Is Cremation Permissible for Christians?

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01:27

Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

01:33

We're your hosts, Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll seek to answer the age -old question, is cremation permissible for Christians?

01:42

Now, before we get into this episode, I've just got to say, we took a little break for Christmas there,

01:47

Tim, but it feels pretty good to finally be back recording episodes again.

01:52

We kind of got ahead of schedule before Christmas so that we could take off for the holidays and do all of our traveling and gift -giving.

02:02

We didn't close down our church, so we met with our church family and worshipped

02:07

God on the day that Christ was born. So that was nice, being away from everything, but I think there's something that feels good about just being able to get back into the regular groove and make new episodes.

02:25

Yeah, the podcast grind, man. So it was a fun break, but we're back at it.

02:30

We're back in the saddle. We're going to have to get out the oil. Yeah, dust off all the cobwebs.

02:39

That's right, yeah. But today we're here. We're talking about cremation versus a normal, probably what we would consider a more traditional burial method and putting someone in a box and then putting them in the ground, six feet deep.

03:00

I think, I guess, do you want to start with just, we did a Twitter poll on this, and we got a pretty good response out of it.

03:07

So do you want to start just explaining what some of the answers to the question were for people and then what the results were?

03:15

Yeah, well, about two -thirds of people say that cremation is permissible, and give or take about a third said that it wasn't permissible.

03:26

And this, I mean, historically speaking, this is exactly the opposite of what you would expect. Yeah, I was a little surprised when you told me that.

03:34

I was expecting it to be most people saying, no, it is not permissible.

03:40

There used to be this idea of a Christian burial. So burial is a very Christian idea. And the reason why burial is a very

03:47

Christian idea is because as you read through the Bible, I mean, there's 114 verses that use the different conjugations of the form burial.

03:57

So you have 114 verses that talk about this. This is the idea that goes all throughout the Bible. Burial, burial, burial, burial.

04:04

Everyone was buried, except for the bad guys, right? Except for the bad guys, all the good guys were buried.

04:10

You have a few examples of cremation in the Bible, like Nadab and Abihu offering strange fire before the

04:16

Lord. You have some of the Israelites grumbling and God consuming them in the outer parts of the camp with fire.

04:26

You have Elijah calling down fire from heaven on the prophets of Baal. So you have cremation there too.

04:32

And then hell ultimately is an example of cremation. Just as a side note, isn't it so strange that that's like in every instance where fire is raining down,

04:45

I guess outside of Pentecost, it's viewed as a bad thing, right?

04:52

But then you have all these worship songs that are rain your fire down on us. It's like, ooh,

04:59

I don't know if I want to sing that line or not. Yeah, they don't know who they are on the story at that point.

05:06

But yeah, definitely. But there used to be this idea of a Christian burial essentially, and you can look this up on Wikipedia or whatever.

05:13

I know that's not an academic source, but you can look up the idea of a Christian burial. And this was basically just the common belief of Christians throughout the entirety of the church age was that the standard impulse was to bury your dead.

05:29

And there's reasons why they would do that, other than just following the biblical practice at that point.

05:35

But then that was just kind of the standard state of affairs. And I think recently, but basically what's happened is that burial has gotten so expensive and cremation is cheap.

05:43

And so someone on Twitter I think basically said that if cremation costs 25K and burial only costs 1 ,000, then everyone would realize how dumb the arguments for cremation actually are at that point.

06:01

So they're not actually good arguments. Really what this is about, it's mostly about a financial, like how much it costs at this point.

06:09

And so what's changed is just burial has become so expensive that then people are kind of coming up with some sort of case to be made for cremation, which is basically an unknown practice throughout church history at that point, just burning.

06:25

The only examples of this happening were Romans burning Christians as Roman candles. And Christians were burned by means of persecution.

06:37

And even the Jews at that point, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego being thrown in a fiery furnace.

06:43

The examples in the Bible are all pagan. And throughout church history, they're all pagans basically trying to destroy

06:51

Christians and deprive them of a Christian burial and humiliate them in that way.

06:57

And so this is just not coming from the Bible. It's more just coming from the pocketbook. So with the examples you're giving, basically what you're saying is all of the positive representations, or at least the majority of the positive, well, it sounds like you're saying all of the positive instances of people being buried throughout the

07:26

Bible, the positive ones are they're actually being buried, right? Yes, and not only is it the case that all the patriarchs are buried.

07:36

So over and over again, you're going to see they were buried with their fathers and buried as throwaway statements.

07:43

But then there's some major stories in the Bible that center around burial. So just think about Abraham purchasing the field for Sarah in the

07:54

Promised Land. That's a burial story, right? Joseph, not wanting his bones to remain in Egypt, but to be brought in the

08:01

Promised Land. There's another story that's centered around what happens to their body after death, right?

08:09

He wants his remains to be brought into the Promised Land, not to stay in Egypt.

08:15

So you have a lot of stories like that. I mean, Jesus being buried, but there's just burial stories that are taking some very prominent positions in the narratives too.

08:28

So it's kind of like the natural expectation, but then there's also some very prominent stories that center around what we're talking about too.

08:39

So all of the representations of burial as the positive, right?

08:48

But then as you mentioned, the negatives are getting fire rained down on you from heaven, right?

08:57

So is that enough in your mind to say that burial is the obvious right answer, but at least the safer answer in all of this?

09:18

Yeah, so if you're trying to answer this question, is cremation permissible for the Christian, I would want to say no.

09:23

My answer is no. I think looking at the biblical evidence at this point, the

09:33

Bible says whatever is written for former times was written for our instruction. The man of God may be equipped for every good work.

