What does the Bible say about body piercing and tattoos?

Several texts in the Bible forbid the cutting of or the marking of the human body. You can look up these passages and study them: Leviticus 19:28; Leviticus 21:5; Deuteronomy 14:1.

The pagans who did not believe that God had created them consequently had no respect for the human body. The prophets of Baal speared themselves with lances on Mt. Carmel in order to please their god. The demoniac deliberately gouged and lacerated his flesh with stones. These false religions, conjured up by Satan, wish to dishonor God’s image in man by doing what is foreign to it. And virtually every pagan religion of the world has some form of self-mutilation.

These admonitions apply to tattoos and body piercing, which harm the human body (inducing the immune system to fight what is dangerous, harmful, and unnatural) in a bizarre twist of human pride and adornment.

Therefore, Christians should have an entirely different perspective: “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Corinthians 6:19, 20).

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