seek being noticed. Other reasons for getting a tattoo besides wanting notice, are minimal (i.e.– burn victims). Tattoos, like billboards, scream, “look at me.” Sociologically speaking, then, tattoos fit in well with our current narcissistic culture. Some might counter that some people get tattoos where they can’t be seen publicly but the response to that may be, “Why bother?”

The last thing narcissists need is to have their narcissism fed.

It is clear, upon reviewing this, that many of these points are pointing towards how female tattoos are serving a Cultural Marxist egalitarian order where ugliness is exalted at the cost of uglying down beautiful women. A couple of the other points above underscore the “tramp stamp” quotient. Women with tatts are simply seen as lacking sexual virtue by the manosphere. It doesn’t matter what tatted women think about their tatts. What matters is that this is what men think of tatted women. Tatts on females are a dog whistle for sexual advance from men.

 

God’s Call for Virgin Skin … Leviticus 19 & Tattoos

Leviticus 19:2 Speak unto all the Congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy….

26 Ye shall not eat anything with the blood: neither shall ye use enchantments, nor practise augury. 27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. 28 Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo yourselves: I am Jehovah.

29 Profane not thy daughter, to make her a harlot; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.

I am going to try and make the case that this portion of Leviticus cannot be dismissed out of hand. Some would like to do so simply because it is Old Testament law. Just this morning I viewed a clip on the “Christian Broadcasting Network,” with Pat Robertson answering a question regarding this passage which finds Pat boldly saying, “We’re not under the Old Testament. Leviticus does not apply to Christians.”  Those who might want to take the Old Testament seriously are inclined to say about this passage that since the whole hair and beard thing don’t apply therefore the prohibition against scarification or tattooing doesn’t apply.

Another problem we confront in seeking to esteem the ongoing validity of God’s word is conflicting hermeneutics. Some denominations have an emphasis on discontinuity so that much of God’s Old Testament word is seen as automatically void unless repeated in the New Testament, whereas other hermeneutical understandings emphasize continuity so that unless God’s Word in the Old Testament is repudiated in the New Testament that Word remains in force today.  Those who believe that the Old Testament case laws, with their general equity application, are still in force are never going to rest comfortably with those who would dismiss God’s earlier word out of hand.

The first thing we must note in this Leviticus passage is that God is giving here instructions for the Hebrew social order. God, being Holy, is forming a Holy community and God is giving instructions to that end. We should all be able to agree that God is still interested in the formation of a Holy community.

God begins by speaking,

Vs. 26a — Ye shall not eat anything with blood

That this remains in force is seen by the Apostle’s communication to the new Gentile believers in Acts 15:20

“19 Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, 20 but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. “

Vs. 26b — “neither shall ye use enchantments, nor practise augury.”

These were practices of sorcery, occult, or witchcraft. For the community of God to involve themselves in these matters was to make league with God’s ancient enemy, Lucifer.  As such these are forbidden to the people of God. I doubt many Christians today would argue that this law is no longer in force. It clearly is an extension of the first Commandment which prohibits have any other gods before God.

The usage of these kinds of occult indicated a trust in man’s ability to manipulate nature by his power. God would have His people trust Him and Him alone when it came to matters of providence.

Vs. 27  — Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.

This verse becomes a bit controversial as we consider whether or not this law is still applicable. It seems what is  being gone after here is a prohibition to disfigure one’s hair or beard so that it does not conform naturally to the contour of the head or the face.  In other words, in terms of the head, this would be a prohibition against Mohawks or against Tonsures haircuts. In terms of the beard it would be a prohibition against trimming your beard so that it looks like a giant question mark, or so that it looks like a Batman insignia. The Hebrew word “shachath” indicates that the edges of an existing beard on the face are not to be altered. In other words, the hair on the skin of the face is not to be shaped into an unnatural configuration that is inconsistent with the way God shaped us.

I’m not sure why this law would not still apply for those men who have beards.

Some scholars have offered that this passage needs to be read in conjunction with the fact that the reason that God prohibited this among His people is that often the nations surrounding Israel would involve themselves in this kind of practice and by the weird shapes of haircuts and beard-cuts they would be identifying with their pagan gods.  Other scholars suggest that this kind of behavior among the pagans was often associated with the grieving of the pagans in the context of the loss of loved ones (cmp. Leviticus 21:1ff).

What seems to be underlying this is the idea of a natural order. God gives men hair and beards and that hair and those beards, which are natural unto men, are to be had as unto God.  They were to be worn as God naturally gave it to them, and that is, in the case of hair as the hair fits the head, and in the case of beards, as beard conforms to the contour of the face.

It is interesting that even hairstyle and facial hair fashions are not outside of God’s totalizing law authority. God has a legislating word on these matters. There is nothing here that we should immediately insist is not applicable in our current cultural context. Hair fits the head. A beard naturally extends from the facial contours regardless the length. Rushdoony offers here,

“The relevance of God’s law is a continuing one. Unnatural styles too often warped man’s head and body.”