09:40

And so I think you have all these examples that are given that are in some sense meaningful. So I would want to say no,

09:48

I don't think it's permissible. It just doesn't seem to follow the pattern that we see.

09:55

But then at the very least, in a bare minimum, I would want to say it should be viewed in a dubious sense.

10:04

Modestly, I would say it's morally dubious, meaning Christians should be skeptical of this and should be repelled by this.

10:12

But then I think we probably should lean more towards this being unthinkable, not it being normal.

10:18

Does that make sense? Yeah. But you have to kind of make sense of why that is the case.

10:25

So it's not just like you can say, hey, there's a practice and a pattern in a lot of burial stores, Bible over and over.

10:30

Like all the good guys get buried, right? Sure, yeah. All the bad guys get burnt up.

10:36

That hell is burned up. Look, what would Jesus do? Well, he got buried. But then even our salvation is picturing we're buried with him in baptism and raised to walk with him in the newness of life.

10:50

And so I think there's a lot of symbolism there. And so I think there's questions that undergird this discussion that go beyond the example.

11:04

Does that make sense? Mm -hmm. Like the examples all lean towards burial, good, cremation, bad, right?

11:12

Mm -hmm. But then you have to think about the theology of what you're doing that undergirds the project.

11:18

So there's more to be said than that, okay? Okay. That would just be a starting point. So one of the things that has happened basically in this discussion and as I was having it with the people online.

11:29

I've had this discussion with people plenty of times in the past, so this is not new stuff. But most people, what this ultimately revolves around for many people is, if I could just kind of paint the objector's view here.

11:43

Most people, when they look at this, they basically have a moral intuition to say, hey, it doesn't matter what happens to the body.

11:51

Because the body that may kill, God's truth divides still. They think about the fact that, all right, let's say you were thrown into the lions and eaten up.

12:03

Let's say you were turned into a Roman candle. Well, ultimately, God's going to raise you one way or the other.

12:08

Yeah, you didn't have any control over what happened to your body. Yeah, let's say you get eaten by a shark at sea, whatever, right?

12:15

Ultimately, there's a sense in which, from the perspective of you getting a resurrection body, none of it matters.

12:25

Does that make sense? Yeah. So we're not like the Greeks or whatever, where Achilles cuts out

12:37

Hector's tongue and his eyes so that he will enter into the afterlife with blind and mute, essentially, in his ears and deaf.

12:47

So what happens in the body in this life is not going to carry over into the next in that kind of way.

12:53

So you mutilate the body. It's not some sort of superstitious thing to say, hey, I'm going to cut off your ears so that for all eternity, you won't be able to hear.

13:02

Sure. That's the opposite, actually. Yeah. God heals affirmatives in the next life.

13:07

Yeah, and I mean, you could get burned up like a Roman candle. It doesn't matter. God's going to still raise you, right? Most people, that's the extent of their thought process on this, is to say it doesn't matter what happens to the body because you're going to get a resurrection body no matter what.

13:26

Fair enough? Mm -hmm. All right, but I think that's profoundly misguided, okay?

13:32

So for that kind of person who is making that kind of argument, I want to say, well, look, all right, would it be okay, then, to feed your dead wife's body to your pets in order to save on dog food?

13:49

No. Why not? It feels icky. Well, isn't that just you being a

13:56

Puritan, like a Puritanical killjoy? Feeding my wife's remains to the dogs?

14:05

I mean— That sounds like something some psychopath would do.

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A psychopath that also refers to their dogs as their fur babies. But it didn't matter, right? It's just a corpse.

14:19

It just—no. Hey, but that's not—I'm not persuaded by your no.

14:29

I don't want Spot eating my dead wife's body to save on dog food.

14:38

All right, but does it matter or doesn't it, okay? Uh -huh. I saw an article where essentially a couple devoted their grandmother's body to science, and they were paid for it.

14:56

But then apparently the military had bought her body, and she was used as—like her body was strapped to a chair, and they were using explosive rounds on her body just to see what would happen.

15:08

And so this is like a— Are you serious? Yes. Oh, my goodness. So why would—is it fine—the question is, is it fine to test military weapons on grandma's corpse?

15:20

I mean, is it okay to feed your dead wife's body to dogs in order to save on dog food? Can you just throw your dead person off the cliff, right?

15:28

Uh -huh. Just throw them off the cliff somewhere. It doesn't matter. So, I mean, a lot of—the thing is, this goes against your sense of what's right and wrong.

15:39

Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, you think about Holocaust mass graves.

15:46

It's like, well, that doesn't sound right. I mean, obviously all of the Holocaust doesn't sound right, but even down to the burial method, you know, like what happens after they die, you know, that doesn't feel—that feels equally—well, maybe not equally, but certainly very bad.

16:06

So, but the thing is, so you have a moral intuition to say that's wrong, and this is—moral intuition is built into the fabric of who we are in a wide variety of ways.

16:15

So like this moral intuition you have, you may not be able to explain where it comes from, right? Uh -huh.

16:21

But it's there. But then this is the same kind of moral intuition that soldiers have on the battlefield where, you know, you don't leave any man behind.

16:28

Uh -huh. Right? So you're— Yeah, there would be like revolutionary times.

16:34

There's like a period to go and pick up, you know, collect your dead basically on your side.

16:40

In order to give them a Christian burial. Yeah, I mean, but then like even if they shoot your friend on the battlefield, don't you—I mean, you can—you've watched plenty of war movies where they're lugging the corpse along with them just to not leave them in enemy territory in order to be like, you know, defiled or whatever.

16:57

And so like we have this sense that dead need to be honored, right?

