Max Lucado Stirs Controversey With Tattoo at Age 70
Pastor and bestselling Christian author Max Lucado announced on Good Friday that he has gotten his first tattoo to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of his conversion to Christianity. He chose the Greek word “telestai” in reference to Jesus saying “It is finished” on the cross.
“I’m celebrating the golden anniversary of God’s great grace in my life,” he posted on Instagram. “Fifty years ago this spring, grace found me. My testimony is interwoven with my favorite word in the Bible.”
Lucado reflected on how radically his life changed.
“This was the message that changed my life,” he wrote. “I was a 20-year old scoundrel, a bum, a train off the tracks. My priority was six-packs; not the kind that come from crunches but from Coors. Friends, I was a mess. Not only was I drunk, I was a racist, a misogynist, a brawler and a schemer. Worst of all, I was a hypocrite. I wondered, honestly wondered, could Christ forgive a jerk like me?”
In 1975, he heard a preacher say that grace is greater than sin and chose to follow Christ. He admits that some people question him getting a tattoo at age 70.
“That’s OK,” Lucado wrote “I didn’t do it for people, I did it to say thank you to Jesus, who paid a debt I could not pay. Do you know this grace? I couldn’t care less if this truth is tattooed on your skin, but I care deeply that it be tattooed on your heart. My Good Friday prayer is simple: May Christ grant you what he has given me — grace upon grace.”
He recently told CBN News that the “promise of the return of Christ, in which the world that’s upside down right now will be turned right-side up,” should “give us hope in these days that feel so dark, that feel so desperate. Satan’s greatest lie is that God is against us. That’s hogwash. God is for us, and the first pages of the first book of the Bible reveal God’s intended plan for eternity. And that is we will reign with him in a perfect state, in a perfect paradise, in perfect harmony. And God will have his garden. Just because Adam and Eve fell away, that doesn’t mean God changed his mind.”
The announcement sparked immediate debate within the Christian community. On social media, some expressed strong opposition, with one Facebook commenter warning, “When the antichrist comes and marks everyone with his ‘666 tattoo,’ it won’t be a problem at all to many. It will just be another tattoo.” Others. like Karen Olney Ashton, posted a screenshot of scripture on Lucado’s Facebook page, Leviticus 19:28: “You shall not make cuts in your flesh for a person (who died). You shall not etch a tattoo on yourselves. I am the Lord.”
Others pointed out a historical inaccuracy as Jesus would have spoken Hebrew on the cross, not Greek.
However, many Christian leaders came to Lucado’s defense. One pastor responded on the Christian Post, stating firmly, “I will never cut off anyone from fellowship in Christ because they have a tattoo or one hundred tattoos. I will never cut them off in Christ.” Lucado himself addressed the controversy in a follow-up post, writing, “I couldn’t care less if this truth is tattooed on your skin, but I care deeply that it be tattooed on your heart. May Christ grant you what He has given me – grace upon grace.”
–Alan Goforth
