Christian Burial and Transhumanism

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00:24

And welcome to the American Churchman podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. We are going to be talking about transhumanism today.

00:31

And I want to just plug TruthScript really quick. If you go to truthscript .com, scroll down to the bottom, you can find the donate tab.

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You can also find the publish tab. If you like what we're doing and you want to participate, that's how you do it.

00:43

Like I said, my name is John and my co -host is Matthew Pearson. As always here on this 4th of July week, it is summer.

00:51

Summer's in full swing. Of course, it's always summer in Florida, but in New York, it's actually summer right now.

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And I just had a big thunderstorm, which reminded me of that while I was trying to do work outside. So that's how my day has been going.

01:02

How's yours been going, Matthew? It's been fine. Just been doing some work, you know, just working today, but I'm not looking forward to the heat tomorrow because tomorrow

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I'll be pressure washing all day. So I'll really be feeling it. But no, today's been fine.

01:19

I've been looking forward to this cast as always. So here we go. Yeah. I just did pressure washing and it seems fun.

01:26

Before you do it, you're like, oh, it'll be so refreshing. And then when you're halfway into it, you're like, this is terrible.

01:33

Yeah. Well, I'm at least getting paid for it. So that's the thing, you know, is when you get a paycheck, it's nice.

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And it is nice to like see something get clean or, you know, I don't know what you're washing, but I don't know if you like to see the change.

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Like painting is like that too, where you see the fruits of your labor right there in real time, which is kind of cool.

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Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. So, hey, I got a question for you. We're going to get into this attribute, but I, so I just saw recently, like within the last hour, people on X were saying, this is, this is totally random, right?

02:08

But that murder, okay, sorry. Doxing is murder. Not like it's like murder, but it is murder.

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And I had multiple people telling me that. And I was like, I was a little confused. I think I might know where they're coming from, but because you're

02:21

Matthew Pearson and you're younger and you're in with the cool things and all that, do we even say cool anymore?

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What's going on? What am I missing? What, do you know what that's about? I have not seen such a thing actually on Twitter recently, but I mean, my guess as to, yeah, my guess as to how that would be or why that's being said or how that should be interpreted is that doxing is akin to, you know, character assassination because somebody is intentionally concealing their identity due to a job they're in or a position they're holding.

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And by somebody leaking that information, you're intentionally ruining and upending their lives in such a manner that like, it's basically like, it's practically a murder.

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It's obviously exaggerated, but that would be my guess as to why people are saying doxing is murders because you're upending someone's own livelihood.

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Yeah, that's, okay. So I was on the right track then. I thought, okay, this must be - That's just a guess, Matt. Yeah.

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Yeah, that's a good guess though because you guessed the same thing that I was guessing and I checked right before the podcast with a few other guys and they were saying something similar, so.

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Okay. But doxing now, I don't even know what it is because I've had guys tell me that I, so I had someone tell me that I murdered them.

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They're still alive, but I murdered them or I tried to murder them, I should say. So some people say it's murder.

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Some people say it's attempted murder. And we actually, we have Romans 8 shaman who's saying right now it's attempted murder.

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Okay, so some people are telling me right now it is murder though. Anyway, so they said that I murdered them because I used their first name, which is publicly available and that was doxing.

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And I don't know, like in my mind, doxing is you expose where someone lives and expose them to their enemies who might be crazy enough to go hurt them or murder them.

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That's, I always thought like that was doxing, but I get, I don't know, maybe there's a broad definition.

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What do you think doxing is, Matthew? What is doxing? In your mind when you hear that? Oh, I can't hear you.

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Sorry, I had my mic muted. I would say that doxing is basically like the public releasing of information about somebody who otherwise remains anonymous online or whatever.

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And I would say it would be doxing regardless of whether the information is publicly available or not.

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It's one thing to say, oh, well, their name is literally in the bio of their post or whatever or, oh, they say, follow my sub stack and the link to the sub stack, it uses their name.

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But it's another thing if like stuff is like maybe a bit more difficult to access or come by or whatever.

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So there's like a lot of debate over that because some people like to get hyper -autistic about what the definition of doxing is because, oh, if there's any public information about you at all, you obviously, that's not being doxed.

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That's just presenting public information. But the point being is that some people are just, they don't get all the blind spots,

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I guess, or whatever. But yeah, I guess that's just how I would define doxing is the releasing of someone's information from someone who's otherwise anonymous or I guess the more technical term, pseudonymous, basically.

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But yeah, I mean, you see controversy like this all the time like with the whole like Watson watch thing, controversy with him releasing a dissident soaps like real name or whatever, even though it was tied with the company, he was called like a doxer because regardless -

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Basically available, yeah. Yeah, yeah, but like, regardless of that, like people are otherwise operating under a pseudonym.

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And so like, but the thing is, is that not everybody goes out of their way to find that information.

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So there are certain like plebs and fiends out there who like, they're not gonna go and find that stuff. But when somebody else who is willing to makes it public, it draws more negative attention.

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Man, this is, okay, I'm glad I'm talking to you about this because this is such a broad way of conceiving of this.

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This could be anything from, yeah, highlighting something publicly available, like a name to releasing someone's address to Antifa.

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Like that is such a big spectrum in my mind. But I'm glad I gotta be up on the internet lingo.

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I thought I was pretty up on it, but it's within like the last two or three weeks that I finally understood what crashing out was.

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So maybe I'm behind. I keep hearing people say it. Actually, you've even said it.

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And I was sort of like nodding along, assuming, I'm like, oh yeah, crash out, okay. That means like, you know,

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I don't know, like you're just kind of not putting any effort in or you're just kind of like careless.

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But now I realize crash out means that you're like, you're like a plane going down in flames and you're choosing a hill to die on, which was very foolish usually.

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So now I get it now, but. I'm a millennial. The big thing with internet lingo and just language in general is that based off context and things of that nature, definitions change like all the time.

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And it's like circumstantial. You have to look at how it's being used contextually. And like, that's just the reality of language.

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And that's like, you know, that happens all the time with words. So if I say the word save right now, that could mean

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I'm saving someone from getting hurt or I'm saving somebody from getting in trouble for not doing their laundry or the

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Lord Jesus saved me from sin, death, and the devil. But in the King James, when you read the word save, it does have that general meaning.