17:03

Sure, yeah. So if someone dies, you don't just let them laying on the side of the road. You dig them a burial because you feel like you need to honor them in some way, right?

17:13

Yeah, it's even frowned upon to like speak poorly of a person after they die. Unless they're really bad, you know, and everyone agrees that they're bad.

17:21

Then it's like, okay, now we can all say what we're all thinking but never said out loud. Right.

17:27

So, but the thing is like you have that moral intuition that's been drilled into you through tradition and culture, right?

17:34

But then you have to ask, is that right? Is it right? Like not just is it there, right? So a lot of the cremation people, like the arguments are it doesn't matter whatsoever.

17:43

But then if you press them, like, you know, and I was pressing people on this. So would you feed your dead wife's corpse to your dogs the same on dog food?

17:50

It doesn't matter, right? She's going to get a resurrection body. Who cares? It's like, no, that's crossing the line.

17:55

Well, what's the difference? You know, and I didn't get any answers on what's the difference, right? And so what's happening there is you have individuals who they're being inconsistent with what they're saying.

18:06

Right. So they have they've accepted some sort of moral obligation there. They just don't know where it comes from. Does that make sense?

18:12

Yeah. And then they disagree on like where exactly the line is, I guess. Right. So like what's happening is like functionally.

18:20

Cremation is 1k. Burial is 25k. Okay. That's what's happening.

18:26

Like what's happening is like their their conscience is still bound to the other standard to some degree.

18:32

Right. Now, I heard, you know, one guy on the Twitter poll basically said, yeah, I, you know,

18:37

I made the mistake of watching someone get cremated. And that was disturbing to my core.

18:42

And I should have never done that. Right. And I think it's a lot easier to talk about this in the abstract, let someone else burn the body than it is to picture yourself watching the body burned up.

18:51

At which case it would bring more moral clarity to the situation of what we're actually describing. But but my point, though, is just to say, like, you have an intuition that's triggering.

19:01

Right. With certain levels of desecration of a corpse without necessarily the thought theology to tell you why that's wrong.

19:08

Right. And so part of part of what's happening, though, is that we're actually not Gnostics. Okay. So, like, meaning what we don't just believe that the body is unimportant.

19:19

Sure. Yeah. Right. So we believe that, like, it's not just, you know, the spirit matters and the body is irrelevant.

19:25

Like, that's not what we are. We're not Gnostics. And so you have, like, prominent burial stories in the old covenant where, you know, it was very important for Abraham to get that burial plot in the promised land and to get

19:41

Sarah in that burial plot in the promised land. And even to purchase it.

19:46

And to purchase it. They were going to give it to him for free, and he refused. So he died in faith, not receiving the promise of the promised land.

19:54

Mm -hmm. Yeah. But the only taste of it that he got was burying Sarah in it. And that reflected his eschatological hope.

20:02

Right? Mm -hmm. Is that she would get buried in it, he would get buried in it, but he never got to live there.

20:07

Right? So, like, the thing is, though, like, we're not Gnostics. We believe that the body will be raised.

20:13

And so it's not just, like, you know, you're looking at that dead body and, like, there's been people,

20:22

I've been at funerals, and they're like, you know, that's not her. And it's like, no, it is. You know? Mm -hmm.

20:27

It is. Meaning, like, that's her. You know what I mean? But that body is going to be raised. Now, sure,

20:33

I mean, it can get eaten up and return to dust and everything else. But God's going to raise that.

20:40

Like, there's some correspondence that that body has to the resurrection body. It's not just irrelevant.

20:45

You get what I'm saying? Mm -hmm. And then what you do with it matters. Like, it mattered. Like, it really mattered to the patriarchs what they did with it.

20:53

Right? Which, like, you know, to that point, because I think there are a lot of people who think that the physical body they have now, yeah, it has no correlation to whatever physical body they'll have in heaven.

21:11

But then, you know, you think about, like, well, I mean, I guess maybe it's 1

21:18

Thessalonians where, you know, Paul talks about the dead will be raised first. Right. And then everyone will be caught up in the air to meet

21:26

Christ. Right? Even the ones who are currently living. So, you know, unless you think they're going to, like, they're going to get, like, you know, dementor kissed.

21:41

Their soul gets, you know, sucked out through their mouth or something. And their soul flies up in the air and their body just flops over or something.

21:49

I've never met anyone who thinks that's what would happen to them. You know, it's probably more just we'll all get caught up in the air with the body that we are currently in.

22:03

So, it seems like even reading through verses like that, the physical body has an unavoidable correspondence to our eternal body in some way.

22:19

Right. So, there is a correspondence, you know. And the scriptural language at this point is actually pretty strong, you know.

22:25

So, at various points, it's like the same body will be raised. I mean, it's that kind of thing.

22:31

Now, we know that, yeah, I mean, that body gets eaten by a lion. I don't know how that all works.

22:37

But the point is just to say that there's correlation there and it matters. And it matters what happens.

22:42

And in a very real sense, the way Jews and Christians always thought about this is that in honoring that body, you are honoring the person.

22:53

So, it's not just kind of like you're honoring a corpse. No one viewed it that way. They didn't view it like, oh, that's just shell, you know.

23:00

That's just a meat sack. Yeah, they didn't view it that way at all. I mean, in fact, I mean, like, one of the most, and this is a passage that I just couldn't, like, to the kind of person who is saying what happens to that corpse doesn't matter, right?

23:17

Mm -hmm. Jesus didn't think that way, okay? So, you know, you remember the story of the woman with the alabaster flask, okay?

