Until next time, Ciao!
Erased
Father Greg Boyle is in the business of erasing the past. A Jesuit priest who is
the founder and director of "Homeboy Industries" in East Los Angeles, Father
Boyle has put together a team of physicians trained in the laser technology of
tattoo removal. The team is part of a program that takes the tattoos of ex-gang
members and wipes the slate clean. For many, it is as crucial a service as it is
merciful.
Gang-related tattoos prevent many former gang members from getting jobs or
advancing in work. For others, the markings critically impinge on mental health
or put them in serious danger on the streets. There is no fee or community
service required to receive the tattoo removal offered by Homeboy Industries. It
is strictly a gift—a gift that is perhaps a modern look at Christ washing the
feet of his friends. Currently, there is a waiting list of over a thousand
names.
For those involved, the spiritual imagery is often compelling. The seeming
permanence of a gang tattoo fosters the attitude that the gang's claim is also
permanent. It is a mark of ownership as much as identity. The emotional
consequence is that it seems a part of you that can never be shaken. I suspect
some of us have felt like this with past mistakes, actions whose mark we cannot
shake off, decisions embedded into our existence like permanent tattoos on
bodies longing to forget.
It's not hard to see how profound the erasing of such marks could be in the life
of a former gang member. The life marked by Christ is similarly altered. Like
former gang members who have had the marks of a former life removed, so our sins
are blotted out by Christ. They are remembered no longer.
To those holding on to the scarred markings of former sin God would say: "I,
even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers
your sins no more" (Isaiah 43:25). Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall
be white as snow. Like the unmarked
ex-gang members among us, we are made into something new.
One of the curious things about the growing list of people interested in laser
tattoo removal is that Father Boyle is straightforward about the procedure. The
process of tattoo removal is extremely painful. Patients describe the laser
procedure as feeling like hot grease on their skin. And yet the list grows, each
name representing a life that longs to be free and is willing to endure the pain
to seize it.
Followers of the Christian faith have described God's work in our lives as the
"refiner's fire." Removing the impurities we have embedded into our lives is at
times quite uncomfortable. But like a child that trusts her mother enough to
endure the pain of having a splinter removed or the young man who undergoes the
burning process of removing a gang tattoo, we are freed by skillful hands. The
Great Physician is sometimes a surgeon. But when we look at God through the
refining fires of God's presence, we know that it was well worth putting our
name on the list (whether it was our doing or God's in the first place). "For as high
as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from
us." At his table, we are made new.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity with Ravi Zacharias
International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
