About to go to bed. Here's something on my mind that I had a conversation about with a friend of mine a week ago. When people say "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit", and people (usually your parents) refer it to tattoos and piercings, that's not what it meant in the Bible, and people have taken it out of context.
When it's mentioned in 1 Corinthians, it's referring that there's only one act that's damaging to the temple in the spiritual sense, which is sexuality. Where it's a spiritual act of two people becoming one. It's meaning is "Should prostitution be happening in the temple of God?" And the answer is simply no. It's talking about sexual immorality. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 says this: " Don't you realize that this is not the way to live? Unjust people who don't care about God will not be joining in His kingdom. Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don't qualify as citizens of God's kingdom".
If you read in chapter 5, it talks about how sex (outside marriage) is wrong. If the Bible was talking about piercings and tattoos as a bad thing, then there would be no eating Big Macs, french fries, or any of that bad junk food stuff. The reason being is because that's damaging our bodies, like tattoos and piercings (just in a different way). I'm not saying to rebel, don't use this as a fighting tool, and get tattoos and piercings all over, I just wanted to clarify that it's not the definition people have put it as.
I have two piercings, and a tattoo. It seems like people get really judgmental in the congregation about people with tattoos. They don't even ask questions, they might not know anything about you. They just categorize you as a bad person, and put you in that box of people. They don't know what your background is. Maybe the tattoo is of extreme significance to you (death of a family member, Jesus, etc.). You need to come to realize that if you see someone with tattoo's all over their body, and piercings everywhere: Get to know them. You never know. They could be in a rough spot in their life, and they just walked into a church for the first time in years. How would you feel if you were outcast from a building because of the way you looked? I would feel like a leaper. Or even the woman in the Bible who was sick for 12 years. In Luke chapter 8, there was a woman who had a disease for 12 years. Because of the culture they had back then, and the disease she had, she was required to live outside the city walls. They didn't want her "infecting" the other people. That sounds very familiar to people who treat people with tattoos and piercings nowadays. "We don't want them infecting our church" "We don't want them near us. They're different." Really church?
For us as Christians, we shouldn't judge or condemn other people for their past/sin (if they continue to live in their premeditated sin, and profess Christ, that's a different story). Love the sinner, hate the sin? Oh, you betcha. Now, I'm not saying that everybody is this way. A lot of churches and people have accepted these people in, and some people don't even mind the tattoos or piercings. This blog post really goes out to the people who grew up with thinking that piercings and tattoos are bad. It also goes out to the people who are curious about this subject. I don't mean to offend anyone by this post. If you found it offensive in some way; First, I apologize. Second, pray about it, and if you are still feeling like something I said offended you, and you feel led to talk to me about it; By all means, go ahead.
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