A Christian friend of mine wanted to get a tattoo of a cross on his forearm, but was not quite sure if it was inline with what the bible teaches. We discussed it a bit, and came up with something interesting points. But none of them were really scriptural, or had the scriptural backing we required to make the decision.

I decided to search google, and see what other Christian folks had to say about tattoo’s. I noticed quite a bit of diversity in peoples view points, ranging from “it’s cool” to “if you get a tattoo you going to hell”.

But how can this be?? Surely Leviticus 19:28 clearly reads
“Never slash your body to mourn the dead, and never get a tattoo. I am the LORD.”

So I’ve decided to write my own view on this problem, and hopefully put it all to rest..

One of the reasons I am writing this article is because of the following page :

http://www.biblebelievers.com/watkins_tattoos/bible.html

I felt that it had a strong argument against getting tattoo’s, but felt that the guy was missing the point of being Christian.

How we handle Christians who have tattoo’s:

I don’t believe that tattoo’s are right or wrong..

I definately do not see them as a salvation issue, and I believe that the bible teaches us that if Christian’s have tattoo’s for what ever reason (maybe because of a lifestyle that encouraged it before their conversion), we should not look down on them, or think that we are better than them, for we are one in Christ, and all have fallen short of Gods requirements.
Romans 14:
“Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.”

Leviticus 19:28

When ever the debate of “To tattoo or not to tattoo” comes along, Leviticus 19:28 will always without a doubt be played by the one against tattoo’s. But is it right to bring out this verse? Is this verse only for OT Israel? Does it still apply to us today? I think the best place to get the answer’s are from the Bible.

We read in Romans 10 : “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”

Where it says “End of the law”, Paul means that that it is the goal of the Law.. The goal of the Law was, and still is there to show us that we fall miserably short of God’s requirements, and that we need Christ to save us.

We read in Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
We are no longer bound to the OT law, for it was fufilled by Christ.
So you might ask then what about laws like prostitution or bestiality. Well all of those are clearly summed up in the fact that sex is designed for marriage alone, and marriage is designed by God to be between one man and one women.

The site makes a comment of “There are many other “moral laws’ that are ONLY forbidden in the Old Testament, such as the human sacrifice of children. No where in the New Testament is this forbidden. Does that mean that NOW under the New Testament, God Almighty endorses throwing babies into the fire as a human sacrifice?”

The New Testament clearly teaches us that ALL life is valuable, and that we should not kill any one (including babies).

The New testament does not point out that tattoo’s are right or wrong.
But 1 Corinthians 10:31 teaches us that what ever we do, we must do all to the glory of God.
Romans 12:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

So the real question we have to ask ourselves is: “Is tattooing glorifying God?”

Do tattoo’s glorify God?
I Believe the answer to that lies in Romans 14 5-8
“One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.”

Obviously this is all in accordance to God’s will. We can not sin, and sin to the glory of God. (This is also taught in Romans)
But we cannot say that tattoo is, or is not a sin..
What we can say is that our motives for getting a tattoo can be a sin..

Are we doing it to fit in? Are we getting a bible verse tattoo’d on our arm as a form of evangelism?
We are clearly taught in the New Testament that it is what is in our heart that makes us unclean, and not that which is on the outside.

See at the end of the day we must question our motives, and try come to an understanding of why we truly want to get that tattoo. Once we know this, we can decide if it glorifies God or not..
So I stand on both sides of the fence on the topic of tattoo’s.
The question you must ask yourself is this :

Does the following picture glorifying God?

