MORE TATTOO QUESTIONS!

Q: I've been an ardent reader of your column for many years. Your statement that "the way to show your religion is true is not to yell or scream about it but live it," really resonates with me.

My question is this: While I wholeheartedly agree with your position on tattoos, what about extra pounds on the body? I also think that "defiles" what God owns but is obviously a much more delicate topic to "preach" to my "friends in the pews." -- Shalom from Pastor A., a Methodist minister somewhere in upstate New York, via godsquadquestion@ aol.com

A: Thank you, my brother in faith, for pointing out this very important connection. Once you decide that God owns your body, all sorts of issues come into play. I don't want to put drugs into the body God owns and cause that body to become sick and addicted and perhaps fatally ill.

I don't want to put bad food and too much food into the body God owns. and in that way make my body obese and impair my health and well-being. Obesity is not just a physical problem but it's also a spiritual problem. I've struggled with this issue myself.

Our relationship to food, like our relationship to drugs, is about placing too much reliance on physical comforts and not enough on spiritual comforts. I think the best way to address sins of all kinds, both those we commit and those we observe, is to be kind, encouraging and helpful to all those who, like us, struggle with passions and weakness that are the result of the fact that we're partly divine and partly animals.

Our dual nature is the cause of our sin. Remember also that the struggle against our weakness is itself a healing struggle. Ernest Hemingway put it this way in his novel "A Farewell to Arms": "The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places."

Q: In a recent column, a reader asked you to clarify the law with respect to his desire to get a small tattoo. You advised that wounding yourself is forbidden, that God owns our bodies, and that we therefore ought not to defile what we do not own.

With that in mind, what about circumcision? Think of it this way: We're born with an appendix and with a set of tonsils. Unless some problem flares up, most of us go through life without having our appendix or our tonsils removed. If they are removed, we continue on without any real problems. Yet I've never heard of anyone who's had their appendix or tonsils removed just because they felt like it.

Males are born with a foreskin that's a natural part of the body. Why then has it become a ritual to remove it if there's nothing wrong with it and there are no health issues involved? If there's no reason to remove the foreskin, doing so becomes nothing more than mutilation and is a clear example of defiling our bodies - something you said we ought not to do. Any comments? - W., Allentown, PA, via godsquadquestion@aol.com )

A: The first distinction between a tattoo and circumcision is that a tattoo is explicitly forbidden in the Bible (Lev. 29:35), while circumcision is explicitly commanded (Genesis 17:9-14). However, you're correct that both are acts of cutting. The offense to God and also to the standards of secular morality is when cutting the human body is done with no therapeutic purpose.

Obviously, cutting the skin for a tattoo is not done to heal or help anything except human vanity. Therefore, all the risks associated with tattooing, both physical (infection) and psychological (buyer's regret) are spiritually and morally unjustified.

However, as I said in my first answer regarding tattoos, if you believe that you own your own body, then you're certainly entitled to mark it any way you choose and take any risks with your body that strike your fancy. If, on the other hand, God owns your body, then defacing it for specious reasons is clearly forbidden.

Now, the question becomes, "Despite its ritual obligation for observant Jews, what medical value is produced by circumcision?" The answer is that circumcised men are less likely to contract a variety of diseases because, and only because, they are circumcised.

A long-term study done on baby boys born in VA hospitals revealed that urinary tract infections were lower in circumcised men. Other studies indicate that circumcision offers some protection, though obviously not anything like complete protection, from sexually-transmitted diseases like HIV, HPV and syphilis. For female partners, it provides substantial protection from cervical cancer and chlamydia.

So, although there exists a continuing debate on this topic - and I encourage readers to survey the literature and ask their doctors about their views - it seems clear that the epidemiological evidence supports the view that circumcision should be recommended by health professionals.

The cutting of circumcision involves both fulfillment of the biblical commandment for Jews and a healthful medical procedure for all men. If there were no medical benefits from circumcision, there would, indeed, be a problem with this procedure for all men, and particularly for Jewish men: A biblical commandment would conflict with the command to never endanger life needlessly. Thankfully, this is not the case.

(Send QUESTIONS ONLY to The God Squad, c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or email them to godsquadquestion@aol.com.