When the resurrection of our bodies happens, will those with tattoos have tattoos in heaven?

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We don’t know. Jesus’ resurrected body retained His scars.

ETA I often wonder if I will still be a dwarf in my glorified body.
 
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JimR-OCDS said:
A tattoo is the ego expressing itself

The resurrected body will not be a resuscitated body, but a glorified body which is free of ego.

Oh and I have a tattoo. A Bull Dog Wearing a DI Hat with USMC in large letters underneath. Of course the bull dog is hard to distinguish after all these years, but yeah, at 19 years of age, it was my ego which drove me to get a tat
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Possibly it is, possibly it isn’t. People have different intents for different things.

As somebody else said: tattoos have existed on and off in different times in history, including in Christian history.

Also, individuality and the ego will continue to exist in Heaven, but it will be free of the effects of Original Sin and it will be ordered towards God and benevolence and generosity and a healthy love for self that isn’t disordered. The Communion of the Saints isn’t a hivemind. It is community and unity but not excluding of individuality. God made each of us to be irreplaceable.
 
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Ego will cease to exist in heaven, as it’s a human flaw.

Humility will triumph over egoic ideals

Getting a tattoo for one’s own pleasure, may happen, but generally, people don’t get tattoos where they won’t be seen by someone else.

But besides that, at the resurrection, we will not have resuscitated bodies, but glorified bodies as Christ had after the resurrection, whatever that means.

Flesh can’t penetrate through walls, as Jesus did, so our understanding of what a glorified body is, we don’t have.
 
A generic dictionary definition of ego is:

“a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance”.

So no, ego won’t disappear. Humility isn’t a lack of ego. Humility is when the ego is rightly ordered. A total lack of self-esteem is called “pusillanimity” and it is one of the listed vices in Catholic tradition that can lead to despair or moral cowardice.
 
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irenaeuslyons said:
Your body is a temple and you don’t mar the temple.
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Agreed! In my opinion a tattoo is a mutilation of the Holy Ghost’s temple, akin to graffiti at best. I don’t doubt that it’s forgivable (even though the bible inclines against it), but it’s something that one may regret when judgement is at hand. Very doubtful that it would be honored with existence in the next world.
 
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In heaven, a soul doesn’t need a sense of self-esteem or self importance.

Ego is a defense mechanism humans develop to defend their true identity. It puts on a false image for the world to see.

God knows the true person, for it’s whom He had in mind when He created him.

Humility requires detachment from the false self and can only exist in a person who has been transformed into union with God.
 
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I am not familiar with the language you are using to describe Heaven, but I know that people will not lose their sense of self or their individuality.
 
Sense of self or individuality is not what the ego does. The ego works to hide the true self and individuality as a means of projecting a false image of the person.

Exposing the true self requires placing yourself in a state of vulnerability and most people can not handle this. So, they build a false image for the world to see

God however, knows the true self, which is why many people reject God, because to accept Him means to accept the true self and acknowledge the sins within because they know that God knows them. They feel naked and ashamed, so they created a false-self.

To me in heaven means to be without sin and all the consequences sin brings.

That is being true to self and to God who knows us. The ego will no longer exist.
 
That’s the false self

The true self is who God knows, but we fear letting the world see our true self.
 
In the way which you are describing the word ego, it would be a barrier between a person and God that needs to be removed.

However, I haven’t typically seen the word used in the way which you are using it.
 
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There is a lot of talk here about being attached to ourselves. Keep my tatoos, implants, etc. Well, I am thinking that going down this path we could extend our list of wants to include things like your money, favorite jewelry, and hey - what about that truck in my driveway? Surely God will let me take all of this stuff. It is mine, after all.
(Jim - this is not directed at your comment, btw)
 
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Idk, perhaps. I always regarded any sense of self as a separation from all else. When in full union with God, is there any room for separation/individuality? Furthermore, the type of will of true self that you seem to describe, is the will of God. Hence indistinguishable from God, as it is of God. Again, I dont see much room for the self. Diminishing and denying the self would seem to be the goal which would lead to heavenly union.

I certainly do need to seek clarity on the matter, from scripture.
 
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Ego is a barrier between ourselves and God. It’s what builds pride and pride is the opposite of humility which is necessary for living a holy life.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen taught about the ego as it was being called by psychologists of his time.

St John of the Cross called it false appetites and wrote of how the soul must detach from them in order to grow toward union with God. He also wrote that it took the transforming grace from God to rid ourselves from those appetites.
 
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@ontheway1

Earthly material possessions are useless though. A person doesn’t need a truck when they can move their glorified body to any location in space at will.

But we will still have senses. Private revelation has mentioned things such as an enormous variety of colors that cannot be perceived by the human eye; music that is indescribably beautiful; people clothed in robes that are somehow “whiter than the color white”. These are earthly images to describe something that is unimaginable.
 
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But we’ll be detached from having the need to satisfy the senses and being in the presence of God, because He is God, is all that will be important to us. This doesn’t eliminate the beauty of heaven, but the need to put it before union with God.

The first part of the spiritual journey St John of the Cross wrote about is the Dark Night of Sense. This is when we no longer seek things to satisfy the senses, even the spiritual things.

The Spiritual Canticle which St John wrote, speaks of this as the soul can no longer be satisfied with beautiful religious things, wonderful sermons or words said by others about God. Only God Himself is the desire of the soul who is seeking union with God.
 
Yes I’m familiar with St John of the Cross, but what he has written doesn’t seem to include a lose of identity or a melting away of oneself, and that doesn’t match well with what other people have written about Heaven. What you are saying sounds borderline Buddhist to me because it sounds a lot like a description of Nirvana, although I know that is not your intent.

Taking God away is like cutting the vine and expecting the branches to remain unchanged. Without the vine, everything else withers and dies. This is why it is impossible for a person to find any delight in hell because without God everything else is dead. None of the good things that brought some measure of happiness in life can bring happiness anymore.

But, when God is ordered before everything else, everything else becomes beautiful. That is why the saints in Heaven are actively working to do good on Earth as we speak, because their will is aligned with God’s will, but without them ceasing to be the people that they are. Mary & Joseph in Heaven are still Mary & Joseph and they are individual people.
 
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The false self is not the true self, but what the ego created. St John of the Cross wrote about detachment from the appetites which the false-self will defend at the cost of not loving others.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote about the ego, and he was not preaching Buddhism.

Detaching from the ego-driven attachments has been part of spiritual teachings going back to the 4th century desert fathers of the Church, like Abba Isaac and St John Cassian.
 
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