Jesus Tattoos

Walking away from identities that define us is not easy.

I spent Thanksgiving week in Texas, which means more Bible tattoos than I’m used to. I see several of the same tattoos every week in Minnesota. Being that I frequent the same gym at the same time most days, I tend to cross paths with the same guys. There’s a Jimmy Buffet parrot tattoo, a couple military tattoos, and your standard barbed wire wraps around biceps and calves. And, of course, I see a couple cross tattoos as well.

But in at the gym just around the corner from my in-law’s house in a suburb of Dallas, Christian tattoos abound. At least two of the trainers working at this gym, for instance, have Bible verses on their forearms. Actually, one wasn’t a Bible verse, exactly, but a reference. In huge block letters, this guy’s forearm reads, “GALATIANS 2:19.” When I see references like that, I always wonder what the tattooee is thinking. I can imagine three options:

1. Everyone knows this verse and it’s shorter to have the reference on my arm than the actual verse.

2. People will see this tattoo and then google the verse and be immediately blessed upon reading it.

3. People will see this tattoo and then ask me, “What does that verse say?”

Being surrounded by all these Jesus and Bible tattoos got me thinking…

I’m currently at the front-end of a three-year project with Ryan Burge, in which we are running the largest-ever survey of nones in America early next year, followed by two years of study and distribution of the results. (“Nones” are Americans who affiliate with no organized religion — it’s the fastest-growing category on the religious landscape, and comprises over 40 percent of Americans under the age of 40.)

Organized religion is hemorrhaging adherents, one of the most significant demographic shifts in our country right now. And churches are (rightly) worried.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been talking with my youngest son about social psychology, since he recently joined a fraternity as a freshman at college. The psychology behind hazing rituals — both intense (running around campus naked) and mundane (being made to clean a brother’s bathroom) — is the same as military boot camp: when a person is made to participate in unsavory or demeaning behavior in the name of an organization, that person is more likely to be loyal to that organization. It’s a trick our brains play on us, making the determination that the only way to justify undergoing that humiliation on behalf of an organization means that the organization must be worth it! (Because no way you’d go through all that for an org that wasn’t worth it, would you?)

Which got me to wondering: if you get a Christian tattoo, are you more likely to stay Christian?

I presume the answer is yes.

And if my presumption is right, churches should offer free tattoos — the bigger the better! Take communion, then get in line for the tattoo artist.

But seriously, what’s really at work here isn’t very complicated: it’s hard to admit that we’re wrong. And the bigger the mistake, the more difficult to admit. This is why the deconstructive journey that many (former) Christians are on is so traumatizing — the deeper they were in evangelicalism, the harder it is to shed.

For someone who was, say, homeschooled, and attended an unaccredited Christian college, then served as a missionary for a few years, it’s incredibly difficult to leave Christianity behind. Of course, there’s the loss of relationships. But also, the first 20 or 30 years of one’s life was spent sold-out to an idea that no longer holds.

In writing my forthcoming book, I had to come to terms with a related loss of identity. It wasn’t the identity of Christian, which I’d still loosely call myself, but the identity of pastor. Funnily enough, it was writing the marketing copy for the book, in which I finally referred to myself as a “former pastor,” that I admitted it: I’m no longer a pastor, and I won’t be in the future. That aspect of my life, which was so core to my identity, is behind me, it’s no more.

It was two years ago at this time that I gave pastoring one last shot. I thought it was going well. The congregation that hired me must not have, because it came to an unceremonious end after five months. I walked out of that sanctuary, having preached a sermon on the fourth Sunday of Advent, and that was it. I didn’t know it at the time. But I know it now: I won’t be a pastor again.

Or, to state it more existentially: I’m not a pastor.

I’m just glad I didn’t get a pastor tattoo.

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