23:27

Mm -hmm. So, the disciples, they were all scandalized by the fact that she is wasting all this money on him, right?

23:33

Yeah, she should have sold it. Given it to the poor. Given it to the poor. Right, but then what

23:39

Jesus told them is, like, so they didn't realize what was actually happening. They just thought it was a waste, right?

23:45

They thought it was a waste of money. But then what was actually happening is Jesus basically aware of this.

23:52

So, this is Matthew 26, 10. He says, why do you trouble this woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me.

23:57

Now, notice what he just said. He says, what she's done is a beautiful thing, right? Mm -hmm, yeah. She's done a beautiful thing to me.

24:04

And then he says, well, why is it a beautiful thing? For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me with you.

24:10

Now, notice what he says. In pouring this ointment on my body, she has done it to prepare it for burial.

24:18

Yeah. Right? Mm -hmm. And then he says, truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she will be done will be told in memory of her.

24:28

So, this passage, it totally undercuts this notion that what you do to the corpse doesn't matter.

24:37

Mm -hmm. Do you get what I'm saying? Mm -hmm. So, her doing this and preparing his body for burial, it wasn't seen as a waste of money.

24:45

It wasn't seen as worthless. In fact, Jesus says it was a beautiful thing, right? Mm -hmm.

24:50

So, what people frequently were saying is Jesus doesn't care about it.

24:56

It's like what he did for himself, didn't he? Do you get what I'm saying? He cared that she was honoring his body, and it didn't just reduce to that was a nice intention, lady, but like a dumb act, a waste of money, right?

25:11

Because none of it matters because I'm just going to get raised, right? Sure, yeah. No, you doing that communicated what was meaningful, right?

25:19

Yeah. It mattered to Jesus that she prepared his body for burial, and then it mattered to the disciples.

25:25

They were very concerned to give him a burial, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's why they petitioned the

25:33

Romans to let them do that. So, the point there is just to say it was very important to them.

25:40

No one in the Old Testament and no one in the New Testament viewed it as just a corpse that you could just dispose of, right?

25:50

Yeah. And so, not only that, but then they had theological motivations. They thought what they did with it reflected ultimately their hope.

25:58

Does that make sense? Mm -hmm. Yeah, and even going back to our point about our physical body now having some sort of relation to the one we'll have in heaven.

26:10

I mean, what happens when Jesus is resurrected, right? His body is gone, right?

26:17

Because he's alive. He's not in the grave anymore. So, it's not like, hey, there's one sort of deflated body in the tomb, and then there's another

26:31

Jesus body that he's using to go around and talk to all of the disciples and the apostles.

26:40

It's just the same body with the same holes in his hands. And glorified.

26:46

And glorified. Well, yeah, I mean, that's a great point just to say that there's a correlation. And I mean,

26:52

I imagine when he returns and the dead and Christ are raised, I mean, all these dust piles all over the world, wherever they were, will come.

26:59

And however that works, I mean, if it was eaten by a lion, he'll figure it out. I don't know. Yeah, I guess let him sort out that one.

27:08

Sort it all out. But I do imagine, though, I mean, when people were raised in the tombs, they came out of the tombs.

27:16

There's not still a corpse in there because it was completely irrelevant. They came out of the tombs they came from. And so those are pictures of things.

27:23

And so I think the point there is just to say that Jews and early Christians, they didn't think that what you did with the body didn't matter at all.

27:33

In fact, they thought it reflected their hope, their eschatological hope. So, you know, for Abraham, getting that burial in the

27:42

Promised Land, that reflected his hope. You know, you see what I'm saying? And it reflected their hope of resurrection and their hope of God fulfilling his promises.

27:52

And in the same way with Joseph, Joseph, he wanted out of Egypt so he can get to the Promised Land because that's where his heart was tied.

27:59

In a similar way, I think, you know, Christians, there should be a very real sense in which we want our last moments to be a testimony to faith.

28:15

And so, I mean, now you think about burning yourself up as a testimony to your eschatological hope.

28:22

It's kind of like singing, let the fire fall down on me. I mean, it doesn't, at that point, you just...

28:30

Maybe your heart was in the right place, but you know not what you say. You know, I hope you didn't speak better than you knew, you know, at that point.

28:40

No, I mean, so I think we're just not, what's happened is we are unaccustomed to thinking in these ways anymore.

28:48

But then this is the natural way that Old Testament saints thought, and this is the way that the early Christians thought.

28:54

And so we should reorient ourselves with what we're doing and think more soberly about the afterlife and the nature of our hope.

29:02

And I think Christians, you know, for the past 2 ,000 years, they understood these things kind of intuitively. This is why you recoil at the thought of feeding.

29:11

Now, the reason why you recoil at the thought of, you know, feeding your wife to the dog is because you know that in some sense that's disrespectful to the person, right?

29:21

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But then, you know, there is a famous story of a woman getting eaten by dogs in the

29:27

Old Testament too. That's why I bring this up. So Jezebel, right? Jezebel was such a wicked woman that, you know,

29:34

God basically punished her by predicting her death, you know, essentially that she would be eaten by dogs.

29:43

But then the text is very specific in that this basically was to fulfill that no one would be able to look at her remains and say this was

29:55

Jezebel, right? So she was wiped off the map, right? Unable to be remembered. She wasn't there.

30:02

She didn't exist. So she was that wicked that she was erased. And when you think about cremation, that's what cremation is doing.

30:09

It's erasing them, right? No one can look at them and say this is them anymore. And so I think there's something profoundly, like, we don't think that way, but we probably should.

30:22

Do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Like no one could say, like, we don't think in terms of leaving a legacy.

