In the history of the world and then the more specific history of the United States, new beliefs and practice begin that differ from what was previously believed and practiced.  Those beliefs and practices are either corrections or improvements to what was previously occurring or they are perversions, corruptions, or deterioration to or from what was previously occurring.  What is unique to United States history more than most cultures in the history of the world is that the United States culture has been shaped by the Bible.  If they are corrections or improvements, someone should go to the Bible for the defense or change.  The present belief and practice is bad and needs to be changed and this is why.

When I say, “piercing,” it’s this:

a form of body modification . . . the practice of puncturing or cutting a part of the human body, creating an opening in which jewelry may be worn, or where an implant could be inserted.

Piercing in the United States is a change of belief and practice.  You have not seen piercing in almost the entire history of the United States.  It’s not that piercing never existed.  It wasn’t accepted in the colonial America and the United States.  So, is it a correction or improvement, or is it a perversion, corruption, or deterioration?  When people began piercing themselves, did they go to the Bible to find this new belief and practice, or was it a movement of rebellion or paganism?

Someone might observe that changes occur all the time in a culture, for instance, something like handwriting, to typewriter, and now to computer.  It’s a silly argument, but I’m going to deal with it, because it is the normal kind of argument piercers might use.  Using a computer for word processing is an improvement to handwriting.  It is faster and neater.  However, that isn’t a cultural change that one can deem is right or wrong.  It’s not wrong to handwrite or type or word process.  It is a better or easier way of doing things.  It has no inherent meaning if what you are reading is in handwriting or through word processing, any more than reading something on a tablet or on paper.

Piercing isn’t an improvement on the human condition like the polio vaccine.  It isn’t a better, more secure window. that keeps out the rain and the cold.  Piercing expresses something, means something, that is a departure or deviation.  We know from scripture that these types of practices arise from belief.  They are filled with meaning.  God warns about such practices.  They aren’t neutral.  They reflect on a worldview.  In Leviticus 19:28, God warns:

Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I [am] the LORD.

This could apply directly to piercing, and is surely the reason American culture had an aversion to piercings.

If I see someone with piercings, I don’t think that pulling the implement out will bring a right relationship with God.  Not piercing doesn’t get someone to heaven.  Obviously, the heart yields this behavior.  The piercing manifests on the outside something on the inside.  I’m more concerned with the inside, but that doesn’t mean ignoring the outside.  If a person has it right on the inside, you’ll know it by the outside.  The former precedes the latter.  The latter, however, will necessarily follow though.

The new covenant is a corollary to the old.  God still wants obedience.  It’s enabled by a new heart.  Piercing is a manifestation of the old heart.  This is a person who says he has faith, but piercing is not showing that faith by his works.  It matters.  It isn’t turning from idols to serve the living and true God.  You can’t serve both God and mammon.  Piercing is mammon.

I see professing Christians, who call themselves Jesus followers, propagating their piercing more than they do Jesus, if they do Him at all.  They are ashamed of Jesus Christ, but proud of their piercing and other forms of worldly expressions.

God created male and female.  He created them obviously different.  He did a good job by His own perfect assessment in Genesis 1.  He expects male and female both to wear things, even as God Himself made garments for Adam and Eve to put on for the sake of modesty.  God doesn’t tell either male or female to pierce.  That didn’t start with God.  Mankind started piercing itself on its own.  Is it right for people to pierce themselves for whatever purpose they have for doing so?

Piercing is more than a form of jewelry, but it is a form of jewelry.  God doesn’t promote jewelry, but it is regulated in scripture.  Not all of it is right.  1 Timothy 2:9 instructs:

In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array.

Here Paul says, not, “not with . . . gold, or pearls.”  When the Bible says something about it, it says, not.  This is not that women can’t wear jewelry, but the problem is with wearing, not with not wearing.  The same is seen in 1 Peter 3:3:

Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold.

These texts never even regulate men, because men are assumed not to be wearing these decorations.  Why are men wanting to decorate themselves like women with jewelry?  Think about it.  Women wear these things, not men.  That is in scripture.  That’s why in the United States, men would never consider wearing an earring.  This didn’t originate with godly men.

Piercing is new in the history of the United States.  Even as recent as when I grew up, it was controversial for a woman to be pierced and no men were pierced.  I remember men being pierced for the first time when I was a teenager in the 1970s.  Girls were never pierced.  They would only be pierced as a kind of point of reaching womanhood and then only once in each earlobe, and even then it was disputable among Christians.

Jewelry itself is not prohibited.  It is regulated.  It is an adornment, an accessory, like a decoration.  The goal is to allow the beauty of God to shine through.  This is where the simple single earring in the lobe of each ear has become acceptable in a mere supplementary way.  This is not to make a statement or express a philosophy.  It is for a woman and pertains to beauty within the nature of a woman:  feminine, dainty, delicate, splendid, and ladylike.

Multiple piercing and piercing all over various body parts is new in the United States and it corresponds to an ungodly trajectory in the culture.  It wasn’t spawned by a growth in godliness.  Even for women, piercing only once in each earlobe even was frowned upon until the 1960s.  Men being pierced associated itself with the unisex movement.  It was entirely rejected by churches.

When I see a man with piercings, I still reject it as both unisex and pagan.  Personally it makes me sick.  I abhor it, when I see it.  Multiple piercings are significant of reprobate culture and depravity.  Amanda Porterfield in an entry within Religion and American Cultures: an Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity, and Popular Expressions reports that after World War 2, piercing began increasing in popularity among the gay male subculture.  That’s where piercing of men started in the United States.

Piercings obviously mean something.  People want them.  They get them.  When they do, they’re sending a message.  Even the world says that the piercings mean rebellion.  If you google the two words, piercing and rebellion, you’ll get almost three million results, and dozens of articles.  It’s a self-attesting truth.  A male piercing and all multiple piercing is a kind of rebellion, even according to the world.  Is this what should characterize a Christian?  Is it sacred?  Does it distinguish someone as profane and worldly, characteristics to be avoided for a true believer in God?  Does it matter if a Christian is worldly and presents himself in a profane way?  Of course it matters.  It dishonors God.

Many times children growing up in a Christian home start piercing in contradiction and in rebellion against their parents.  Apparently, they are showing their liberty or authority.  They don’t have to do what they’re told.  They want to embarrass or shame their parents with their appearance.  That’s a big reason they’re doing it.  They might still say they’re Christian, especially with the state of evangelicalism today.  They have left the belief and practice of their parents.  They should consider what God told Moses in Leviticus 19:1-3:

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2 Speak unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say unto them, Ye shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy. 3 Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, and keep my sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.