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Wow what a sight!! You don’t quite understand the awesomeness of this comet until you have actually seen it! We went on quite a road trip trying to track this little thing down as we realized we were on the wrong side of Table Mountain for good viewing! We even ended the evening with a speed trap to make a great ending to the little road trip. Nevertheless it made quite an impact on most of the spectators standing along the traffic jammed road at the top of Kloof neck not to mention those waiting in kilometer’s queue from signal hill’s vantage point! The traffic officers actually closed the road to stop motorists from entering!The funniest bit was to come as we reached the top of Kloof neck and in unison all of us except Ultra-Lord screamed with excitement as we saw the brightest little comet with what seemed to have a curved tail..??? …mmm.. what? Last time we checked it had a straight tail… it turned out we spotted the sliver of the moon with a star next to it and had mistaken it for the comet to which Ultra-Lord commented ” What you guys thought that was the comet … I wondered why you all got over excited!?” He had seen the true comet and although it was definitely something to be excited about it was not nearly as bright as the moon! We all then jumped out to join the masses of people standing on cliff’s edge of the mountain overlooking Camps Bay. It was amazing to see such a great turnout and to think that there still are many people in Cape Town who make an effort to view something that only our great and awesome God could have created!

I moved away from our crowd and found a slightly more solitary spot where I could just sit back and gaze at this piece of God’s creation and it made me realize how greatly designed our planet is and how perfect everything is in order for it to exist… okay I am getting all sentimental and soppy I will stop… but yes it was a time where I just admired what we have been given on this earth and how perfectly designed creation is.

Okay now get into your car and take the time to drive to Camps Bay to see this comet before it’s gone (provided you stay in Cape Town that is) Or if you lucky to be in the Southern Hemisphere.

The best time to view the comet in our opinion from Camps Bay side is between 20:45 – 21:15, it got brighter from 21:00. We left at about 21:15 in order to miss the major traffic jams… yes you have to think practically even when there is a comet which you may not ever have the opportunity of seeing again is around… that’s life!

Who knows maybe we will be seeing many more lights in the sky in the very near future…

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Apparently the missing link has be found… again… this time in South Africa (though I think South Africa’s quite a hot spot for missing links). The news article goes a little something like this:

A prehistoric human skull from the Eastern Cape has provided a vital “missing link” in the fossil record which shows that modern people originally came from sub-Saharan Africa and migrated to colonise Europe and Asia around 30 000 to 40 000 years ago.

The 36 000-year-old Hofmeyr skull, named after the Karoo town where it was found, shows that people living in Africa at that time looked the same as people living in Europe then.

This critical piece of evidence, which is published in the journal Science on Friday, corroborates genetic evidence about the African origins of modern humans. It is the first fossil evidence to support the “out of Africa” theory, which holds that all modern humans evolved in Africa and then migrated to Europe and Asia.

Alan Morris of UCT’s department of human biology, was part of an international team, led by Frederick Grine of Stony Brook University in New York, that studied the skull.

“The skull is probably male and is completely modern. If he sat down next to you on the Sea Point bus you would not react, apart from wondering where he came from. He would not look like modern Africans or like modern Europeans, or like modern Khoisan people, but he is definitely a modern human being,” Morris said.

The skull was found decades ago, but was dated only recently. It was found in an erosion gulley in the mid-1950s near Hofmeyr, 70km north-east of Cradock.

Morris, who first saw the skull in the Port Elizabeth Museum in the 1990s, showed it to Grine a couple of years ago. Grine had it dated by a method developed by Richard Bailey of Oxford University.

Grine said in a statement that the field of anthropology was known for its hotly contested debates. One which had raged for years concerned the evolutionary origin of modern people. A number of genetic studies of living people indicated that modern humans had evolved in Africa and moved to Europe and Asia between 65 000 and 25 000 years ago to colonise these continents.

But he said other DNA tests argued against this Africa origin and exodus model.

DNA tests argued against this Africa origin and exodus model

“Instead they suggested that archaic, non-African people, such as the Neanderthals of Europe, made significant contributions to the genomes of modern humans in Europe and Asia. Until now, the lack of fossil evidence from sub-Saharan Africa has meant that two competing genetic models of human evolution could not be tested by palaeontological evidence. The skull from Hofmeyr has changed that,” he said.

Once the skull had been dated in Oxford, it was studied by other members of the team at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. The scientists there had expected the Hofmeyr skull to have close resemblances to the Khoisan, because they are represented in the recent archaeological record in South Africa.