30:28

We just, you know, wipe me off the face of the map, who cares, whatever, you know? And it's just like, that's not the way

30:33

I thought, man. You're praying to end up like Jezebel.

30:38

That's a weird thing, you know? Like, if you want to have Jezebel's ending, that's a strange place to be, isn't it?

30:46

That's weird. Yeah. I would like to be eaten by dogs. Well, I mean, but like, just to be erased, you know, just to be erased, like, from memory.

30:56

You didn't exist like that. That shouldn't be, there should be something unsettling about that,

31:02

I think. So anyways, what I'm trying to say is, like, your intuition to say there's something wrong there is,

31:07

I mean, there's a lot of scripture, I think, and principles that would feed into that, that maybe we've forgotten, you know?

31:15

So, all that's left is the tradition, but there's a lot to that, more than what people think.

31:21

Does that make sense? Yeah. I guess, you know, a question arises when you think about, there are certain cultures where at least it seems like a burial by fire was, like, a pretty normal thing.

31:44

You know, you think about, like, and I understand that this is sort of a stretch, because you're talking about pagan nations and civilizations at this point, but you think about, like,

32:01

Nordic people, for example. It seems like that was a pretty common way to honor the dead, was to build, like, a pyre, basically, with their body on it and burn it, right?

32:13

And that was their way of showing respect to the person, right?

32:21

And so, is there any, you know, in light of something like that, again,

32:27

I know we're talking about, like, a pagan nation at that point, or pagan culture, you know?

32:33

Is there anything there to say, like, well, maybe there's something to, like, the way that you honor the dead body of the person might vary from culture to culture?

32:46

Or, you know, is that like a, no, that doesn't matter, they don't have the same understanding that we do when it comes to what happens to the dead?

32:56

Yeah, I think there's a, I mean, basically, just a multiculturalism kind of discussion there, where all cultures are viewed as neutral, and then you can't criticize any culture, and you can't say that any of them are wrong in any way.

33:09

And I would say that, yeah, they're looking forward, like, they're speaking better than they know they're, you know?

33:15

They're pointing to their eschatology, you know? They're singing, fire fall down on me, right there, huh? Someone, you know, someone posted on our

33:23

Twitter poll, and they made a comment to essentially say, you know, from their grandmother, to say, you know,

33:30

I know that if, like, I want to be buried, like, I know that if I were cremated,

33:37

God could sort it all out and give me a resurrection body. But then, you know, it just seems easier to leave it alone.

33:47

It seems safer, basically. The impulse is just to say, I know that if I tear this thing up, he can put it all back together.

33:55

But it seems to make more sense just to give it to him as it is, and not make it harder than it needs to be.

34:04

Not that, like, it's, you know, anything's hard for God, but there is something about what, like, that country wisdom kind of statement, right?

34:13

Like, it seems like it's silly, but then I think it speaks better than you know.

34:20

Well, I guess there's an argument to be made for, like, hey, you know, so we're created in God's image, and you're basically trying, not,

34:31

I don't think people are doing this on purpose. Like, they're thinking about this specific thing, but, you know, it does seem like you are, in a certain way, trying to, like, remove yourself from that purposefully.

34:52

Does that make sense of what I'm saying? Like, we're made in the image of God, and then you're reducing yourself to something that's basically,

35:01

I mean, unrecognizable. Right, well, I think along those lines, I mean, you can go to funerals, and people are hugging this corpse.

35:12

Sure, yeah. And it isn't intuitively obvious that that's stupid.

35:21

Mm -hmm. Do you get what I'm saying? Mm -hmm, yeah. Like, they come up, and they hold the hand, because they, like, and so part of this is, like, it gets to your horror at the thought of feeding your wife to your dogs for dog food to save money.

35:38

Because, like, you know that's her. Do you get what

35:43

I'm saying? Yeah. And this is what you're getting at with the image of God kind of thing that you're saying.

35:50

Just to casually dispose of it and destroy it, it feels so utterly wrong, because this is made in the image of God.

36:01

Like, you said it feels sadistic. And the reason why it feels sadistic is because it's very hard mentally just to say, like, you feel there's a connection here, right?

36:13

Yeah, yeah. Because there is. Because there is. Yeah, because there is. And so you just take a hatchet to the thing and chop it all up.

36:21

It feels like you're a serial killer, right? Yeah, I was watching, well,

36:26

I wasn't watching. I saw a, I can't remember if it was, like, a news article or what it was.

36:35

But in whatever I was looking at, it had a picture from some movie that just came out.

36:44

I think, like, maybe it's called, like, The Northmen or something like that. It came out this year.

36:52

And apparently in one part of the movie, the main character, he goes to this village and he kills all of the males in the village who are his enemies, if I remember correctly.

37:06

And after he does this, he basically mutilates their bodies and hangs them up on the side of one of the buildings in, like, a certain mythological image as a way to essentially, like, defile this village and the people he killed.

37:30

And I think that's basically what you're getting at here is, like, there's a certain way you can bury someone that shows respect to them as a person.

37:39

And then there's a certain way that you can, you know, basically dispose of someone that communicates a total lack of respect for who they were as a person.

37:53

Yeah, I mean, throw them into a wood chipper or something like that, right? Yeah, like, that's something a serial killer does.

38:01

You see, people might get irritated at us even just talking about it, right? Like, it feels…

38:07

What do you mean? Like, oh, it just feels gross. Well, it just feels, like, disrespectful even to…

38:12

Yeah, absolutely. But then the point of talking about it is to say why.

38:17

You get what I'm saying? Mm -hmm. Like, now you can't have your cake and eat it too. You understand?