28a Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead,

Some have noted that the Hebrew word for “flesh” here as reference to the whole person and not merely the body. The thrust of this would be that there are ways that the mind can be scarified via trauma or perverse reading material of various sorts.

Turning to the body, in the ancient world of animism and superstition, this kind of scarification of the body was done in the context of grieving for the dead and was pursued as a kind of honor for the dead. In my lifetime the women folk of the deceased in Papua New Guinea, for example, would cut off finger ends to show proper grieving for the dead.

The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary offers here,

 “The practice of making deep gashes on the face and arms and legs, in time of bereavement, was universal among the heathen, and it was deemed a becoming mark of respect for the dead, as well as a sort of propitiatory offering to the deities who presided over death and the grave. The Jews learned this custom in Egypt, and though weaned from it, relapsed in a later and degenerate age into this old superstition (Isa 15:2; Jer 16:6; 41:5).”

Does this still apply to today? Are we still prohibited from this kind of scarification for the dead? Well, nothing in the New Testament repeats this case law requirement so does that mean scarification is permissible for Christians?  I believe most Christians would instinctually say, “yes, this law still applies. Christians may not scar themselves for the dead.” Yet, though Christians might agree with that those Christians who would dismiss God’s law would have a hard time justifying their belief that this law remains in force.

Before we get to verse 28b, we should note that so far that what God is doing here is creating a “set apart” (Holy) community (cmp. Leviticus 19:1). The prohibitions given here were all, in one way another, characteristic of the heathen communities surrounding the Hebrew children. All of these prohibitions were to the end that the Hebrews might be a distinct community.

We should note also that this scarification for the dead is making a comeback in the West. Tattoos that are dedicated to the dead are already quite popular among heathens and Christians alike. It isn’t unusual to meet believers who have a deceased relative’s name, or even their portrait on them. I just read an account where a chap tatted himself using his Father’s ashes as ink.

28b — nor tattoo yourselves: I am Jehovah.

God’s people were to have clean skin. This would be in contrast to the heathen nations that surrounded them who often decorated the finished work of God with assorted marring of God’s perfect canvas.

Barnes — Notes on the Bible offers here,

Tattooing was probably practiced in ancient Egypt, as it is now by the lower classes of the modern Egyptians, and was connected with superstitious notions. Any voluntary disfigurement of the person was in itself an outrage upon God’s workmanship, and might well form the subject of a law.

Ah … now the real controversy is afoot given the current popularity of tattoos among even Christian people. These Christian people, who would insist that scarification is not permissible for Christians are likely to be people who insist that tattoos are permissible for Christians. But by what standard? The New Testament, we know, does not speak an explicit prohibition against scarification and so those Christians, who insist that there is likewise no New Testament prohibition against tattooing, are in a pickle. How are they going to teach their children that scarification for the dead is wrong while tattooing is acceptable?

The response might be, “but no one in the West today wants to scarify themselves for the dead.” And my response is, “not yet.”

I think it is clear that this passage wherein God speaks against tattooing remains in force and remains clearly in force for today’s Christians. If the main thrust of what is going on in these individual prohibitions is that God’s people are to be different than the people around them (Holy — cmp. Leviticus 19:1) then that necessity remains today upon God’s people.

What Ellicott offers in his commentary remains just so,

“Nor print any marks upon you.—This, according to the ancient authorities, was effected by making punctures in the skin to impress certain figures or words, and then filling the cut places with stibium, ink, or some other colour. The practice of tattooing prevailed among all nations of antiquity, both among savages and civilised nations, The slave had impressed upon his body the initials of his master, the soldier those of his general, and the worshipper the image of his tutelar deity. To obviate this disfiguration of the body which bore the impress of God’s image, and yet to exhibit the emblem of his creed, the Mosaic Law enacted that the Hebrew should have phylacteries which he is to bind as “a sign” upon his hand, and as “a memorial” between his eyes “that the Lord’s law may be in his mouth” (Exodus 13:9; Exodus 13:16; Deuteronomy 6:8; Deuteronomy 11:18).”

Of course we no longer use phylacteries because God’s law, in the New Covenant, is written on our hearts but we still retain God’s prohibition to disfigure the body either with scarification or with tatting.

Rushdoony chimes in here also in his commentary on the 6th commandment,

“The body must be used under God and kept for his purposes and is not to be defaced. It is significant that the tattoo mark has an origin in religion, in paganism. It indicated two things in pagan societies: one, that the person was a slave of a particular God. Second, that he was the slave of a particular person. A tattoo is a mark of slavery, and it is ironic that it should become so popular for it has always, until fairly recent times, retained that meaning. And slaves were tattooed. This was until fairly recent times, the means of identification, and still is in some parts of the world. But in bible times not even a slave could be tattooed, he was still God’s before he was mans.”

