What about tattoos and body piercing? 

    Sure, you can have tattoos and body piercings and still be saved and go to heaven. In fact, you can have body piercings, tattoos, and a blue Mohawk and still be saved and go to heaven. You can even have your tongue pierced, your eyelids sewn shut and your teeth filed to points and still be saved and go to heaven. You CAN have any and even all of these and still be saved and go to heaven. So is that it? Is that your only question- can I have piercings and tattoos and still be a Christian? Sure, go ahead.

 

   Now I have a question, “Why would you want them?” I can understand if you were not a Christian and were living in our whacked-out little world without Jesus as your Lord and Savior. In that world, you have to worry about your ‘image’. You need to be cool and feel accepted. You want to be a little rebellious and live on the edge, maybe make a statement. You don’t want to be left out or feel behind the times. In that world, having tats and metal has become almost like having ceremonial ‘tribal’ markings to be part of the tribe of non-conformity, which requires it's own conformity.

 

   But as a follower of Christ, your heart attitude should be to focus attention on the inward matters of the heart and growing to spiritual maturity. As a man or woman of God, I want people to look at you and be impressed by the person you are as a follower of Jesus and NOT by the way you are decorated!

 

   When people looked at Jesus, they were impressed by the man, not how he was dressed or his hairstyle. If a person met Jesus, they probably couldn’t recall five minutes later, how he was dressed or how he combed his hair. But they never forgot their encounter with Him.

 

   I have known some really good, solid, mature Christians who came to the Lord from backgrounds where these outward adornments were valued. When they first came to the Lord, they still had their piercings and tats proudly displayed as a way of ‘proving’ that they could be Christians and still have them. The tats and metal were their identity. These things had taken them over. They needed the tats and metal as their security like a baby need his little blanky. Some of the tats and metal were gotten in the first place, as weapons to inflict shock and hurt to people that had hurt or disappointed them. Others were gotten as acts of defiance. Still others were gotten because of the need to feel cool or accepted amongst a particular group of peers.

 

   But as time went on, the internal reasons to have them began to dissolve and go away and the tats and metal went away as well. At first, the attitude changed. The tats and metal were no longer flaunted or pushed out in front of people. They just slipped into the background. In some cases they even paid to have them removed. The person ceased to be ‘identified’ by them. They were identified by who they had become in Christ.

 

   I have one friend in particular named Russell. When he first came to our church, he had spiked green hair and always wore clothes decorated with spikes and even spiked ‘dog-collars’. He came from that background and when he came to church people just loved him and accepted him without passing judgment.

 

   I remember going out to a punk-rock concert with him to pass out gospel tracts and share the gospel. I had just finished preaching at our church on a Wednesday night and was dressed in a suit and was wearing a tie. A group of punk rockers came up to me and started giving me a bunch of grief about the way I was dressed.

 

   Russell came up to them with his green hair and said to them, “Hey quit judging this guy by the way he is dressed!” It was a funny irony that he was protecting me from their criticism based on my outward appearance. He has since gone on to Bible college and then to the military where he served in Iraq and recieved medals for His service. He has no need for the green hair and the assortment of metal paraphernalia.

 

   If a person is FROM a background where tats and metal are important to them as a part of their culture, when they come to Christ, just let them be for a while. In time, they will likely mature in their faith and the reasons for their attachment to these things will go away. If after time, they still feel the need to make a big display of them and flaunt them as a challenge, they may need to be pulled aside and talked to in a respectful way, because there is likely something of spiritual significance behind the ‘decorations’. Jesus always works with the spiritual matters and the outward things follow. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to work on outward things as a way of working back to the heart.

 

   If you are a Christian with a desire to reach out to people in a tat and metal culture, don’t go getting a bunch of tats and metal so that you can fit in with them and ‘relate’. The gospel is intended to be a one-way valve. Getting outward adornment is going in reverse because it is focused on the body which is of this earth and temporal. We are focused on the spirit, which is eternal.

 

   Jesus always meets people where they are and loves them forward. He never had to do drugs to reach drug addicts. He never had to have an affair to reach fornicators and adulterers. He never had to steal to reach thieves. He never had to do anything but be absolutely holy and draw us to Him. Jesus couldn’t care less about your outward appearance and decorations except in the way they reflect spiritual implications going on in the heart. Anyone who is walking strong with the Lord will have no need or compulsion to give much thought to hairstyles, tattoos, piercings, or the like.

 

   If you had them before, then you had them. Just go on. If you feel at some point you need to remove them, let the Lord direct you. If the tat or metal is beyond mere decoration but is of a nature that it is more seriously offensive, you may need to take steps to diminish its visibility or remove it so that it does not hinder others. That is a serious thing to consider when getting these things in the first place. We should not be so short sighted that we will create a permanent situation that we will regret later.

 

   It is like the guy who gets a tattoo with his sweetheart’s name on his arm and then marries another girl years later when he is no longer with the first girl. At the time, he thought she was the one for him, but later he realized she wasn’t. We don’t want to have a situation where we come to the Lord with a bunch of tattoos on our bodies as leftovers from when we served our own flesh and the devil. Sure, the Lord will still love us and accept us, but it would be a lot nicer not to have to deal with the added shame and regret staring us in the face every time we see that place on our body.