38:24

You can't say that body doesn't matter and then not be able to tolerate me talking about disposing of it in disrespectful ways.

38:36

Like, pick your stance. So either you burn that thing up like it doesn't matter, like it's a piece of trash, right?

38:44

Like it's a log to be thrown onto a fire. Or you treat it with respect. And the thing is your emotions are tied to treating it with respect.

38:52

The only reason you're considering cremation is because it's cheap and you don't have to see it. Okay? Now, I think that…

38:59

Did you have more? I don't want to cut you off. Well, no, I think it's just we know, like, it's the image of God.

39:06

Like, it just feels wrong to destroy the image of God like that even in death, right?

39:13

It's just… Yeah. You can say all day long, yeah, they'll be raised and whatever else.

39:19

It's just… It feels wrong, right?

39:25

And I mean, the thing is the biblical authors, they shared that perspective. So, like, that's the point.

39:31

And so then you have to ask, well, what changed? Was it that we got better exegesis in the past 20 years?

39:39

Or was it that burial got more expensive? Typically, the answer is never.

39:47

We figured it out in the last 20 years. I mean, so, you know,

39:53

I think what's happened is that with increased government regulation, I mean, you can't just bury a body in the backyard anymore, you know?

39:59

Yeah. And so I think what's happening is the government is making it real hard to do this for people.

40:07

And I'm sensitive to the kind of comments where it's just like, hey, I buried two people and I'm too broke to bury another one.

40:17

So if someone else dies, I'm not sure. I mean, and that's a very real thing. I'm not trying to pick at that. I'm just trying to say, though, there's something that's changed.

40:25

It's not that our theology has changed. I mean, our theology has changed, but it's not because we got better at exegesis.

40:33

You know, what's happened is it's just practical situations that are factoring in here more heavily than they should.

40:42

Well, and that's what I was going to ask is, you know, for the, I mean, let's imagine a scenario.

40:48

I mean, God forbid this ever, we know this does happen, but, you know, you never want this to happen to someone.

40:56

Let's assume you have a situation where, you know, you have your, some people in your family are taking a trip and they get in a car wreck and all of them die.

41:08

Right. All of a sudden you're having to pay for several funerals all at once.

41:14

And, you know, a lot of, well, I don't know if a lot of, but it's common to have some sort of insurance for when you die that in part helps cover the expenses of a funeral.

41:31

But I don't know if everyone has that. What does the person do who is in that situation and just simply, you know, they don't have the life insurance they need to cover the funeral and they don't have the money put away to bury three or four people all at once.

41:47

You know, what do you do in that scenario? Yeah. I mean, I think you,

41:53

I think this just goes to show that people need to be preparing better than what they think they need to be preparing in a lot of ways.

42:03

So like meaning I, some of these, like you can kind of get yourself in thorny situations because you don't prepare for life.

42:11

But I mean, I think most people, you know, most young men who are, you know, living in their parents' basement at 25 years old, playing video games all day long and, you know, hyped up on caffeine.

42:22

They aren't asking these kinds of questions, like they aren't thinking to the future. They aren't preparing for the future.

42:29

And there's a lot of things like this that come up in life that, you know, you might not be prepared for because you didn't make the right choices early on to be prepared for those kinds of things.

42:40

So, I mean, obviously God's gracious and obviously God's merciful and God's obviously much more kind and patient and everything than us.

42:48

And, you know, a lot of times like if you pray and ask God, he'll provide a way, you know, to do things.

42:54

And I don't think you should discount that. I mean, I've heard of plenty of scenarios where someone offers to help, you know, in those ways.

43:03

And, you know, sometimes it just falls on someone and, you know, you got to make a moral.

43:10

I mean, you know, there may be some place at some point to make a morally dubious choice because it's all he got, you know, kind of thing.

43:16

But I think, you know, it's a very different posture to make a choice like that not because you want to, right?

43:27

Just out of necessity. I mean, at that point, it's just the government is holding a gun to your head.

43:35

You get what I'm saying? Yeah. Like the government is holding a gun to your head and saying like in order for you to give your loved one a

43:46

Christian burial, it's going to cost you way more than you can afford, you know? Yeah. And then at that point, you're just being coerced to do something against your will.

43:55

But I think we have a category for being coerced to do something against your will over and against.

44:01

Like, I don't think you have to destroy like the entire conversation we have just because a person can be in a scenario where they have a gun in their head trying to make the best of a bad deal.

44:12

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So, you know, I'm sure God is merciful and yeah, he'll raise him up on the last day and everything else like all that.

44:21

But I don't think that most people, I mean, I think most people would rather have a plot somewhere, you know?

44:31

And if you don't, I mean, I understand like, I mean, a lot of people, you know, it's like, yeah, I don't want to have a funeral. So just getting them burned up or whatever.

44:38

I want to be or, you know, I want to be spread out in the Atlantic Ocean or something like that.

44:44

Yeah, but I think that, you know, those kind of things are more meaningful than what people realize to, you know, going in.

44:52

I mean, there's like history there and it ties you to the past in certain ways. And I mean, like we have a burial plot for our family in Alabama in a certain spot.

45:04

And, you know, it ties you to history and, you know, there's moments there that you can take advantage of too.

45:13

And that are instructive in different ways. But, yeah, so I mean, I think you can have a category for the government putting a gun to your head without having to.

45:22

I mean, in that way, it may be that they're the Romans forcing you to do the Roman candle thing, you know? Like, and okay, yeah,

45:30

God cleans it up, right? And, you know, ultimately God will, you know,

45:37

I mean, if your loved one was the one being turned into a Roman candle, like that shouldn't be. I mean, you're being, that is an act of humiliation they're trying to do.

