I raised my coffee cup in the form of a toast. "To Zack, magister.¹ May all your students remember to use verbs in their sentences."

"And lots of exclamation points!" added Julie. They raised their cups and clinked.

"Thanks," answered Zack, "but it's only a part-time temporary position down the road at the community college, just to pay the rent while I'm finishing my doctorate."

Julie was amused. "If it's no big deal, then why are we celebrating?" Deftly snatching the bill from my hand, she said "We're paying for this, Professor. Besides, we haven't had our dessert yet."

"That hardly seems fair," I said.

"Dessert is always fair."

"I mean you should let me pay for it."

"Don't worry. You're going to sing for your supper."

I turned inquisitively to Zack.

"She means we have a question for you, Prof. Sorry."

"All our other friends have put in their two cents," she said, laughing, "and Zack promised that we'd do what you said."

Zack said, "I promised no such thing! I only promised to listen to him."

"Pish," she answered, oversized earrings clinking as she tossed her hair. "A distinction without a difference."

"It is not without a —"

"What is this about?" I asked.

"We have a little disagreement," Zack confessed.

"About tattoos," she added.

"You want to get one, and she disagrees?" Julie was laughing again, so I corrected myself. "I see. She wants to get one, and you disagree."

"Now you've got it," he said.

I looked up to the heavens, the ceiling anyway, and shook my head.

Julie arched her eyebrows in mock disapproval. "What's the matter? Have you got something against girls?"

"No, he just hates being put in this position," said Zack. "Even Jesus hated that. 'Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?'"²

"We're not making him a judge, Zack. We're just asking his opinion."

"But don't you see? For a guy like Professor T, that makes it even worse. 'Who am I to give an opinion?' he asks himself. He knows he's nobody."

"I'm not sure you put that very well," she said thoughtfully.

"May I break in?" I asked.

"You?" she asked in surprise. "OK with me, I guess. What do you think, Zack?"

"Go for it, Prof," he answered.

"You're right that I don't like making extra rules for people," I said. I keep thinking of that line in Luke. 'Woe to you lawyers also! for you load men with burdens hard to bear, and you yourselves do not touch the burdens with one of your fingers.'"³

"But you're not a lawyer," she protested.

"That's not the point. The point is —"

"And you wouldn't be loading anything on us. We're asking you to —"

Zack interrupted her. "That's not the way to get him to do it, Julie. Think of it this way, Prof. We're not asking you to lay down a rule, or judge or divide anything."

"No?"

"Not at all. We're just asking you to discuss the deeper issues."

As she saw what he was up to, her face lit up. "Right. The implications, Prof. And, um, the ramifications. Right, Zack?"

He nodded soberly. "Maybe even the collateral matters, Julie." He paused to deliver the final stroke. "And let's not forget the associated considerations."

"Stop," I groaned. "I'll answer your question."

Julie looked at her husband with glowing admiration. "You're good, Zack."

"It was nothing," he said modestly.

She turned back to me. "I want you to know, Professor Theophilus, that if I can't talk Zack into going along, then I won't get the tattoo. Marriage makes a difference. I'm not just me anymore, just like he's not just him. Maybe it would be different if I had a duty of conscience to get a tattoo. But I don't."

"I'm glad you recognize that."

"I also want you to know," she went on, "that I haven't gone off half-cocked, as I usually do. I've thought carefully, and I've looked into the matter."

"Have you?"

"Yes. In fact I even thought of you. I asked myself, 'How would Theo' — sorry, that's what I call you when I'm talking to myself — 'How would Professor Theophilus advise me'?"

"Uh huh. What was the answer?"

"You would ask, 'Julie, what does the Bible say?'"

Zack broke in. "When she told me that, I protested."

"You didn't think she should read the Bible?"