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But, you know, like I think it's the King James in Galatians where Paul says, far be it for me to boast in anything, save the cross of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. When in English we hear that nowadays, he's like, wait, how was the cross of the

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Lord Jesus Christ saved? No, what it means is like, far be it for me to boast in anything except the cross of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. So, you know, language just does that, so. Yep, and it's quicker online, so.

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All right, well, if you're listening and you're a millennial or older, you may have been educated already.

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This podcast is already worth it for you because you know what doxing can mean and you know what crash out means.

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But we're gonna talk about things even more important, much more important. I'm gonna let

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Matthew take it away. We're gonna do our attribute of God. Of course, yeah. So our attribute today is going to be

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God as Almighty. So what's fun is that I actually, I looked in a few places for this.

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I looked in Richard Moeller's dictionary. I looked in Herman Bovink's Reform Dogmatics and I did not actually find a single section on God as Almighty, but nevertheless,

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I came up with something regardless. And I'm gonna have some Bible verses in the beginning, of course.

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And this will actually end with a quotation from the Heidelberg Catechism, which is a bit helpful at helping us understand what it means for God to be

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Almighty. The first verse that we will be reading from is Jeremiah chapter 32, verse 27, where the scriptures say, behold,

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I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is there anything too hard for me? And then the second scripture verse is

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Revelation one, verse eight. This one's a bit more nail on the head and speaking of God as Almighty, you'll see in a second.

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The scripture says, I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the

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Almighty. So it's kind of like right out in the open there. But when we speak of God being

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Almighty, Almighty, we speak of it as both an attribute of God and a name which is predicated of God by virtue of this attribute.

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As an attribute of God, God being Almighty, it predicates of God a complete and total power which he has as the eternal, infinite, simple and sold

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God possesses and exercises by his eternal decree. Thus, God has the power to, because God is

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Almighty, he has a power to create from nothing, to grant eternal life, to grant just decrees to the righteous and punish the wicked and to orchestrate all things whichever come to pass.

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So God as Almighty, this attribute is a vindication of God as sovereign.

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So it's a vindication of his sovereign rule because God being Almighty, this grants him the grounds on which he rules as a sovereign on which he reigns, because no one can claim to be

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God who is without the supreme and infinite power which he possesses. So this then also, this connection with sovereignty and God being

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Almighty, this overflows into the idea of Almighty not just being an attribute, but a title for God.

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Notice how in that Revelation 1, verse 8 verse, he calls himself the Almighty. Almighty as a title for God, it basically states, this ties again into sovereignty, but it states that God claims right over all things by virtue of his power.

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This is because all things are subjected to him as he made all things. And thus he presides as the sovereign and judge over all creation.

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He's the giver of life and he is the law giver, the one from whom all authorities derive their own power.

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So God as Almighty grants might to his creation, to men, to beasts.

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So man possesses power in the same way that God possesses power, but only insofar as it is granted to them by this

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Almighty God. To abuse or transgress this power is actually a grave injustice because it is actually insulting to God's own power because the power which they exercise wrongly is a participation in God's own power and thus to misuse this power and act unjustly is to blaspheme

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God himself. But that would basically be the idea of God being

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Almighty. And from this, there actually is a wonderful, practical application that we take from this.

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One of the things that God has the ability to do being Almighty is the ability to grant eternal life, to change your status.

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You go from being someone who is under the wrath and condemnation of God in time to being granted access to the throne of God, to eternal life because you have the

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Lord Jesus Christ as your advocate who pleads your case before the Father. And because God is

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Almighty, he can pardon you of your sins. He can redeem you. And so a place we can go to see this is actually, where we'll end, it will be the

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Heidelberg Catechism question and answer 26. And the question is this, what do you believe when you say,

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I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth? And the answer to that is, that the eternal father of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, who out of nothing created heaven and earth and everything in them, who still upholds and rules them by his eternal counsel and providence is my

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God and father because of Christ the son. I trust God so much that I do not doubt he will provide whatever

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I need for body and soul and will turn to my good, whatever adversity he sends upon me in this sad world.

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God is able to do this, why? Because he is Almighty God and desires to do this because he is a faithful father.

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So God is able to do all these wonderful things because he's Almighty. And why does he do it? Because our status has been changed.

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We have been adopted. He is no longer just the judge over us, but he now is our own faithful father.

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And that is the attribute of God as Almighty in a nutshell. So I got a little daughter and she is just learning to walk.

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And when she looks at me, she'll put her hands up, right? Cause she wants me to pick her up or help her walk.

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Or she looks at me as like stronger, more powerful, obviously.

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And I know that's obviously a very imperfect parallel because it's not even close to,

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God is the source of all our life, right? And you can say, I guess my daughter, I'm the source of my daughter's life, my wife and I, but not in the same way.

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But there is this dependency that she has and a recognition that she's incapable at such a young age.

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And I think that's my reaction to this attribute of God. And it should be our Christian reaction, right?

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That he is capable of moving any mountain. And whatever situation you find yourself in,

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I mean, that is the application. God is powerful enough to get you through it and bring a positive end, a positive conclusion.

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There must be a complete dependency on him because of this. That's the application of my mind.

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And when we try to walk when we can't, when we try to do things that only

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God can do, we fall down, we look silly, right? And so there are things that are gonna always be beyond the scale that God's given us and that's where we have to leave it to him.

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So that was the initial thought I had. What do you think of as far as application?

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I mean, that's gotta be one. I'm sure there's others. Yeah, I think for application, the big thing about application and I would say like in regard to the sermon or just in regard to just doing theology in general for your own personal study is further establishing the relational characteristics of God in relation specifically to you.

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So thinking, okay, like we should study theology and the things of God in and of themselves because it is valuable in and of itself because God is of infinite value and we of course will benefit.

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But like part of the big thing with Almighty is like how that question or how the answer to the question from the

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Heidelberg Catechism ended there was how it spoke of how God is able to because he's

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Almighty but God desires to because he is a faithful father. So the very fact that God can be our father derives from the fact that he is all powerful and Almighty.

