Blessed are the tattooed, apparently.

I saw this over at One Minion’s Opinion and thought I had to share it with my minions. I’ll bet Jim West will find this another example of Total Depravity™.

A Church in Seattle (reported in the Tuscaloosa Times) has gives out tattoos to congregants as part of their services.

The sight of a woman being tattooed live on the altar accompanied by the sound of a buzzing ink gun provided a startling backdrop to Sunday’s evangelical sermon.

Your parents’ church service this was not. In the drive to stay relevant, the Gold Creek Community Church has been hosting a series called ‘Permanent Ink’ that featured Sunday’s live-tattoo finale.

The Mill Creek, Wash., church is not exactly staid — booming 20-minute rock sets launch regular sermons — yet the pastors acknowledge this series was pushing societal norms.

‘We’ve said from the start that we are not advocating tattoos — nor discouraging them,’ said pastor Larry Ehoff.

‘We think of it as amoral. It’s neither immoral nor moral, it’s just the choice of a person.’

Ehoff said the church is telling the same story of Jesus as always, it’s just finding different ways to tell it.

As the story reports, the “most famous symbol” emblazoned on a person  is 666, the mark of the “Beast” (of course, some manuscripts have the number as 616, but that’s a story for a different tattoo parlor).

But there’s also mention in the Bible of markings on Jesus, saying he is the king of kings and lord of lords, [Pastor Dan] Kellogg said.

Another congregant who volunteered, Erica Armendariz, was getting work done on an arm tattoo she calls her ‘faith sleeve.’

Faith sleeve, yeah, ok, whatever. Somehow it just seems to me to be another way some Christians try to build an alternate reality that looks just like the world they are trying to leave but is stamped with all the proper ideological brand. Some people only where one designers underwear, some people get Christian tattoos. Not a lot of difference that I can see.

It’s not that there is anything wrong with Christians getting tattoos.  Of course, Christians are not bound by the Old Testament injunction against getting tattoos. but when it becomes part of the service and others watch it being done as such, one has to wonder how disconnected they really are from the roots of their tradition. What next, tying your shoes for Jesus?

There is even a “Christian Tatoo Association“, and they could probably put you in touch of an “artist” who would give you what you want, tattooly speaking, of course.

Here is the work of one of their members, Religious Tattoos:

Their caption on this image reads: ” The writing is Hebrew and is Song of Songs 2:16.”  It is a good thing they have a disclaimer that reads “Religious Tattoos makes no guarantees concerning translations in tattoo pictures. The onus to verify a translation rests with the person who wishes to get a tattoo.” The Hebrew writing is, well, lets just say “directionally challenged.”