Instead, the Hofmeyr fossil was found to have a very close affinity with the fossil skulls of Europeans of the Upper Palaeolithic, and is quite distinct from Khoisan specimens.

Grine said the evidence from the Hofmeyr skull agreed with the “out of Africa” genetic theory, which predicted that humans similar to those who lived in Europe and Asia around 36 000 years ago, would also be found in sub-Saharan Africa during the same period.

The Hofmeyr skull from the Karoo provides the first fossil evidence to support this prediction.

I tried to scan in the article from the newspaper, but the pages were too big for the scanner so I’ve had to try and patch them together as best as possible, and the quality’s not great, but here they are:

Newspaper article 1

Newspaper article 2

I find it somewhat interesting that they say we wouldn’t have been alarmed to see him sitting next to us on the bus. Surely in 30 thousand years things should have to change a little, and he would be noticeably different? And why wasn’t the skull dated until now? And how do we know the specimen hasn’t been contaminated or tampered with. Considering the world’s been so desperately searching for “the missing link” all this time, surely someone would’ve wanted the fame and come forward sooner? Or was it perhaps dated previously, and it didn’t yield any juicy results so was put back into its box until someone discovered another dating method that would tell them what they wanted to hear. Why do they only use one dating method?

Let’s recap… we’ve got a skull which looks the same as “modern human” skull would, found some 50 years ago, supposedly sticking out of a deep erosion gully, which has been sitting in a museum until the 1990s, and some dating method says that it’s thousands of years old. Just “what if” the guy who found it bent the truth, and instead of “sticking out” it was just lying there? Yeh, nice hard evidence we’ve got going here – let’s see if it would hold up in court, but some how it’s all “science” (say “oooh, aaah” and act amazed).

Caught in a flash flood (second scanned in page), what a co-incidence, my bible mentions a flood a few thousand years back. It “could not be carbon dated” because “carbon had leached out of the bone”… well this is the first I’ve heard of this, and if carbon can “leach out of bones”, couldn’t this affect other bones that have been carbon dated? Can’t anything be carbon dated, I mean technically? It just wont return an answer, or a valid one, if their’s no carbon?

They couldn’t even find the gully where the skull was said to be found, because it had since been eroded so badly, and only one scientist went to see it! As for the dating method, Wikipedia says “Ages can be determined typically from a few hundred years to 100,000 years, and can be reliable when suitable methods are used and proper checks are done” – what do they mean CAN BE reliable? Shouldn’t they ALWAYS be reliable? If you don’t know how old something is, to start with, how do you know when you’ve used the “suitable methods” to calculate it’s age correctly? Why are there “suitable methods”, not THE method? “Crucial to the optical dating method is that there was adequate daylight exposure to the mineral grains before they were buried” – and what if there wasn’t adequate daylight exposure, in this case?

Sounds far more like a theory, than any scientific proof of anything, to me.

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Good day all.

Sorry for the delay in articles, I’ve just been completely swamped with work (which I know is a poor excuse, but an excuse none the less), and once that was all out the way I had to go to hospital for a nasty back op, which turned out to be quite interesting.

You see, I was actually meant to be awake for the whole procedure, in order for me to be able to speak to the doc when ever I felt pain etc. Well that is how it was meant to happen… Instead I passed out before I even entered surgery, woke up half way through the op in an extreme amount of pain, noticed my right leg was going crazy, passed out again and then woke up four hours later with my back feeling as if it had just been hit with a shovel and then had someone come with a jack hammer and finish off whatever the shovel hadn’t gotten hold of yet.

One thing I can say though is that I have awesome friends. All the phone calls and support has helped during this incredibly boring time period which has pushed my levels on insanity way up. I mean if you thought that, that big excuse of a movie Alexander was boring, then try sitting in your bed for 4 days straight, staring at the ceiling… come to think of it, I would probably still choose that, over Alexander.