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So I think part of that is there's a comfort in the fact that God loves and cares for you.

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Why? Because he is able to do so. His desires and affection for you are grounded in his ability to do that.

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And you may wonder, well, why does God need an ability to do that? Isn't it very easy to just love someone?

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And to that, you just need to laugh and think, okay, when somebody wrongs you, how easy is it to love them?

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I find it incredibly difficult to love those who do me wrongly. It's very hard if you feel very betrayed.

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Even if you forgive someone, it's difficult for trust to be restored. That has to happen over a period of time.

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And even if it does happen over a period of time, trust may never fully be restored, even if they're forgiven. But in the snap of a finger, in an instant,

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God decided to take you in. He made you his, he adopted you, he claimed you as his own, he marked you as his.

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And so the fact that God has the ability to do that, that God has saved you from sin and salvation shows that stems from him being almighty.

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And also the fact that we're not necessarily promised a peaceful life necessarily, or a life of flourishing and all that.

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But regardless, God is able to carry you through the trials. Why is he able to?

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Because he is almighty. Yeah. So I think another thing is,

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I'm gonna go out on a limb. This is kind of, I guess, a bold thing to say in a way, but I don't think most pastors, oh man, that's such a,

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I really am going out on a limb saying this. Uh -oh. Most, all right, I'll say it this way.

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Most of the popular pastors, I won't say all pastors, but most of the popular pastors, I don't know if they believe this completely.

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And we struggle in our own lives at times to fully trust God, right? And to believe that he actually is powerful enough to meet a situation.

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But doing the work that I've done, especially living through 2020, I think the fear of man, the fear of the government especially, and power, powerful institutions, we really did see an experiment in real time where so many

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Christian institutions and a lot of them with pastors on their boards and pastors who are writing for them and running them, they showed where their true fear is, it's who they really thought was powerful, who they really thought made the rules.

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And it doesn't seem like it was the Lord Jesus Christ who said to meet on Sunday or to, the

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Lord Jesus Christ who doesn't put any racial or ethnic barriers between someone and the gospel or church leadership or any of these things that the

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Bible talks about, understanding the word. But there was a lot of people that went along with all of this, right?

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So anyway, I think just a good dose of stories that from the scripture and maybe even from church history that reinforce this attribute of God and really believing this attribute of God cures that, because it's the fear of God that he can, what does

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Jesus say, right? Fear the one who can kill, to destroy the soul in hell over the person who can destroy the body.

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God's truly almighty, even when it looks like everyone else is scary and powerful and can hurt you.

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So, and docks you. So, I figured I'd get that in there. Let's maybe switch gears a little bit here.

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We do have comments coming in and I wanna remind everyone, if you do have a comment or a question to share, you can do that during the course of this.

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We're gonna talk a little bit about the last week, was it last week or the week before?

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I can't remember when we last did a pod, I think it was last week. Last week, yeah. We talked about AI, right?

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Right, so you got most of it though. We talked about AI. And one of the things that we kind of maybe skipped along the surface on is this idea of transhumanism.

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And AI is seen as a means to that end. Transhumanism is the end that many utopians and futurists are banking on.

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They actually have a optimism about technology that we're going to get to the point where things like Neuralink are going to help us bind with technology, connect to AI.

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We're going to be able to connect to the internet of things and have all the available knowledge that humans have amassed at our fingertips and possibly cheat death.

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I mean, that's the ultimate goal here because if we can switch out parts, if we can have, let's say, we can grow parts of our body in labs, organic biological material using cloning technology and that kind of thing, then we can effectively just transplant organs.

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We can take our consciousness, maybe we can download it. I mean, there's all kinds of directions that people think this goes.

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And it's kind of scary to talk about that. People, Christians especially, I think, get nervous

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I think the dispensational folks start to think in terms of like, this is the mark of the beast and we're going to be raptured out of here soon and that kind of thing.

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But I think everyone gets a little nervous with this kind of talk. But I think we do need to talk about it because it's an alternative religion in a sense.

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It's an optimism in man's perfectibility and that sin won't keep us back.

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We will actually have eternal life. So we'll break, we'll cheat the curse that God put on man because of death, right?

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The day that Adam disobeyed God, that was the day that he would surely die. And death is separation, separation from the body.

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And Adam degraded and eventually died. It took him a while, but we're going to get to this point supposedly that where some people think we're not going to have death anymore.

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I don't know if you listen to these guys. I referenced Ray Kurzweil a lot because I used to listen to him years ago, not because I was into what he said, but because I was curious about what he said because it was so weird, but he has that belief.

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He takes like an incredible amount of supplements every day. And he thinks if he lasts long enough, he may be able to actually live forever.

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And you think it's nuts, but there's people who actually really believe this at very high levels, very smart people, right?

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So what do we do as Christians? How do we respond to this kind of thing? So do you,

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I don't know if you read anything or know anything about this. You want to add to any of that, Matthew? I haven't looked too deeply into this.

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I have my obvious concerns though, but I'm more familiar with the case of Brian Johnson and not the liver

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King Brian Johnson, the roided out freak, but the weird vegan Brian Johnson that takes like a million supplements a day.

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And it's like, has like all these like red lights on them all the time and like does these things. And he like injects his own younger son's blood into himself to make himself a younger, whatever.

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I can tell you haven't heard of that, John, but I've seen some of what he does. And yeah, it's very odd, but I think one of the funniest things about that is like, obviously maybe they say, oh, you can live like long insofar as you're preventing natural death from occurring.

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But I mean, the thing is, is that if they think they can just like live forever, like there are still, you know, the

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Lord numbers everyone's days. And even if you do manage to prevent, you know, dying from natural causes, like they're very obviously is still the chance of, you know, something catastrophic happening.

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And to me, it seems as if it's just man attempting to, you know, subvert the sovereignty of God, failing to realize that, you know, providence is out there and providence is over you.

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You do not escape the eye of providence. And part of providence includes the day of your death.

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And it's not the same thing as like, you know, the ancient Greek understanding of fate where there wasn't sort of a rhyme or reason for it.

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Even the gods were subjected to fate. Even Zeus bowed down before fate, but like there's a very particular reason behind death.

