I Recently Heard an Interesting Story

I recently heard an interesting story.

In Soviet times, a factory purchased a machine with numerical program control (CNC). They set it up, started it – it works, everything is good. Management and workers are delighted. After some time, one of seven fans failed. They didn't pay much attention – the equipment doesn't overheat, it can work. If all seven fans had failed at once, they would certainly have sounded the alarm, but, as usually happens, when it's not sudden and not quick, there's less concern about it. Over time, all the fans broke down. One cannot say they didn't notice, but since the equipment still didn't overheat, they decided they could do without them and continue working…

One day the monitor screen went dark, not responding to any commands. They called a specialist; he opened the cabinet, took out a small board, blew on it, flipped it over, blew again, put it back and started the electronics. The amazement of those present knew no bounds: he took it apart, blew on it, here he should say a couple of incantation words and it's pure fairy-tale magic! It turned out to be much simpler. When a critical mass of dust had accumulated, a short circuit occurred, and the monitor went dark. It turned out that the fans were working not for cooling, but for ventilation, so that dust wouldn't settle. Just dust, seemingly such a trifle, but there you have it – the machine broke down!..

Recently I heard about a discussion on tattoos: allowed, not allowed, arguments and counterarguments. This news came from Moscow. Life is teeming in the world's capitals, all innovations come from there, both positive and negative. Progress and regress reached the provinces not very quickly, but now everything spreads at the speed of the internet.

So I think, how much dust has settled on the body of Christendom that it's short-circuited so. Three or four decades ago, such a thing wouldn't have been dreamed of even in a nightmare – that believers, and especially sisters, would cover themselves with various inscriptions and drawings.

Well, never mind, let's not sigh meaningfully about modern youth, but let's look at where the dust came from; it has settled not only on the present generation of Christendom.

A wife, cleaning the apartment, often complains: "Where does all this dust come from, even if you wipe every day!" The husband replies to her: "Well, cosmic dust settles in tons, and dust from earth flies in tons, and besides, we ourselves are created from dust, so we keep on dustifying."

Since the very birth of Christianity, sinful dust has settled on the church – the dust of delusions and false teachings, the dust of sin and immorality, the dust of Diotrephes-ism and apostasy. Therefore, the apostles turned on the fans and blew away all this dust, so that Christianity wouldn't suffer a short circuit and stop working. All the epistles are essentially a reaction to the "dust" that settled in the minds of believers. The apostles, and especially Paul, turned on the powerful fans of the Gospel Word to blow away all heresy, sin and delusion.

But even with a superficial glance at the history of the church, one can see that the "fans" often broke down; at ecumenical councils they tried to repair them, but this didn't always succeed. Later they simply stopped turning them on, pushing God's Word to the back shelf, replacing it with traditions, rituals, and human teachings. So gradually they came to indulgences… When the church approached the critical point of no return, God the Lord raised up reformers with powerful fans, and they carried out a thorough cleaning of God's house, radically removing all human accretions and striving to return to the sources of Christ's teaching.

The followers of the reformers were so convinced that they were on the right path and with correctly formulated doctrine that they weren't very concerned about the dust, which, nevertheless, didn't go anywhere and continued its eternal action – settling on every surface of churches, movements, denominations, and producing various short circuits in the minds of believers. Then new reformers appear, and such a cycle occurs throughout the entire history of the church.

This is an ancient history and one can discuss it without pain, without fearing particularly fierce criticism. But what about our tattoos? The evangelical churches in Russia and later in the Soviet Union were so shaken that worldly dust hardly settled on them. The church, both by its own convictions and because it was separated from the world and the state, and the world in no way allowed it close to itself, barely tolerating its presence. Consequently, worldly values, views, worldly standards of behavior in the church were, to put it mildly, not welcomed.

But times, like a pendulum, invariably change from one direction to another. In the seventies it became easier to profess one's faith than in the thirties. Of course, the freedom of the nineties was still far away, but worldly dust penetrated the church through cracks and poorly closed doors. It was intensely fought against by ministers, preaching about the immutable truths of the Gospel, about chastity, temperance, modesty, about the danger of flirting with the world. However, in the struggle between flesh and spirit, the latter doesn't always win.

As always, everything seemed to begin with the most harmless things. Women began their quiet and, at first, unnoticeable struggle against headscarves. It must be said, they won it. Simultaneously with this, television began its victorious march into every home. An intense discussion began about the possibility of this marvel of technology being present in a Christian's house. At first, the ministers managed to hold the line, but not for long. On television boxes there were inscriptions: "Now the whole world will be in your home." And the world penetrated both the house and the souls. Harmless films and programs became increasingly depraved and immoral, propaganda more aggressive. This dust settled, and they ventilated it less and less often. Although recently, unexpectedly for myself, I heard from the lips of one charismatic pastor that tattoos are forbidden in their church… Such a turn of events…

Each new generation does not stop at what has been achieved. Prohibitions and admonitions seem already in bad taste. Various perversions no longer shock – they've grown accustomed to them, often they spread in the church. The Bible, like a healthy fan, is applied selectively and in awkward cases is bashfully switched off, lest unwanted dust be raised.

Against this background, a tattoo looks almost like child's play – as long as the child amuses itself, as long as it doesn't change its gender. Such are our dusty realities. It seems to me that God will turn on His fan…

I'll end with one argument about tattoos nonetheless. The Bible calls biblical teaching sound, that is, it contains common sense. It happened in human history that human skin was made into drums and other items, decorated in various ways. One could, of course, make a canvas for drawing from human skin, but something tells me that God gave us skin for another purpose, or..?

P.S. I wrote the word "homo sapiens" so as not to repeat "human," and I think "homo sapiens" means "rational man." God grant that this sinful world doesn't switch off our reason, so that we don't mindlessly follow the crowd with a tattoo on our forehead.