45:47

And like, okay, you know, God will fix this and you will get what's coming to you.

45:52

You get what I'm saying? Yeah, and what's interesting is, you know, in the early church that was viewed as like the most honorable thing that could happen to you.

46:01

Not to be, you know. It was a dishonorable thing. Yeah, it was a dishonorable thing that it's like, but the act of martyrdom was honorable.

46:11

And so you have the martyrdom canceling out the dishonor. Like, they think they're doing a dishonor to you and they're doing something honorable.

46:18

But then with cremation, it's like you're voluntarily just. Right. It's certainly a very different category there.

46:24

Embracing the dishonor. Yeah, I mean, you're voluntarily embracing this dishonor, you know, just because you don't know what you're doing anymore.

46:31

Sure, yeah. Now, okay, let's, you know, the last question that I have here is, okay, so the person, you know, we're not talking about the martyr.

46:45

We're talking about the person who willingly signs up to be cremated. Not cremated, you know, out of any sort of desperation, some sort of circumstance that was outside of their control.

47:00

They just chose, like, hey, I want to be turned into a pile of ash. You know, is there any sort of like, you know, punishment or rebuke that you're going to receive for that?

47:20

Or is it just like a, I mean, like, is there any sort of, basically what I'm asking is, is there any sort of repercussion for the

47:28

Christian who willingly gets cremated? I think, yeah,

47:35

I mean, for them who wants to be cremated, I think it's just, I mean, it's just one of those unintentional sins, you know, kind of thing.

47:44

I mean, at the most, it's kind of like, I mean, God's not, you're not going to get to heaven and God's going to be like, you know, let's, you know, why did you do that last one?

47:53

That was dumb, you know, like, that was a dumb move, man. You know, like, what were you thinking on that?

47:59

It's like, I don't know. Thanks for overlooking it. You know, I don't. Like, at best, unwise.

48:08

Yeah, I think it's morally dubious. I think it's morally dubious. I think we should know better. I think we should.

48:13

We used to know better. We should know better. You know, I think it's just, you're losing, like, what you're doing is you're just, like, that's a poor reflection of your eschatological hope.

48:24

It's a missed opportunity to proclaim, like, the nature of your hope, right? It's showing contempt for the image of God that he's made in you.

48:34

It's, you know, I think it's just kind of a callous disregard. It's Gnosticism.

48:39

It's all that, you know. So I think it's all that. But, I mean, God, obviously, if he would count iniquities, none of us could stand. And, obviously, he's going to forgive us, you know.

48:48

Right. You know, but I think it's one of those things where you just have to—we have to regain, like, the theology of the body in what we're doing and try to—

48:56

You know, and I think there's—I think for people who go that route, I mean, there's, you know, there may be consequences in this life, you know, on their end, you know, for going that route, too.

49:12

What do you mean? Well, I mean, just not being able to ever go to the burial site and say—I mean, like,

49:19

Jezebel has said, no one can say to her, this is Jezebel, right? Yeah. And so, I mean, those kind of rituals are comforting to people in certain ways, you know.

49:28

And if you just kind of take the ashes and throw them somewhere and never into nowhere, you know, you can't have that same kind of—you know, you're not tying yourself to history.

49:41

You're not tying yourself to memories. You know, there's not—like, you're just cutting yourself off from part of, like, grieving and life and things like that.

49:50

Well, you can just leave them on the mantle. That's creepy.

49:56

It's creepy in a different way. All of the jokes that have been made in movies about that.

50:03

That was grandpa's ashes. Yeah, don't have kids, man.

50:08

Now, yeah, so I think definitely, you know, when you're thinking about this topic, obviously

50:18

God's merciful to us. He isn't going to—you know, it's not like he's going to hold anything against us.

50:28

He's forgiven us everything, past, present, and future. But I do think we need to relearn, you know, the theology of what we're doing at that point.

50:35

Sure. Okay. Yeah, this is a—it's definitely a pretty interesting conversation.

50:40

Because I think, you know, personally, I've always found myself more on the, it probably doesn't matter.

50:54

Or at best, you know, like, it's probably better to bury.

51:00

But then I don't know that there's any sort of, like, repercussion if you don't bury and you get cremated instead.

51:10

So this is a pretty interesting discussion. Because, you know, I think what it has done for me is it has forced me to think about, like, there certainly is a way to respect the dead.

51:23

And there's a way to disrespect the dead. And for whatever reason,

51:29

I mean, everyone, you know, thinks it's wrong to respect—I mean, to disrespect the dead.

51:36

Even in that article that I was reading, you know, about, like, the

51:41

Northmen or whatever that movie is called. The comments—I mean, it's very obviously people who are not

51:49

Christians who are commenting on this article. And, you know, all of them were, like, all of them were things like, you know, do you think, you know, assuming this was, like, a real story, do you think the guy, like, got halfway through what he was doing and then realized, like, what it was?

52:10

But then, you know, once you're halfway through, you've got to finish. You can't just stop halfway.

52:16

So, like, they're recognizing, like, this is really—this is, like, a grotesque—I mean, utterly grotesque thing to do.

52:26

Yeah, it's subhuman, right? Yeah. I mean, like, even as, like, your enemy, it feels vile in a lot of different ways.

52:35

And I think that is a very real—I think that is a very real thing that we should feel for a lot of reasons.

52:43

But especially because, you know, we are talking about someone made in God's image, and you're essentially showing no respect for that in any way.