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And like, it happens because of the fall and the Lord has a good reason behind it all, even if we in this life don't fully understand it.

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Yeah, wow. I have not, I mean, I've heard about that, but I didn't know anyone who was publicly saying they were doing that with blood.

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Yeah, he is. And you gotta think about, like I haven't really processed this deeply, but why is that disturbing, right?

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Why is that? Like you could, he probably thinks it's no big deal. Like my son's fine, right? But it's like,

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I don't know, like the life is in the blood. There is something sacred about this. And when you go,

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I mean, I've given to a Red Cross like once in my life because I hate trying blood, but I know it's a good thing and people do it.

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My dad does it all the time. And you're giving them your life in the case of an accident or something.

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And I don't know, there's just, there's something I can't quite quantify in words about it, but taking that from, taking that life force from your child like that just seems out of the created order.

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It just seems like out of step, wrong. Something's demonic about it or just weird.

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John, if it helps you feel any better, in the private chat, I just sent an article where it says, I'm no longer injecting my son's blood.

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And then it says, Brian Johnson, he abandons the blood infusions for just plasma exchange. So he's just getting his good plasma now.

26:20

Yeah, so he stepped away from the blood. Nevermind, it's all is well and good. Yeah, well, we have an article and I'll just read, it's pretty short, so we'll just go through it.

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But this is an article that describes some of this issue.

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And I don't know, I just think it's good to go through.

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We could just stop. Let me, I'm trying to, can you see that? Everyone can see that, right?

26:47

Okay, good, I switched screens. So the case for Christian burial, a remedy for transhumanism by Doug Steffi.

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Society's approach to death, he says, and dying has fallen on hard times. Euphemisms such as passing away and celebration of life aim to ease the sting of death.

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Death and dying is frequently outsourced to nursing homes and hospitals, preventing the mortality of loved ones from serving as a memento mori, remembering that you shall likewise die.

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I've noticed a parallel cultural trend, cremation and replacement for longstanding custom of burial. He's absolutely right on this, because I've noticed that too.

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And usually it's economic factors, but it seems like everyone's cremated today. I don't know if you noticed that, but when

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I was a kid, it wasn't that way quite as much. It just seems like that's accelerating. So anyway, this shift is evident to anyone who attends a funeral somewhat regularly and statistics confirm those observations.

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According to the Cremation Association of North America, the percentage of Americans who chose cremation rose from 38 % in 2009 to almost 62 % in 2024.

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The National Funeral Directors Association expects that number to eclipse 80 % by 2045. With those numbers in context, only 3 .6

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% of Americans chose cremation in 1960. I'm gonna stop there for a moment and just take a breath and analyze that, because I'm sure there's economic factors, but boy,

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I have to think this has something to do with trying to kind of,

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I don't know, not be confronted with death and things that make you uncomfortable.

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Churches don't really actually have graveyards anymore. That's not even something that's, all the modern churches that you see, even if they look like traditional buildings, of course, most look like strip malls or some kind of a corporate building now, but even if they look like a traditional building,

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I've yet to see one that takes into account a cemetery. That just doesn't happen.

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And how many of those kinds of things are we separated from now? We don't kill our own animals, right?

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Less people are hunting, less people are on farms. We're so separated from death. And this is just one more example of that in my mind, because when you go to a funeral, and I'm not trying to knock anyone, by the way,

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I understand there's situations, and I get it, but when you go to a funeral and it's a cremation and all you see are pictures there, it is sad, but there is something about a casket, especially an open casket, my goodness, but just a casket, knowing that there's a shell in there, there's a body in there, it sobers you up in ways that I just don't think happen when it's cremation.

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So some people have never been to an open casket, actually. Have you been to one, Matthew, an open casket?

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No, I don't believe I have. Actually, no, I have been to an open casket funeral. There was someone

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I knew back during high school and he passed away tragically, and I went to his funeral last year and his was an open casket.

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Okay, yeah, so I've been to several of those and it's sobering, I guess, when that happens.

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You can see the shell of the person, at least. Anyway, the article goes on and it says, man justifies the choice to cremate financially over concern for the environment or for familial flexibility.

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These, however, fail to explain the aforementioned universality of Christian burial, at least until very recently, regardless of time, place, cost, or convenience.

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These justifications may indeed be secondary motivations for cremation, but I would contend that the Christian acceptance of cremation is just one effect of a more serious underlying cause, an understanding of Christian anthropology that diminishes the value and goodness of the body in a way that is at odds with both scripture and the

30:30

Christian tradition. So I'll just be open a little bit. So my wife just, like maybe two years ago, almost now, her mother died unexpectedly.

30:41

And they go back a long ways in the Catskill Mountains and they have a family funeral. Actually, it's land that belonged to their family that they gave to,

30:51

I guess, the town and they made it into a funeral, or sorry, what am I saying, a graveyard. And so there's a lot of extra costs, just so people know this.

31:02

There are a lot of extra costs that obviously go into preserving a body and that kind of thing. But if you're not concerned with that, if you can do a funeral very quickly, then you don't have to pay, a lot of those fees go away.

31:19

So I just, food for thought, we just went through this and you can save substantial amount.

31:25

Obviously, it helps to have your own plot and everything like that. But yeah, it's very expensive if you just go to like a normal graveyard or cemetery and you wanna put a body there.

31:42

But he talks about the universality of this. He says that Christians have long maintained that humans are created as both body and soul, while angels are exclusively spiritual and animals exclusively physical.

31:53

Mankind has been uniquely created by God as being a composite of both the physical and spiritual, possessing both a body and a soul is central to what it means to be human.

32:02

The church has little difficulty with the soul. It is eternal, important and in need of redemption. The body on the other hand is where uncertainty sets in.

32:10

Is the body temporary, eternal or partially both? If it's temporary, then how important is it?

32:16

Is the body in need of a redemption? The answers to these questions will affect how we handle the physical bodies of those whose souls have departed.

32:23

The reformed tradition provides some helpful clarity. Westminster says that bodies of believers being still united to Christ do rest in their graves until the resurrection.

32:33

And Matthew Henry comments that their souls are in his presence and their dust is under his care and power.

