Meditations from Zion

This is a freedom I don’t practice as much as I should. It’s so easy to get caught up in tracking all the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” in our lives. What is it we fear so much? Why have we lost our confidence in grace?

I Corinthians 10:23-24
Looking at it one way, you could say, “Anything goes. Because of God’s immense generosity and grace, we don’t have to dissect and scrutinize every action to see if it will pass muster.” But the point is not to just get by. We want to live well, but our foremost efforts should be to help others live well. [The Message Bible]

My daughter was working with some dear counselor friends of mine the other day and in the course of their time together, she said she was planning to get a tattoo. Now, I am not a fan of tattoos at all. Five or six years ago, I told my three teens, “If any one of you goes out and gets a tattoo, I will cut it out with a spoon.” Yah, I’d say I had a bit of an attitude. But, over the years, it’s become evident that cultural acceptability of this practice is going to outweigh my threats and I can either fight it and watch them sneak into a tattoo parlor some weekend in Ocean City or I can speak lovingly, reasonably and simply abd ask them to plan it: plan it well, and to be sure it’s what they want. So far, no one has added one yet.

But that’s not really my point. Those friends ended up pulling out scriptures and telling her that getting a tattoo is a sin (I assume this is based on Leviticus 19:28, “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves…” and other similar Old Testament passages). But, aren’t we missing the phrase, “for the dead” in this passage. The cuttings and tattoos referenced here are cultural and clearly ritualistic. Most kids and young people are not participating in a satanic ritual any more than they are by going from house to house on Halloween saying, “trick or treat.”

This reminds me of other “do nots” that have been conveyed to me in the name of sin, such as practicing yoga or visualization. Can these things be abused? Of course, but then, so can practices in the name of Christ, such as “miracles” of gold dust floating off the hands of a “healer.”

What is essential here then? Motive and intent. Christ brought freedom and that freedom “completed” the law [Romans 8:1-2].

Needless to say, we must remember, if participating in an activity gives pain and anxiety to those around us, it’s probably best not to do it, for their sakes and out of our love for them, the other (the sacred other). We can’t always know that, though, and we can’t go through our lives second guessing these things. But when we do know, when a child chooses NOT to act in a particular way out of respect and love for parents, that is a good thing. And I’m sure there are other examples of these choices.