So now I’m sitting here at home, banished to my bed with nothing to do but read, work and sleep I have absolutely no excuses left to dish out when it comes to explaining the delay in articles, in fact I feel almost forced to write something. What is it you ask? That I will not tell you, but let me just say this.. Get ready to be blown away!

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And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. This is how Genesis 1:3 starts, and what a wonderful statement it is. The account of God creating the world, and how he created it has caused quite a stir among Christian, and non-Christian circles in recent times. It has be causing rifts in church’s as well as doctrine and education faculties and homes. But does it have to be all science and theories? Can’t we just open our eyes and look around? Is it such a great sin to use the brains God has blessed us with?

I believe God created the world in 6 literal days, and as Christians we shouldn’t even begin to play with the notion that it is anything else but that.. Why? Well because the bible clearly states it in the first 7 chapters of Genesis (the bible really isn’t written in some special code that requires some kind of higher grade spirituality to use it.). For those of you trying to claim that God had to use millions of years to create the world are just trying to fit in with “the world” view and science and are too scared to place some faith in God.
Even if we choose not to place faith in God, as Christians we still can’t argue against a six day creation. You see the word for ‘day’ in Hebrew used through out the account of creation is ‘yom’, which clearly means ‘one day’. If we can’t believe the first few chapters of the bible, how are we ever going to be the rest? I’m not going to delve any deeper into this topic, but if you have any questions on it. Just read “Did God really take 6 days”.

So as Christians we should believe the entire bible, since it states in 2 Timothy 3:16 that “All Scripture is God-breathed”, which is basically saying that all scripture is and was inspired by God, and everything in the bible is written the way God wanted it to be. So if God wanted Moses to use the word yom, then I’m sure God did so because it was 6 days, and not 6 millions days. If we choose to believe otherwise, we really have to question our motives and then also question our faith.

You see if we can’t believe something as simple as God creating the universe and everything in it in 6 days, how will we ever be able to truly believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, so that we may be saved, when we repent and believe in Him. Beware those of you who do not accept the bible as it is, or who try to change the meaning of a single word in the bible, because you leave yourself open to just about any kind of heresy, and will start to justify any of your actions, no matter how far from the truth.

The funny thing is, sometimes we don’t even need to have ‘blind faith’. All we need to do is just open our eyes and look… Now you are probably wondering, what am I on about? Well let me just tell you a quick story.. On Saturday (25-11-06) I went for a hike with a couple of friends of mine up Table Mountain (in Cape Town). Well, when I say hike I actually mean “a 5hr grueling torture trek sent from hell”. Be it as it may, through some slave driving and motivation, as well as an icy wind we some how we survived and managed to conquered this large piece of barren rock, more fondly known as Table Mountain.

So, you ask yourself, what does this have to do with creation or the bible? Well that’s simple, you see. Even though all I could do is think about trying to find the escape or pause button, I did actually have some time to just sit and take in the breathless scenery. And WOW, was it a sight to behold. eg..

 

So, as I was sitting and staring at this awesome sight, I came to realize how great and powerful God really is, and how absolutely small and insignificant we really are in this world. To then realize that God created all of this for us,
to enjoy and look after is such an eye opener.

As I sat there looking out across the bay I came to realize how structured and ordered everything is, and how hard it must be for someone to try and claim that all of this is a chanced happening that took millions of years , it is just completely baffling. Anyone who is just willing to open there eyes(or even just take a peak), has an IQ greater than 2 can see that no amount of “evolution” could ever create anything as beautiful as this. Science itself has proven that anything left on it’s on own just falls into the clutches of chaos and degeneration.

God created the universe for us, so say that he created in 6 millions and after a couple of million attempts finally got it just the way he wanted, and then decided to morph us from apes to humans is saying that God is a wasteful, cruel and imperfect God, who even goes against his own words (by contradicting the bible), in other words, calling God a liar.

I just pray that people could just open there eyes and just look around every now and then, pray and read the bible, and then maybe, just maybe come to realize the wonders God has given to us to enjoy while we are on earth.

 

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