32:39

It also says in the Westminster that all the dead shall be raised up with self, same bodies and none other all though with different qualities.

32:49

In short, the body remains in union with Christ and under his care after death. And that same body will itself be raised in glory while we must balance these truths with passages that emphasize the mortality and lowliness of our earthly bodies.

33:02

It is also true that our body's eternally a part of who we are. Our body is perishing, not into nothingness or replacement but rather into death and resurrection.

33:11

Maybe we'll stop there for a moment and talk about this. Jesus obviously had a resurrected body, which was different.

33:20

I mean, he went through walls, but he also had the scars in his hands and he was recognizable that that was

33:28

Jesus. Even though his body was different. And we're told that that's the kind of body we're going to have.

33:33

We're gonna have a resurrected body. And I don't know what that looks like, but this has been part of the

33:39

Christian tradition to bury. And so many questions come up with this. Like, well, what if you die at sea?

33:46

What if fish eat you? What if you were cremated? And like, what's gonna happen then?

33:53

Is it, are you just, how does God figure that out? Because that's such a puzzle, right?

33:59

And I don't know the answer to that, but I trust God because he's all powerful. He's, as we've talked about, right?

34:06

He's mighty and he can figure that out. But there is, it is odd to me that for thousands of years, this is how

34:18

Christians in general treated this. And all of a sudden, this is the anomaly that we don't do this anymore.

34:25

So thoughts, Matthew? Yeah, a few. First off, like a very important principle, which is it's very common in the

34:36

Christian tradition, but it's been made popular in recent years due to discussions about Christian nationalism and things like that.

34:43

But it's like a very true principle that grace doesn't destroy nature. And so part of the idea of like the funeral with the traditional burial is like, yes, maggots and worms and just the course of time and things like that may erode at this body.

35:02

Regardless though, God will one day raise it up. And not only will he raise it up, but he won't cast it away.

35:07

He will make it anew. God will put back together what sin has taken apart.

35:15

And the fact that Christ rose again bodily goes to show that Christ not only lived in the body a perfect life, but he died a perfect death.

35:26

And in dying a perfect death and then living a perfect life with the both of those going together, he's able to raise himself anew unto life eternal bodily, such that he redeems a body.

35:38

So everything that that which Christ assumes, he redeems. And Christ in assuming a body and redeeming our body of death and in raising with his, he makes us new.

35:49

And that is what the traditional funeral attests to is that though this is just a shell now,

35:57

God will one day raise us up and make it anew. And even though like when many

36:04

Christians go against cremation, we're not saying that God can't raise a cremated body.

36:09

If God was able to make from the dust of the earth, Adam, surely he can make a new body from the dust of ashes that happened in cremation.

36:17

But regardless, it's not about like God's ability to do that. Remember, as we talked on the beginning, God's almighty, he can do what he wants with that.

36:24

The idea is like, what are you communicating through this funeral? Are you communicating the importance of the body?

36:32

The fact that Christ redeemed the body or you just communicating that the body didn't really mean anything.

36:38

It was just a shell. It was, that's all it was. And now the soul, no, like God doesn't just save,

36:45

God doesn't just save us soul, but he saves us body and soul. Just because our body still rests, that doesn't mean that God won't one day redeem us.

36:52

But I mean, I'm talking in circles at this point, but I just, it's just so important that like fundamental to the

36:59

Christian religion. And this is because of the fact that of course, Christians, we have positive things to say about each other.

37:04

We define ourselves by a positive vision, but part of the way that orthodoxy is defined is in opposition to heresy.

37:11

And literally like one of the earliest heresies in the early church was the various forms of Gnosticism.

37:19

I mean, like you read the very beginning of 1 John, John's like that which we have seen, which we have touched, which we have heard with our own ears.

37:25

You read the gospel of John where Jesus is, or where Thomas is touching Jesus's hands. You look all throughout it, it's like this idea of the body.

37:35

It's so important because like you either have people that are overly carnal or people that completely deny any carnal facets of religion.

37:44

And Christianity and its purest form of religion is the greatest expression of a fusion of the spiritual and the carnal together because Christ redeems us body and soul.

37:55

Yeah, that's great. Well said. Yeah, there's so many things to say and so many things that you could speculate on, but we just don't know, right?

38:04

Like what is your, what does that body look like? Is it like Jesus at 33?

38:10

Are we all 33? Are we all at the prime of our life? What about the babies? If you think babies do go to heaven, right?

38:17

What about those who are young, let's say, or 10 years old, we'll say, to avoid that discussion?

38:23

Are they gonna be older? Are the elderly gonna be younger? What about someone who got burned in a plane crash?

38:28

Are they gonna? So I don't know the answer to all those. I just know, I mean, it'd be kind of be weird though, right?

38:35

Like you're in heaven and your grandpa comes up to you and he's your age, but just like, I don't know.

38:41

I don't know what that would do, right? Our relationships will be different. There's this one book by Thomas Watson called

38:47

The Privileges of the Covenant of Grace. And he actually, he tackled that sort of thing of like knowing somebody in the, after the resurrection.

38:55

Cause he basically says that like, it's a bit absurd to suppose that you won't be, you'll be in heaven and you won't be able to recognize

39:01

Abraham. But have you ever seen Abraham? No, you haven't. But part of like this redemption of the body is, and not only the redemption of the body, but the redemption of the mind is that you'll be able to know someone so fully and their body will be redeemed in such a way that everyone will be knowable by like who they truly are.

39:19

I forget the way that he phrases it is so good, but. It sounds like a major dox to me though.

39:25

Like. Yeah, heaven's one big dox and it's okay. Heaven is one big dox.

39:31

You go, yeah. So all Christians are going to be doxed guys. I'm sorry. Yeah. I mean,

39:36

I guess. Oh, that could be such a good Jesus juke. Dude, that could be such a great Jesus juke. Everyone's going to be doxed one day.

39:42

Quit being a, quit being a nun. Right? We should just dox everyone now, right?

39:48

It's going to be in the eternal state. Yeah, that's what we call emanatizing the eschaton though.

39:53

I know, I know, I know, I know. Oh, anyway, that was good. Anyway. So we're going to receive this new body where, but it's going to be, so it is connected to the body we have now, right?

