Is it right/wrong to get a tattoo? Does the Bible address this? The short answer is, yes, the Bible addresses this. But whether it’s right or wrong is not as simple as saying yes or no.
The only place in the Bible that the Lord speaks about tattoos is found in Leviticus. The context of this passage is as critical as the doctrine of the passage. The context is that the Hebrews/Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for centuries. They had been completely assimilated to the Egyptian culture. Assimilated means to adapt someone’s thoughts and behaviors in order to have them become like someone else, or like another group. God had recently used Moses and his brother Aaron to lead the Hebrews/Israelites out of Egypt, away from slavery, and now they find themselves in the desert and under the direction of the Lord. The Lord is trying to assimilate them to become His followers, but at the moment, they all looked, acted, and talked like the pagan Egyptians. The Egyptians had a diverse pagan culture that celebrated and worshipped many false gods/idols. Subsequently, the Israelites had taken to the same idolatrous practices. So, in an effort to assimilate the Israelites to trusting and following the Lord, the following commands were given.
Keep in mind as you read this passage, that every passage of scripture has one thesis; one main point, but often has multiple support clauses.
Leviticus 19:26-28, “You shall not eat anything with the blood, nor practice divination or soothsaying. You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads nor harm the edges of your beard. You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the LORD.”
The thesis from this passage is to abstain from idolatrous practices. There are three support clauses that drive at this point. Tattoos is addressed specifically, but let me walk through the passage to give clarity to what is really being said here. The first group of support clauses is found in verse 26, “You shall not eat anything with the blood, nor practice divination or soothsaying.” These three things were common pagan practices having to do with seeking information from beyond; from the dead or from spirits. Divination or soothsaying are still practiced even today. However, “eating anything with the blood” is less known. This is the pagan practice of sacrificing an animal to a deity, then sitting in a circle around a bowl of the animal’s blood. While eating the meat, they would gaze into the bowl of blood, much like crystal-ball gazing, and demonic spirits would reveal images onto the surface of the blood. In short, all of these practices are always forbidden, throughout the Old and New Testament.
The second group of support clauses, two of them, are in verse 27, “You shall not round off the side-growth of your heads nor harm the edges of your beard.” Part of the way that idol followers would identify with certain deities would be how they wore their hair. For the men, they would shave off the side-growth of their heads, similarly to a modern-day bowl-cut; leaving the sides bare, but growing out the hair on top of the head. As well, “blocking” the beard by cutting the loose ends to create a squared or blocked shape of the beard was a common identifier with certain idols. I’ll speak more to this in a moment.
Last, the third group of support clauses is in verse 28, “You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves.” Making cuts in your own body, or self-mutilation, was a way to appease your deity and show depth of sincerity when praying. For example, if one wanted to pray for the salvation of their dead ancestors, which is a common pagan practice, then they’d cut themselves, or “blood-let”, to offer their own blood as a sacrifice to their deity on behalf of their relatives. This is always forbidden. We see blood-letting demonstrated by the prophets of Baal when they were calling out to their false god on Mt. Carmel in 1 Kings 18.
The Lord then turns attention to tattoos. As you would expect, putting tattoo marks on oneself is a common way to identify with something or someone that they love and/or worship. The Egyptians would put tattoo marks on themselves to identify as a follower of certain deities.
Bottom Line – Is it wrong to get a tattoo? Is it wrong to trim your beard? Is it wrong to get a bowl-cut? The short answer is, no, but it might be! The key is, what are you trying to identify with. The point the Lord was making was that He wanted the Israelites to make Him their identity, and at the time their false idols were their identity.
In the same way, Paul is teaching the new-converts to Christianity in 1 Timothy 2:9, “I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments.” The issue here was that in Greek culture, it was common for women to dress immodestly, revealing themselves in an improper manner, and certainly not in a manner fit for public prayer gatherings, when attention would shift onto themselves. Likewise, many of the Greek women had worshipped Aphrodite, the mythological Greek goddess of love, and in doing so, identified with her by how they adorned their hair and in the manner in which they wore jewelry. So, they also needed to be assimilated into godly modesty and identification with Jesus as opposed to their former lifestyles.
So, is it wrong to braid one’s hair, or wear gold jewelry? No, but it can be! The bottom line is what are you trying to identify with? This is the question that you should ask before you get a tattoo. A tattoo is generally a significant form of public identification; showing everyone what you value in life.
One might say, “What about getting a Christian tattoo, like a cross or Bible verse?” I attend a local gym to work out and it seems that most of the guys there have a cross tattoo. In fact, this has seemingly been the trend for about fifteen years or more. However, despite their publicly displayed crosses, too many of these same people talk profanely at the gym, which doesn’t reflect Christ-like identification at all. It’s as though the cross tattoo is simply cultural, not deeply rooted in faith. All I’m trying to say is, it’s better to walk and talk like Christ, then to put a tattoo on yourself which is likely not going to get much attention nowadays anyway.