During a recent conference, Christian speaker Joyce Meyer made a biblical case for getting tattoos and admitted she has been thinking of getting one herself just to shut the mouths of religious people.
The video clip posted by Joyce Meyer Ministries on March 14 kicks off with Meyer explaining the difference between being holy and religious.
“Holiness is not legalism,” Meyer declared.
She went on to explain that religious people have made a mess of holiness by putting a bunch of rules and regulations on people. She listed drinking, dancing, wearing makeup and more among those rules.
Meyer quoted Isaiah 44:5 in defense of getting permanent markings. The scripture says, “One will say, I am the Lord’s; and another will call himself by the name of Jacob; and another will write [even brand or tattoo] upon his hand, I am the Lord’s, and surname himself by the [honorable] name of Israel.”
She also shared the counterargument often used to discourage believers from getting tattoos found in Leviticus 19:28: “Do not cut your bodies for the dead, and do not mark your skin with tattoos. I am the LORD.”
Televangelist Pat Robertson, among others, has cited Leviticus to argue that getting tattoos is a “heathen practice.”
“You look at the Bible, the people are told not to mark their bodies and cut themselves like the heathen did. Tattooing is a heathen practice, it is not a Christian practice,” Robertson said in 2016.
But Meyer rejected the argument and contended that God also tattooed those He loves to Himself.
“The Bible says in Isaiah 49 that God has a picture of you tattooed on the palm of His hand,” she maintained.I’m right on the verge of going and getting a tattoo,” she added, pointing to her shoulder blade. “I thought I might as well just push all the religious people right off the cliff and just get it over with.”