40:08

It is not, it is the body we have now, but resurrected. That's the thing. It's a metamorphosis that happens.

40:15

It's a trans. I was thinking too of the transfiguration, right? Didn't they recognize

40:21

Moses and Elijah were there? That's where Thomas Watson like sort of builds on that speculation's effect that they were able to recognize them despite the fact that like,

40:30

I mean, unless you want to accept like an Eastern Orthodox thesis that they were all venerating icons of the prophets and those icons so happen to accurately reflect them.

40:36

And that's how they recognize them. But I think we both know that's a little preposterous, but yeah. Sorry, Christian, I love you, bro.

40:44

Yeah, I was going to say, you want to, maybe your wedding party's not going to be happy with that. The coming battle of transhumanism.

40:53

This is where we come into the transhumanism stuff. The implications of an improper understanding of body and soul are of course far -reaching.

40:59

Ben Dunson recently explained its importance in combating radical transgender ideology over American reformer.

41:06

Likewise, just as cremation diminishes the natural body in comparison to the soul, many today neglect political involvement by diminishing the natural kingdom in favor of the spiritual kingdom alone.

41:16

Physical discipline is ignored in favor of spiritual disciplines, forgetting that each supports and strengthens the other.

41:22

The list could go on. Ultimately, we need an understanding that is both and and either or. What one fight that Christians appear to be particularly unprepared for is the ethical debate surrounding

41:32

AI and transhumanism. Transhumanism, and he describes what we just talked about, so I'm going to skip ahead.

41:38

He says creation and transhumanism make the same anthropological error, cremation rather, in that both suggest a belief that the body is ancillary to our existence as humans, while cremation handles the problem of death by destroying the body.

41:54

Transhumanists aim to solve the problem of death by offering a cheap counterfeit to the Christian understanding of the immediate and eternal state of believers after death.

42:02

All right, I'm going to read a little bit more, and then, oh, it's almost over, okay. Take the concept of mind uploading, for example, where transhumanists advocate for scanning the human brain and then copying its contents onto a computer so you could,

42:14

I guess, live in digital form forever. So the problem, he says, is that there's a similar separation of body and soul, but the body is deemed irrelevant and discarded, and the soul is present in a computer rather than with Christ.

42:26

The transhumanist notion of body hacking, on the other hand, aims at the enhancement of the body through technology and thus pursues an imitation of the eternal state.

42:34

For believers, the eternal state is on our soul to be reunited with our bodies, and those bodies, as Westminster says, have different qualities.

42:42

All right, so as AI grows, it won't be long before humans can increase their IQ, enhance their strength, and slow the aging process through technology.

42:50

Will we succumb to the allure of this pseudo -resurrected body or cling to the hope of the resurrection?

42:56

This is a good question. I actually am somewhat, and maybe I'm naive, but I am somewhat,

43:02

I don't know, like I'm not as ambitious and bullish on AI and transhumanism.

43:10

Like, I actually don't think that they're gonna be able to do some of the things they think that they're gonna be able to do. For example, uploading your consciousness to a digital device, like a hard drive,

43:21

I don't think that's going to be possible. And I don't know, why do I think that? I guess just, because I don't,

43:28

I know that there's electronic impulses in our mind and that kind of thing, but there is, we have a soul, and that soul is so intrinsic to who we are, and that's not something that can be put in a digital frame.

43:42

You can't, it's not just the contents of our brain. There's something that's spiritual about us that computers can't have, that they don't have.

43:51

AI doesn't have it. And it's somewhat hard to describe, and people try to describe it in different ways.

43:59

It's abstract thinking. It's, I don't know, it's the ability, I mean, I know previous generations have thought it's like the ability to do art and these kinds of things, but now you have

44:08

AI obviously making images. Whatever it is, this spiritual thing that we have that separates us from the animals and the robots and the plants, it's not going to be able to make that leap,

44:22

I don't believe at all. That's a theological commitment, I suppose, that I have, because I believe what

44:27

God said. I believe that we are going to die.

44:33

It is pointed for man once to die, and then the judgment. We are going to die.

44:38

It is a reality. And there's no way to capture this temporary life that we have.

44:47

You can't do it. Life is a breath. It's always going to be a breath. So that's just my theological understanding of it.

44:53

But these schemes to me, they strike me as like every social justice or utopia and egalitarian scheme is the same thing.

45:02

It's always like there's this heavenly state that we can experience now on earth.

45:08

We can bring it heaven down. We don't have to face God on judgment day. I think that's what this is all about. Even though people would maybe say that they're just looking at technology and numbers and math and that kind of thing.

45:21

I don't think this is just that. I think that this is a purposeful avoidance or at least an illusion of avoidance that you can avoid

45:30

God's judgment. That's what I think is going on. So, Matthew. Yeah, I think that's definitely part of it.

45:38

I definitely have my skepticism about this notion that you can upload your consciousness in a computer because first off, the logistics of that, regardless of there's electric waves in there,

45:49

I simply just think that the idea of uploading your consciousness to a computer, I think that's basically just science fiction movie stuff.

45:58

Second, let's grant that it is possible. That's not your conscience though. If anything, that's just like with AI, it's literally just gonna be examining your moral framing and compass in the way you act.

46:11

And it's just gonna be predicting what you would do or what you would say in certain circumstances.

46:16

And AI can already do that in some point. While you were talking, John, I went on to Grok and I asked him, explain the

46:23

Big Bang Theory to me in the manner that John Harris would from the Conversations That Matter podcast. And it gave me a whole thing.

46:29

And it phrased it in a way that I can literally hear you saying all this stuff.

46:35

Like AI can already basically do this. Does it mean that it's you explaining it? No, it's a computer mimicking your voice pattern.

46:42

The way you talk, you're like what you've explained from your body of knowledge and it's doing that. And John, you just explained the

46:47

Big Bang Theory to me very well. So thank you for that. But yeah, I mean, I definitely do think there's a degree in which you're evading, trying to evade something, the inevitability of death.

46:59

People think that they're either going into the nothingness or they have this fear that like maybe there will be a sort of judgment.

47:07

And regardless of what you do believe about death, it is a scary thing because you know it's coming for you.

