So when you see any practice that involves the shedding of blood, you are looking at covenant formation. Anything that deliberately involves the shedding of blood, involves the forming of a covenant. A covenant is a binding agreement between two people, which gives legal rights and entitlements.
Now let me give you one other example, that's an interesting one, found in the area of marriage. Now the first time when a couple come together, and they make a marriage covenant - they come up the aisle.
It's not something that people thought up - wedding is a covenantal commitment to one another. It's not just living together. It's a covenantal commitment; so when two people become married, what they do is they meet together, and they make covenant with one another.
They speak to one another declaring their relationship, declaring their commitment. They do it publicly, so people hear it, and see it, and then you sign the book. They sign the register, and they are married - except for one thing: if they do not have sexual intercourse, it's considered legally that they're not married - and the marriage can be annulled immediately.
The first time that a woman has sexual intercourse with a man, God has designed the woman, and created a woman, so that in the first act of intercourse, there is the breaking of the hymen, and the shedding of blood - shedding of blood. Shedding of blood in the first act of intercourse is evidence that covenant has been formed.
So every time in the Bible that you see references to the shedding of blood, it is about covenant - two people being bonded together. In fact it was so important in the Bible, in Deuteronomy 22:15, that if there was ever doubt that a woman had been a virgin before she was married, if a husband became cranky and got complaining about his wife, and said she wasn't a virgin - that she'd had other men - the parents would bring the bedclothes, from the first night they had sexual intercourse, with the blood marks on them, and they would call them the ‘Tokens of Virginity’. They would present this as proof that she was a virgin on the night she was married.
So consistently through the Bible, the shedding of blood is connected to covenant formation; and a tattoo - so what happens in a tattoo? On a tattoo, you use a needle or some kind of cutting instrument. It can be a chisel, or it can be a needle that's moving very, very fast, and what it does is - it penetrates the flesh, blood is shed.
You'll see when a tattoo's being done; they're continually wiping away the blood that comes. The skin is being pierced. What is happening is now there is pain, there's sacrifice, and there is bloodshed. You can't escape it - that when blood is shed, there is some kind of covenant form.
Among the North American Indians, if you wanted to enter into covenant with a person, you cut the hand, and you touch the blood, one against another, and you became blood brothers. Now this is a worldwide phenomenon. This is not just something that's really cool, and 'in' to do. This whole issue of tattoos goes back to as far as they can find data and information; and so I did a little bit of research on it, to find out some information about it. So if you want to find out the root of something, go and have a look at where it came from, and what it's been used like, and follow and track it's record.
The issue is not whether it's right or wrong. That's eating from the wrong tree: tree of life, and knowledge of good and evil. We're called to eat of the tree of life. We're called to live a life that brings honour and glory to God.