A Twisted Crown of Thorns ®

The next time you strut around like a rooster with your tattoos all emblazoned on your heavily biceped arm or six pack torso remember not to annoy the fashion police in Saudi. A BIG no-no is a Jesus tattoo (that is if you even know what he looks like). One  soccer star lived to tell the story….

Saudi Arabia’s religious police have arrested a South American soccer star in a shopping mall in the Saudi capital for failing to cover up his tattoo of Jesus.

Juan Pablo Pino, 24, who plays for the An-Nasr professional team was wearing a sleeveless shirt while walking with his young pregnant wife in a shopping mall in Riyadh, reported Asia News.

“The tattoo on his left shoulder led to the insults of some local Muslims,” reported the Vatican Insider newspaper. “The incident attracted the attention of the so-called ‘police for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice,’ who stopped the couple.”

According to the Qatar newspaper al-Sharq, religious police “put the player and his wife in a car and took them to the police station.”

Soon afterward, police contacted the soccer club and “Pino and his wife were handed over to them.”

In my opinion that tattoo could be an artistic impression of any one. Who told you Jesus has long flowing locks and a iron filings for a pastey beard? We do not know what Jesus looked like. We do not therefore as a matter of fact have a true likeness of His physical appearance. When an artist paints a picture out of his imagination and then says, “this is a picture of Jesus Christ,” he lies.

When we make  such representation we imagine the human nature of Jesus to be separated from His divine nature. He is God and man in one person. We cannot separate the one nature from the other. If you try flaunting such a bearded effigy in Saudi Arabia next summer better have lawyers as good as Juan Pablo Pino’s. Just saying. 🙂