"Of course I thought she should read the Bible. But Julie reads Holy Scripture like an encyclopedia. Sometimes she reasons as though — well, as though it were a substitute for reasoning. As though the Bible gave an answer to every question. So that if you can't find a verse forbidding, say, tattooing, then tattooing must be all right. I keep telling her —"

Julie wiggled her shoulders in impatience. "We've been through all that. I admit that I used to read the Bible that way, but I don't do that any more."

"You don't? What about the time that —"

"That was two whole years —"

"Children," I interrupted, "don't make me send you home without dessert."

"Don't worry," said Julie, "we're not really mad at each other. We're just fussing. We like to fuss sometimes."

"Sometimes," he said.

"And we do both agree that the Bible is the place to start."

"And so what did you find in the Bible?"

"Predictably," she said, "Zack quoted to me Paul's statement, which I've memorized, by the way, the one where he says, 'Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.'"⁴

"What's so predictable about my quoting his statement?" he asked. "Is there something wrong with it?"

"There's nothing wrong with the statement. And I believe it. What's predictable is that you'd treat it as though it answered the question when it doesn't. Men are so illogical! Professor T, isn't that what you call a non sequitur?"

"Since I fall into the suspect category, you'd better explain."

"That's right, you do, don't you? I was just thinking of how, back in the day, you taught me that a non sequitur is when the conclusion doesn't follow from the premise. Well, the conclusion, about tattooing, doesn't follow from the premise, about the body being a temple, unless tattooing violates the temple, and we can't use that as a premise, because it's the very thing we're trying to find out. For all we know, a Christian tattoo might enhance the temple."

"That's not a non sequitur," said Zack. "It's a begged question."

"This is what happens when educated people marry," I said. "Anyway, you're both right. So what did you do next?"

"Well, Mr. Smarty Professor, I searched both the Old and New Testament for a reference to tattooing. Just in case there was a reference," she said with a significant look in Zack's direction, "not as though it would be automatically OK if there wasn't. But there was."

"I seem to recall that it's somewhere in Leviticus."

"Oh, you know that one? Right. This time I don't remember the words, but I wrote them down. Here they are. 'You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD.'⁵ Well, Zack thought that settled the matter."

"Seems pretty unambiguous to me," he shrugged.

She went on, "But I pointed out something that I'd overlooked, and he had to admit that I had him dead to rights."

"What was that?"

"That rule was part of the Law of Moses," Zack said. "Not everything in the Law of Moses is binding on Christians. Only the moral precepts apply to us, like not murdering, not stealing, and being faithful to your spouse."

"That's right," Julie continued. "In fact, when Zack and I went through that chapter together, we found lots of rules that don't bind Christians. Like not being allowed to harvest your fields right up to the borders, or to eat meat with blood in it, or to wear a garment that mixes linen with wool — I don't know how that applies to this blouse, it's a cotton-rayon mix — or like not being allowed to cut the corners of your beard. Zack, you can't even grow a beard."

Zack pointed to his chin. "What do you call this?"

"Don't be silly. That's not a beard, it's a soul patch. It doesn't have any corners. Anyway, Prof, you see the point. Zack was — what's the expression, Zack?"

"Cherry-picking?"

"That's it, thanks. He'd ignored the rules about fields, meats, garments, and beards, but picked out that one rule about tattoos and treated it as binding for Christians."

"So where does this leave you, magister and magistra?" I asked.

They looked at each other. "We don't know," Julie said. "I'm still for getting a tattoo."

"And I'm still against," Zack said.

"I know!" she exclaimed. "Professor Theophilus, this is where you get to discuss the deeper issues, implications, ramifications and, um, Zack, help me out again."

"I believe you're thinking of the collateral matters and associated considerations," he replied.

"Right?" she asked brightly.

PART TWO: THE DEEPER ISSUES, IMPLICATIONS, RAMIFICATIONS, AND ALL THE REST OF THAT STUFF

* * *

1. "Teacher" (literally, "master").
2. Luke 12:14 (RSV).
3. Luke 11:46 (RSV).
4. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (RSV).
5. Leviticus 11:28 (RSV).