Suspension and ritual cutting

Dear saints, this is a grievous issue.

And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.

In the past few months I have been introduced to a sub-culture in my little home town I was quite ignorant of previously. My astonishment as to the extent of openly manifest demonic power over main street America has been a wake up call to me. I am ashamed of my naivete, tearfully brokenhearted for the people I've met in this subculture, and yet outraged at their bondage to this insanity.

Does anyone here have any direct experience with suspension, and ritual cutting? Any testimonies of deliverance from this "community"? (sic) I will understand if this is inappropriate for the forum and am quite wiling to listen and learn in PM's or offline.

With sadness,

MC

New to me. An escalation of what is behind the cutting often seen in anorexics and other "major mental illness"?

I'm afraid I must defend suspension here despite the fact that I know I will surely be shunned for doing so.
I personally would not be here if it were not for my involvement in the piercing and eventually suspension community. Mind you cutting and other forms of self harm are not part of what these people are about.

See during my first suspension for a moment I felt like i touched something or something touched me, it was a moment of perfection of a presence a Love most never get to experience.
My 2nd suspension was done solely for the purpose of seeking that out and for an hour and a half I sat in the palm of Gods hand. Blessed be all paths that lead to God, right?

Furthermore I don't think people need deliverance from body modification either I mean body modification shows up talked about positively in the bible.
In Genesis 24, we read the story of Abraham’s servant seeking a bride for Isaac. When he tells Rebecca’s father about how he met the young woman, he says, that the Lord brought them together. “So I put the ring on her nose, and the bracelets on her arms. Then I bowed my head and worshiped the LORD (Verses 47-48).” A ring in the nose! Now that’s different than the American norm! In Ezekiel 16, God speaks to Israel as if the country were his bride. He says, “I adorned you with ornaments: I put bracelets on your arms, a chain on your neck, a ring on your nose, earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown upon your head (Verses 11-12).” Yes, this is very different than what Americans are used to. But if God uses such language, how can we condemn it?

For me suspension and my modifications (how I decorate my "temple" "my body is my temple") is a big part of how I worship and seek personal closeness with the great creator, and I know a lot of people who feel the same way.

Love and Peace; -- Joe

Oh I almost forgot the folks over at TWLOHA (to write love on her arms) do a lot of great work to help people who self destructively cut, self harm, and mutilate.
I have been involved with those wonderful people for a long time now too, have run a fund raiser for them in my state twice and have 2 TWLOHA "LOVE" tattoos on my forearms to show support. Look them up.

Brother Joe,

The scriptures you have quoted were about nose piercing, that in my opinion is far from cutting yourself and suspending yourself, or motifying the body.

Every biblical account of body motification that I have read in the bible and history in general has been to the negative. The pagans would often cut themselves to conjure up their false gods Baal being a popular check out:

1 Kings 18:25-28 "25 Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but do not light the fire.” 26 So they took the bull given them and prepared it. Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. “O Baal, answer us!” they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made. 27 At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” 28 So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed."

It was their spiritual act to their god, the God of the bible doesn't call for any such mortification and infact one could view it as a defiling of the Image of God since we are all made in His Image to distort that image with mortify acts seems polar opposite. But dear brother to each his owe, I use to work with youth that would cut on a regular basis and do it because they wanted to feel the pain of it, many of these students were suicidal. Cutting and acting self destructively is not supported by the Word of God, and I very much appreciate TWLOHA, it aided in delivering many of the students I worked with from cutting.

In the years following my original post below, I've been fortunate to find friendship with the owner of a tattoo and piercing business in my hometown. While I don't have any tattoos myself, nor intend to, my friend and i find enough common ground in our creative personalities, business ownership, and Christian faith to share and learn from one another.

I still am sorely dismayed and saddened at the extreme cutting and suspension rituals associated with the piercing culture. However, not everyone who is involved in tattoos or piercing, practices or even approves of cutting and suspension. This is important to recognize in my opinion.

Now some point out that the ancients used to cut themselves as a kind of contractual bonding between parties. However, such an enlightened perspective conveniently ignores the emotional pain that modern cutting is hiding. Cutting is a strange and dark riddle in the mind of a teenager. It is a symptom of something missing or hurting that perhaps only the Lord can understand fully. Surely it must be as pagan a pratice in the suburban basement rec room of an evangelical family, as it was in the ancient pagan cultures of the past.

While earlier I viewed it as a sub-culture, I now believe that the word "sub-culture" implies a separate world from my own. In fact it is not a separate world at all from my own. We all are familiar with the pain of being devalued to such a meaningless loathsome level by the present Antichrist consumer culture we live in. And cutting is only one form of endorphanized escape people can numb their existence with.

My point is that I may be genuinely dismayed, even piteously, towards those who practice cutting and suspension yet still contribute to it's cause. Until I unlearn the mind of this world, which counts people as cheap commodities, and learn the mind of Christ which sees individuals as uniquely bearing some image of our heavenly Father, I am still part of the underlying cause for these escapist rituals.

Too be honest, I'm pretty far from being able to do that.

Thanks,

Mike