47:13

And it's just delaying the inevitable, really, so. Yeah, like people wanna be forever young.

47:20

They wanna be at their prime. And there's all kinds of things, health things, medical gurus, they'll sell you that and they'll say that you can.

47:29

And it's just not true. You're gonna degrade. I mean, so I think what's the,

47:35

I heard 27, I think. After 27, it's downhill. Probably depends on the person. But you know,

47:41

I don't have a hope now, right? I'm gonna be 36 in about a week. So I'm already on the downslope.

47:48

Even at 36, a young person, and maybe not to you, but some people, right, they would still say

47:53

I'm relatively young. But I know I'm middle -aged and it's, you know, every day I can work hard,

47:59

I can eat right, I can be healthy, but eventually it's gonna catch up. And our whole society seems built around innovation, novelty, being young, even, you know,

48:14

I don't know if you see this, Matthew, in your life. I know when I was younger, I remember a lot more older women especially looked like grandmas, you know, that stereotypical grandma look.

48:26

And I see so little of that today. Maybe more in the

48:32

South and the Midwest, but where I live in New York, it's like. They wanna stay young, man. What's that?

48:38

They wanna stay young, man. Yeah, well, they wanna look like it. They wanna, you know, they're gonna dress.

48:45

I remember people making fun of it, like in the late 90s, the grandmas who would wear clothes that looked like they were a teenager.

48:53

And same thing with, I guess, guys who do the same thing. But now it's just kind of common.

49:00

You could be like 75, 80, or even 85 years old and you could be dressing like someone who's 25 and it's,

49:07

I don't know, it's. They're not fooling me, I can tell. Right, I know, all right, yeah.

49:14

Yeah. It still looks silly to me a little bit. Yeah, but something I will say though is that in combating transhumanism and understanding that there is a day fixed for our death, there also is an opposite error, which is equally as heinous, which is basically a sort of fatalistic life assumption that because we're all gonna die one day, you can sort of live however you want.

49:41

It's like, oh, you know, I can smoke a pack or two a day. I can eat this garbage or whatever.

49:47

Live, marry, be happy. You only live once, you're going to die anyway, so just live a heathenistic lifestyle.

49:54

So there has to be the opposite direction where like when approaching the inevitability of death, the proper

50:01

Christian framework will combat both the transhumanist and the heathen. The transhumanist who tries to perpetually prolong his life through absurd feats and things like that versus the heathenistic person who disregards any attention to the body or pursuit of health and excellence because we'll all die one day anyway.

50:24

So that's why like, the thing is, is that John, you and I have a particular like form of politics, which a lot of people may call extreme when in reality it's just being a normal person.

50:37

But - Yeah, that's what I'd like to say. Yeah, exactly. But like, and so while we may like behind closed doors or even in front of people would be like, ha ha, yeah, we're extremist guys.

50:47

In reality, so much of life really does come down to just, hopefully I don't sound too much like Tim Keller here, but like just, you know, not literally being like in the center of not going to the extreme on like either side.

51:02

Like it really does come down to that all the time. And you see this with like the transhuman thing like in contrast to the hedonistic lifestyle, like there is the healthy biblical medium between the two.

51:17

And that doesn't mean like, you know, like creating a binary between any single decision and choosing the middle option all the time.

51:23

We don't wanna fall into like a third way as like garbage air or whatever. But it does mean like being willing to, if you see two things and you're like, that seems really preposterous, why don't we like try to assess with wisdom and discernment, what is the right option?

51:39

You do often find that you sort of have to land in like a middle course. And the only reason that's been obstructed is because the two like political options, like nowadays is just Republicans and Democrats, which are basically like in so many areas, they're way closer than they appear to be to the point where when we have normal, traditional like conservative or right -wing views, we're seen as extremists, but like, you know, that's very clearly not the case.

52:05

So that's what I would say regarding that is we do have to be careful to go to the opposite extreme and like live a hedonistic lifestyle or live in such a way where we don't care that we'll die one day.

52:16

And we don't feel a need to take after and look after our bodies because, oh, God has decreed the day we're gonna die. So it doesn't matter.

52:23

Yeah, good point. Yeah, you do need to try to take care of your body, obviously, I'm not, yeah.

52:29

So let's get to some of the comments that are coming in. We got

52:34

Ray who's saying, who is the guy you said, he's a former Mormon guy who was -

52:41

Brian Johnson. Brian Johnson, he's a former Mormon guy. Who would have thought? I guess maybe that makes sense of some of it.

52:49

I mean, if you're gonna own your own planet and live forever there, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I read the

52:54

Book of Mormon, but I don't remember that part. All right. Mehdi says 1500 compared to 10 ,000.

53:00

Okay, so that's like, I guess cremation versus burial. It's definitely financial. So I don't know exactly what we paid with our situation, but yeah,

53:13

I don't think it was that much. So we have the other Paul saying that on strip mall churches, the

53:19

Sydney Anglican Diocese was actually deliberate over the past three decades in new buildings looking as little like churches as possible, just plaster boxes for fellowship.

53:30

I am not surprised. Yeah. I am not surprised. Matthew, you've seen those McDonald's, maybe you're old enough to remember like the big play area with the characters.

53:41

Yeah, that was probably like ended when you were like seven or eight, maybe. I don't know. Yeah, it was very sad.

53:49

Because I played in those and I mean, McDonald's was the place to be. It was awesome. You didn't just look forward to a hamburger.

53:56

You look forward to a toy and then you got to play and you met friends. And now it looks like a

54:02

Starbucks and they're doing the same thing to churches. They're just killing them all.

54:08

I don't know what it is. Something is very bad in our culture though. They wanna make things look like Soviet architecture.

54:19

All right, Mr. Khan says, growing up in an Asiatic pagan family for the most part, cremation is certainly a pagan mindset since the mindset is indoctrinated by the diluted fantasy of a reincarnation.

54:32

And by the way, I don't know how you feel about it, Matthew. I just wanna say, I'm not, I understand their circumstances.

54:39

I'm not as hardcore probably as the gentleman who wrote this article. Like I don't think it's a sin necessarily to cremate.

