In my last post, I wrote an open letter to Lori Alexander regarding the backlash she received due to her article “Men Prefer Debt-Free Virgins Without Tattoos”. I touched on a few general points about the message of her article, but I didn’t touch on the three specific topics in the title: debt, virginity, and tattoos. This is less of an open letter and more of an opinion/exegetical piece, but I wanted to offer my thoughts to bring my response to Lori to a close. If you haven’t already, you can read part one here.
The Church has a lot of buzzwords these days.
There’s just… always a lot of hot topics in the news. Homosexuality. Abortion. Assisted suicide, immigration, capital punishment–we all could go on.
The Church talks about all of these–and then there’s subsets specific to us! We’ve got purity culture (with subcategories of modesty and courting!) We’ve got Calvinism versus Armenianism; we’ve got New Earth and Old Earth; heck, we’ve got people yelling about whether “Reckless Love” is theologically sound and if it’s wrong to sing it in worship. (I won’t go into that one… in this post.)
Recently, blogger Lori Alexander from The Transformed Wife stirred up another heated discussion surrounding a number of different topics; and while one of them, virginity, is practically everywhere, the other two–debt and tattoos–are talked about much less from what I’ve witnessed.
Lori has taken a stand for virginity, for being debt-free, and for being tattoo-less; and since I’m still a debate team member at heart, I wanted to take a look at each of these and flex my exegetical muscles. Let’s dive in!
Debt
Debt? It’s not great. I would love to pay off my student loans soon, and especially before I get married, because it’s not a fun burden to bear. Lori is also not a fan, and she’s stated that “[Jesus] calls debt a burden”–but actually… I can’t find that specific take anywhere in the Bible. In fact, Jesus says in Matthew 5:42
Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
I would agree that yes, debt is a burden, and as such it would be great to not have to bring that into a marriage; but I would not agree that Jesus has said anything to convince us that we must avoid it at all costs no matter what (sorry, Dave Ramsey!) It looks like he’s actually encouraging believers to let others borrow from them. Let’s take a quick path through some logic gates: if letting others borrow from you is recommended by God, it must at least sometimes be beneficial for either you or the borrower–and therefore, debt must sometimes lead to benefit.
Therefore, we can’t teach that debt is 100% wrong or bad at all times; personally, I’d say that, as long as it’s not crippling you or keeping you from following God’s calling on your life, it’s just an inconvenience that would be lovely to be rid of–but having some shouldn’t prevent you from marrying, from pursuing God, or from serving others.
Virginity
Everyone’s favorite topic in the Church, right…?
I’m tired of long, drawn-out discussions, and so are you, I’d reckon, so I’ll keep this short: virginity does not equate to purity, and God only cares about one of those things.
Sisters and brothers, God does not care about your virginity. He cares about the purity of your heart. If God cared about the history of your sex life, even just a little, the implications that has for survivors of sexual assault are horrific. One of my very favorite early Church fathers, St. Augustine of Hippo, has this to say in the very first book in his work The City of God:
…the virtue which makes the life good has its throne in the soul, and thence rules the members of the body, which becomes holy in virtue of the holiness of the will; and that while the will remains firm and unshaken, nothing that another person does with the body, or upon the body, is any fault of the person who suffers it, so long as he cannot escape it without sin. [emphasis added]
What is done to you has no bearing on the condition of your soul. No bearing whatsoever. It hurts to think anyone would suspect God of feeling any differently.
Similarly, God is a God of forgiveness. To believe that possessing physical virginity has any merit beyond that of possessing spiritual purity is to say God’s forgiveness isn’t enough to cover past sins. If sin has been committed in the past, that is where it remains. That is the end of the discussion as I see it–if God no longer considers someone’s past sins, neither can we. If someone is now walking with the Lord, their old self has been put off, and any consideration of their past sin beyond helping them avoid sin in the future or benefiting from their testimony is not acceptable in God’s eyes.
Tattoos
While I don’t remember my parents explicitly talking to me about tattoos or their morality, I do distinctly remember being very anxious as a child when I would see someone with a tattoo. I’m pretty sure I was told by my parents, “We don’t think people should get tattoos, but they aren’t terrible”, but my 5-year-old I-must-agree-with-every-opinion-my-parents-have mindset decided it didn’t like them and that was final. I wasn’t ever told that anyone with a tattoo was evil or not following God–but I remember having the impression that 1) tattoos weren’t good and 2) they made me feel really uncomfortable.