So, what many Christians are eagerly pursuing by way of cultural popularity was not allowed even among the slaves of God’s people.

A fair reading of the New Testament as read as consistent with the word here in Leviticus offers up the same conclusion.

I Corinthians 6:19 What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you and which ye have from God, and that ye are not your own? 20 For ye are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

Again, we see in the New Testament that God is concerned with the body.  In the context of Corinthians the concern has to do with sexual unions between Christian men and harlots, however, the broader contextual concern does not allow us to limit God’s concern with Christian bodies to unlawful unions alone. Our bodies are Temples of God. Just as in the Old Testament God prohibited the bodies of His people being disfigured with tattoos even more in the New and Better covenant are the bodies of God’s people as God’s temple not to be disfigured.

This reasoning is underscored and supported by British Old Testament scholar Dr. Gordon J. Wenham in his commentary on Leviticus

“Man is not to disfigure the divine likeness implanted in him by scarring his body. The external appearance of the people should reflect their internal status as the chosen and holy people of God (Dt. 14:1-2). Paul uses a similar line of argument in I Cor. 6. The body of the believer belongs to Christ, therefore, “glorify God in your body.”

Some might try to argue here that just as the Temple in the OT had beautiful engravings so believers, as God’s temple, can engrave themselves with beautiful tattoos. The problem with this line of reasoning is that God was specific as to what was and was not to be engraved in His Old Testament temple. God’s silence on any engravings upon our bodies, as His temple, should be a silence that silences this type of reasoning.

In future installments we will be considering other aspects of this Tatting issue that is before the Church. For myself, I believe that tatting is a kind of “gateway drug” to other more serious disobedience to God’s explicit word. That some people take the gateway drug but never move on to the use of harder drugs doesn’t mitigate the danger of the gateway drug.

Conclusion 

Titus 3:5 He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

I Corinthians 12:13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body–whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free–and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

In teaching the covenant children on Baptism I often times will us the illustration that Baptism is like God’s branding us with His mark of ownership. I will tell them just as a Rancher might brand his cattle, so God brands us with the mark of Baptism that is indelible to His eyes. When He looks at us He sees that we are marked with His mark and so treats us as His own.

In Baptism we are marked with God’s mark. It is the mark wherein we find our identity. It is the only mark that we need have placed upon us. Indeed, by marking ourselves with other permanent marks it could be easily argued that we are putting marks on ourselves that are in identity competition with God’s mark of Baptism.

In this vein it is interesting that historically tattoos have been used as an identifying mark that one belongs to this or that god. The gods were thought to have required that their people be marked with their mark. Of course, today no one in the modern West would, upon receiving a tattoo, think that they were doing so as a mark of belonging to some ancient tribal deity but perhaps worse yet what being tatted today demonstrates and signals is the god-like power one seizes over one’s own body.  If one views themselves as autonomous beings then they will mark themselves with their own marks. This is understandable but the Christian who has been marked with God’s mark of Baptism should not want to be marked with any other mark.

Not only should they not want to be marked with any other mark they are forbidden to be marked out with any other mark. The Priest class in the Old Testament was not allowed to be tattooed, like the pagans around them,

Leviticus 21:5 They (the Priests) shall not make bald patches on their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts on their body.

This is relevant to those who profess Christ today who resolve to be tattooed because in the New Testament it is the Church and Christians who are identified as God’s Priest class.

I Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

All God’s people today are prophets, priests, and kings under sovereign God, and so all God’s people today, as God’s Priests, are proscribed by God from making any cuts on their body. And why should they want any other marks on their bodies since they’ve been marked by their God in Baptism?

Why this desire, by professing Christians, for a further marking beside God’s mark of Baptism? One wonders if the increase of tattooing isn’t due to God’s people not understanding their identity in Christ. In so many ways Westerners have been separated and stripped from, and of, their Christian history — and so their identity — that perhaps, at some level, the reason body modification is being pursued by Christians so intently is because they are trying to find a meaning that has eluded them. The modern Western man has been deracinated to the point that he no longer is even sure about gender, and is now treated as an interchangeable cog in a vast impersonal machine culture. Given that, it is not a wonder that the modern Western man, be he Christian or non-Christian, is exploring all avenues, including tattooing, to imbue his life with some possible meaning.

Of course, modern Western man does not speak to himself in such terms. He probably couldn’t and wouldn’t articulate his thinking (if he even thinks about it at all) in such a way. For modern man tattooing one’s self is just what people do. Modern man would insist that tattooing doesn’t mean anything except, “it’s cool and it’s pretty and my peers are doing it and I want to fit in.”

However, if Christians who are also Moderns, had explained to them what God’s mark of Baptism means then just possibly they would see that pursuing any other mark, besides the mark of Baptism, would be a pursuing of a counter claim by a different god.