52:56

And, you know, I don't think anyone wants to have, like, the Judas kind of burial, essentially, where it's a, you know, hang yourself and then be there for days and days, and your body is basically just a ticking time bomb.

53:18

Yeah, I mean, I think in a similar way, it's kind of like—similar to the discussion we were having on another podcast about sin of presumption, essentially, to where, like,

53:30

Satan is tempting Jesus to throw his body off the temple. And, you know, calling on the fact that, like, the angels would bear him up lest he dash his foot against a stone.

53:40

And I think, in a certain sense, there is a very real sense in which it's like, hey, we're in burial, we're just kind of giving this body to Jesus, right?

53:49

As it is, and hope that he will raise it. But then, you know, you chop it all up and do all this stuff and blow it all up and do—it's like—

53:56

Turn it into kibble. Yeah, I mean, you're very—in a very real sense, I think what you're doing is you're engaging in the sin of presumption.

54:04

You're saying, yeah, well, you know, like, God will clean it up anyways, right? So you're doing something similar to,

54:11

I think, what Satan is trying to get Jesus to do. In the way that just kind of respecting, like, this is—I mean,

54:19

I think it's just impossible to imagine taking your loved one and just treating them so callously.

54:34

It's almost like, just to give you a thought on it, let's say that you—just trivialize it a little bit, but you love the car, right?

54:47

You take care of a car your whole life, you love a car, and you wax it, you do all this stuff on it, right?

54:53

You maintain it. But let's say that, like, you've cared for this thing your whole life, and then all of a sudden the engine goes out.

55:01

Like, do you really just go up and take a sledgehammer to it or something like that? Blow it up.

55:07

Blow it up. You know, I mean, I think, like, in a certain sense, that's a lesser example of what I'm talking about, right?

55:13

But then you have a human being that you love, you cared about your whole life. And, like, the last thing you can do for this human being is to dress him up and try to keep him safe, you know?

55:27

Yeah. And I think that there's a very—like, it's hard to, in your mind, transition to, like, from I've cared about this thing my whole life to now let me destroy it, you know?

55:40

Yeah. Like, that feels just like, how do you flip that switch? And most people just—they can't.

55:46

That's why someone else is doing it for them. Do you get what I'm saying? Mm -hmm. It's out of sight, out of mind, someone else is destroying the beautiful thing, not you, right?

55:55

Yeah. But then if you were to think about you destroying that precious thing, it's still precious to you, and that's why everyone's hugging the corpse, you know?

56:04

Like, but then you think about you destroying it yourself. Like, it's like, whoa, I can't bring myself to do it, you know?

56:10

Yeah. Because I'm still attached to it, you know? Mm -hmm. And so then just kind of giving it to God and letting God deal with it, you know, is,

56:18

I think, the Christian impulse. Yeah. Yeah, it really is a pretty interesting conversation, especially because I think it does sort of make you think about a lot of things that I think we all know in the back of our head, but then maybe they're not always brought to the forefront of our minds, or maybe they're not, you know, consistently brought to the forefront of our minds.

56:46

Meaning, I don't know how often we all think about, like, the fact that we inherently want to honor the dead, right?

56:59

Why is that? I don't think we're constantly thinking about the fact that the body that I have right now has some sort of connection to the body that I'm going to have in eternity.

57:12

You know, I don't know that we're thinking about the various narratives throughout the

57:23

Old Testament where burial is a big deal and causes people to make decisions that they might not make otherwise, right?

57:34

Right, right. So there is a lot there to really think through that I think can definitely help in trying to determine, like, what does the

57:46

Christian do with all of this? And it is pretty, you know, like, it is kind of funny, and maybe it's interesting that, you know, you think about the cost of cremation and burial, and you think about when cremation became, you know, became...

58:12

Normal, yep. I guess, like, yeah, a normal kind of thing that you just, like, oh yeah, I'm going to get cremated instead of buried, and no one really responds with, you know, an audible gasp or something.

58:25

That is pretty interesting, you know, that it's in the modern day that that's when that happened, as opposed to, you know, maybe

58:39

King David was buried and then King Solomon was cremated or something, you know? Yep. So it is certainly an interesting conversation that I think we probably need to think through a lot more in depth than a lot of people probably have.

58:56

Like we said at the beginning, I think a lot of people, their response to this is, well, you know, obviously the person who is martyred and has no control over what happens to their body, they're fed to lions, they're burned alive, you know, whatever it is.

59:13

Beaten beyond recognition or something, whatever it is, if that person, you know, there's obviously going to be no consequences for them, it was out of their control.

59:23

If that's the case for them, then it must be the same exact thing for everyone else who is voluntarily choosing to be cremated.

59:33

I think that's a pretty shallow, you know, thing.

59:39

Fair enough, yeah, fair enough. Feed them to the dogs, right? Yeah, a fairly shallow conclusion to come to overall.

59:45

You've got to have more than that to justify it. So, but with all that being said, we want to thank you guys for listening.

59:54

Like we said at the beginning, it was nice to be on break for a little while while we were just putting out the two episodes.

01:00:00

But I think it's good to finally be back into the regular groove, the podcast grind, we called it at the beginning.

01:00:11

So, it's fun to be able to talk about these things and think through them and look at what the

01:00:16

Bible has to say and what the Bible can tell us about a lot of different subjects that we're going to come across as we live the

01:00:28

Christian life. There's a lot of hard questions that have to be asked, and that's at the heart of what we're wanting to do with the podcast.

01:00:36

So, we thank all of you guys who support us week in and week out, who listen. We're glad that we can talk about these things and flesh them out for you and give you things to think through, and we'll see you on the next one.

01:00:49

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