My own thoughts and feelings have since changed entirely; but that being said, I understand why people are still against them today. When you’re raised in a more conservative culture where not many people have tattoos, it’s easy to see someone’s skin marked up with something foreign and feel uncomfortable. I’d say it’s almost comparable to the Uncanny Valley effect; if it doesn’t quite line up with what you picture as human, it seems unnatural or not quite right. Like younger me, others might have been raised in such a way that their natural reaction to a tattoo is, “That’s not right–that makes me feel a little uneasy.”
This kind of implicit bias reminds me of a famous Harvard study on implicit racism; and the discovery described in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink on how that bias can be reversed. As told by Gladwell, a man discovered that when he took the Harvard-designed test every day, he consistently had a slight positive bias towards Caucasian people–until one day, he tested for a slight positive bias towards African-Americans. The difference? That morning he had watched the Olympics, a place where people of all different races display their skills in an incredibly positive light!
Seeing something you are biased against in another context of something positive can reverse even the most deeply-ingrained prejudices. Now, that can be something negative; for instance, we’re so used to seeing the media hype up partying and alcohol that often we’re pre-programmed to see alcoholic-level behavior (like drinking to the point of memory loss) as something normal or fun. However, it can also be positive like the racial example above. Why is this relevant to tattoos? Because I want to clarify something:
Just because you have a bad or uncomfortable feeling about a behavior doesn’t necessarily make it wrong.
If we can look at the exegetical arguments surrounding tattoos in this way, we’re peeling back the layers of bias and personal feelings to look at what the Bible really says. And what we find is this:
You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves: I am the LORD.
Leviticus 19:28
That’s it.
That’s all we get about tattoos. This article does a nice job of analyzing the language used in the passage if you’d like deeper analysis. My own exegesis of this verse is based on the context with which it was written: I believe God has commanded us not to practice anything remotely related to witchcraft, necromancy, ancestor worship, etc., and in the time of the Israelites, that’s what tattoos were associated with.
God does not want his people dabbling in things that are contrary to his nature; it’s why Christ followers don’t generally wear things like pentagram jewelry or anything we see as related to witchcraft or paganism today. This verse is cautioning against that very thing–and since tattoos are becoming increasingly popular and no longer reflect pagan ideas or practices (we don’t see tattoos as spiritually powerful or ritualistic anymore!) I don’t believe this verse is commanding against the practice we have today of simply decorating our bodies with ink.
The Bottom Line
Do tattoos still make people uncomfortable? Absolutely.
Can debt be a deal-breaker in a relationship? For sure.
And is virginity something to be valued? Well, no–but purity of heart certainly is.
But, thankfully, God doesn’t care about those things. What he cares about is your heart–and Lori, as far as I can tell your heart is seeking to follow God! It just seems like you’ve gotten so caught up in your own passions and callings that you’re mistaking them to be the calling of everyone else.
Romans 14 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible when it comes to settling matters of what is “correct” and what isn’t for individuals. Verse 23 reads
But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
This is in the context of Paul believing that sacrificial meats aren’t unclean but knowing that others (mostly former Jews) feel convicted and still don’t eat them–or, more likely, they’re just grossed out by the thought of eating something they’ve always associated with being unclean!* He’s saying that different people have different convictions and comfort levels, so if something troubles your conscience, don’t do it. It’s always, always better to abstain if you’re not sure than to go for it and have to repent later.
I don’t see the Bible proclaiming debt, the loss of virginity, or tattoos as being sins–but I do see importance placed on a person’s heart condition within all of these things. If you still find these things uncomfortable to consider in a future partner, that doesn’t make you judgmental or un-loving; but I would encourage you to think about why they make you uncomfortable and whether or not God agrees with that reasoning.
It’s alright if your image of an “ideal partner” doesn’t have tattoos, debt, or a sexual past; one of those is a physical preference, one is a desire for financial success, and one is hope for a pure heart. What’s not alright is making assumptions about a person’s heart based on these attributes; and I’m afraid that all the heavy-handed teaching against these things is only teaching the church to judge people for factors that have no impact on someone’s salvation.
The bottom line: godly men want women who love God. Godly women want men who love God. And all other physical attributes or worldly traits should fall by the wayside when we find someone else who wants to follow Christ with everything they have and inspire us to do the same, tattoos or otherwise. <3
Thank you so much for reading! If you have any feedback or critiques, I am always happy to discuss. My own exegetical process is always growing, and if you think I missed something (or just want to add your own thoughts!) my email and comments section are always open!
* See Misreading Scripture Through Western Eyes for more on this!