54:47

It is out of step with the Christian tradition though. And you do need to ask yourself why. And so I realize every situation's different though.

54:54

So I just wanna. I don't think it's sin either, but I still think it's, you can call something bad that is not intrinsically sinful.

55:04

And I think that's the case with cremation is that it's not communicating the message of the resurrection and particularly the bodily nature of the resurrection through its symbolism that physical human burial is.

55:17

You can argue about finances and things like that, all you want and convenience. But at the end of the day, it's like, the celebration of someone deceased, like a purely like, are you just trying to be like purely financial with it?

55:28

Like, I just think that it's culturally, like there is in value and importance in communicating what we as Christians testify about the body.

55:38

Not just what we read and believe in our theology books, but how we actually practice our daily life. Because Christianity, when it first started to arise in the first century, it wasn't just like a new set of religious tenants or, oh, this weird new

55:51

Jewish sect that's beginning to include Gentiles or where they think this carpenter dude rose from the dead or something.

55:57

It's not just that. It wasn't, though some people looked at it like that, but it was called the way because it was a lifestyle.

56:04

It was the manner. It wasn't just like a vague philosophical dogmatic principles, but it was a complete subversion of how people lived their life at the time.

56:17

And so if we're willing to testify the resurrection in our theology books, but not in our practical life, then what good is it to say you believe in the resurrection?

56:27

Yeah, no, I totally agree. All right, let's get to a few more here. We got

56:32

Romans 8 shaman saying, I think deracination is an element in cremation. If you have lived in the same place for a long time, wouldn't know where to be buried.

56:40

I don't want to think about it for myself and what's left of my, and it got cut off. I think, yeah, probably body.

56:47

Yeah, that's probably true. Javier says, that's where the store forever 21 came from when we were talking about clothing.

56:55

And he says, both of us are sensible centrists. Thank you Javier. So true. That is true.

57:01

I'm a moderate liberal. I was actually talking to CJ yesterday. I was doing an interview with him and he was saying that he's like,

57:08

I'm just a moderate. So true, yeah. So true, so true. I'm just a classic

57:13

American progressive guys. Yeah, right, right. That is so true though.

57:19

Yeah, like not to get on that tangent, but yeah, if you'd believe what Woodrow Wilson believed, you're a raging

57:24

Christian nationalist, white supremacist, crazy dude, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm, yeah,

57:30

I'm far to the right of Woodrow Wilson because I'm a centrist is really what it is. Yeah, yeah. Matthew is now

57:36

George Wallace posting. Are you really George Wallace posting? I have not done so. I may have been a comment

57:42

I've said, which may have echoed a remark of George Wallace. That reminds me, I was reading a biography of him last summer and I have not finished and I should probably start reading it again.

57:51

There's a really good YouTube documentary. It's probably the only documentary that comes up when you type in George Wallace.

58:01

And I had a few years ago, am I? Because I'm such a centrist. That's why I'm admitting to this. But, and I go through this with a lot of people.

58:08

I had like a George Wallace, like for a few days, I just like started, I watched this documentary and Pat Buchanan was in it, by the way.

58:16

And so, you know, it's a good documentary. And I just, I started listening to like all these George Wallace speeches because I really wanted to understand, you know, why

58:25

Lynyrd Skynyrd said in Birmingham, they love the governor. And then, you know, we all did what we could do.

58:32

Yeah. We, you know, what was that about? What were they saying and what was going on? And it was, he is one of the most fascinating political characters and his party, what was it called?

58:44

The American Reform Party or something? I thought he was just a Democrat. No, well, he was a

58:50

Southern Democrat, but no, he actually, I think he ran for the American Independent Party in 1968. If you read the platform for the

58:58

American Independent Party, it basically is MAGA. It's Pat Buchanan, it's

59:05

Donald Trump. And Pat Buchanan says that in the documentary, he's like, listen,

59:11

George Wallace doesn't give credit because he was a segregationist. And by the way, he actually, in his later life, there was an assassination attempt on him.

59:23

And after that event, he like had a come to Jesus moment and he won, what office was he?

59:30

Maybe he was a governor again, because he was governor for a while of Alabama, but he actually won on the black vote.

59:36

So the black people were voting for him and he wasn't a segregationist anymore. He actually met with Jerry Falwell.

59:42

Like, I think they started becoming friends late in life, but that's another story. And I'm like getting, you know, nerding out on it.

59:49

I probably shouldn't. My grandfather, who lived in Alabama for a while, him and my grandma and one of my uncles, he was actually like a huge George Wallace fan.

01:00:00

And I believe he, yeah, he knew his secretary like personally and was friends with him.

01:00:05

He was apparently like a super nice guy. Like he could walk into a store, haven't seen you in eight years, and he would remember your name and the name of your kids.

01:00:15

Like that's the mind he had, yeah. But it's interesting listening to him speak at places like Berkeley.

01:00:22

He would go into the belly of the beast. He would go into places he was the most hated and he would handle the crowds in such like a gentlemanly way most of the time.

01:00:33

I don't know, it's an interesting case study. And now everyone's gonna say we're pro -segregation and stuff and I'm not saying that.

01:00:39

I'm just saying like he was, he was kind of a monumental political figure that doesn't get the credit he deserves.

01:00:47

And he was a complicated figure. He changed during the course of his life on a number of things. And I think it's just a,

01:00:54

I don't know, it's a cool American story to just to read about. I think, you know, all American stories just about are cool.

01:01:00

I actually had this recently with Jimmy Carter. I started after he died, I started like a few days. I was just like nerding out about everything

01:01:07

Jimmy Carter. And that's an interesting story too. But all right, well,

01:01:12

I guess we're, yeah, we've been going about an hour, a little over an hour. So yeah, yeah, we're good.

01:01:18

Anything you wanna add to any of that? Nope, I think we've about covered it.

01:01:24

All right, well, I hope everyone has a 4th of July that's really good and that you just America max and enjoy fireworks and all the rest.

01:01:34

It's a great time. I'm gonna be grilling or not grilling, sorry. I'm gonna be actually smoking some ribs and pulled pork and that kind of thing.

01:01:43

And, you know, whatever you're doing out there, you know, God bless, stay safe and we'll see you on the other end.