Home-Steeped Hope

This has been an interesting topic indeed! Please read all three posts, but especially this disclaimer posted in Part 1:

Now don’t take this wrong. I realize state laws vary regarding our options when a loved one dies. And you might have chosen the cremation route for economical reasons, this is not in judgement of anyone’s decisions whatsoever. It is our soul and spirit that go on to heaven, or hell, not our body…and many saints have been burned at the stake or died in house fires or explosions. This is not about the body being gone, or unable to be resurrected on the day Jesus returns…this issue is merely, does God have anything to say about how we treat the bodies of our dead?

If you’ve read all three parts, then you know from Part 2, that I’ve formed a conclusion, that biblically, God wants us to honor the bodies of our loved ones when they die, and that in His economy, cremation is not honorable. Is it a sin? Well, I’m not here to say it is. I do know we are under grace, not law, and the more we study God’s word, the more He reveals to us of truth. The irony of this conversation is, what a way to be even more separate from the world, not only in the way we live, but in the way we deal with death.

In Part 1, I shared how my personal “death horror” was related to the embalming process. I didn’t want to have *that* done to my body, dead or alive! So cremation seemed a fairly innocent option. Well, certain things in the Bible (Old Testament law, and yes, I know we’re under grace) point against mutilation of the body…to me, embalming qualifies as mutilation. Definitively! Again, I’m not God, and I’m not saying embalming is or isn’t a sin. (I can see the comment section now–eek!) But it’s an option I’m not comfortable with.

So we were given a link to a resource guide to Home Funeral Care which seems right now, to be the answer for our family. I realize it’s not the path most people in modern society take…but it is the way of old, the preparing of a dead loved one’s body for burial. Remember the book passages I shared in Part 1, of how this can be a sacred offering, an act of reverencing and honoring a life, perhaps highly therapeutic in the grieving process.

I realize for this to work, one’s entire family has to be “with the program.” And that’s as it should be. My family’s conviction needn’t be yours. When it comes to burial decisions of grandparents, or parents, the decisions are often not ours to make. But it is a good topic to discuss before the fact, between husbands and wives, concerning their personal wishes, and in light of the loss of a child.

To make a more informed decision, be sure to check out the following:

• Federal Trade Commission Funeral Guide
• Resource Guide to Home Funeral Care
• Your state laws concerning home burials and funerals
• A very informative New York Times article about home burials and why you should consider going that route

Our state laws require embalming unless burial takes place within 24 hours of death, or if the body is kept on dry ice. Many states also permit burial of family members on their own rural property. These things are good to know ahead of time. There are also quite a number of wooden casket companies available online, that provide caskets quite affordably. Some even ship flat for storage in the garage rafters perhaps, for the family to assemble together when needed–another rite of passage experience in the grieving and letting-go process. Some coffins even double as bookshelves, coffee tables and entertainment centers until they need to be used. Here are a few casket companies to check out:

• Ark Wood Caskets
• Caskets By Design
• ABC Caskets Company
• Oregon Wood Caskets
• Living Hope Woodwork
• Lowest Cost Caskets
• Wood Caskets By John

Summing this topic up…

Don’t let the idea of home burials turn you off. They really are growing in popularity, mainly because you’re looking at an option that might cost you $250 max, compared to $6000-15,000 if you go the funeral home route.  The monetary savings isn’t what sold us though. We read several precious testimonials of those that prepared their loved one’s body, and were blessed by the healing it brought to the grieving process. Why not have a simple funeral service, on your own property if state laws allow, followed by a larger memorial service for the public at large if you so desire?

More important than these to the Christian, is to weigh our own convictions and ask prayerfully as we seek for truth in God’s word: What would the Lord have us do? Scripture says it best, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!

What that looks like for you and yours, is between you and God!

It seems to me that here in the USA we are in denial when it comes to dealing with death. We prepare for the births of our children, we prepare for their educational years, we save for retirement…and some people do pre-pay and plan out their funerals, and take out life insurance policies on their spouses. But when it comes to final decisions regarding cremation or burial, we might be making them too blithely, without wanting to give much thought to particulars–without consulting God’s word for answers.

So a couple of weeks ago, our Sunday evening Bible study veered into the topic of death when we were studying the life of Joseph, and his father Jacob, in Genesis 47:29-30, was emphasizing his desire that his body be returned to be buried in the land of his fathers. Suddenly we were all discussing this matter of Christian burial, and wanting to know if cremation was a biblical option. Our pastor decided we’d devote a couple of Sunday evening classes to the topic, and here I am, to share my notes.

First a couple of passages stand out to me:

1 Thessalonians 5:21-22, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil.”

Jeremiah 10:2, “Learn not the way of the heathen.”

Burning dead bodies has long been a heathen practice. Take India for example. We learned that cremation is centuries old in India. Did you know that Christians in India do not want to be associated with the heathens, and so they try to avoid cremating their loved ones when they die? Interesting.

Romans 15:4 tells us that the things written “aforetime were written for our learning“. In the Old Testament, in Genesis, we are given m.a.n.y. accounts of the deaths and burials of God’s people…so it seems we are given the scriptural example that burial is His way. Even in the New Testament we see Stephen, the first martyr, carried to his burial. Conversely, we see God using fire as punishment, as a way of showing forth His wrath.

• He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire
• When Aaron’s sons offered “strange fire” to the Lord, He sent a fire to consume their bodies
• Korah’s group was swallowed up by the ground and immediately after God sent fire to burn up 250 men that were there offering incense
• Idols were to be burned and destroyed
• Achan and his family and livestock were stoned and then burned

But Amos 2:1-2 was the most convincing for me…

Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I will not turn away [the punishment] thereof; because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime:

But I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth: and Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting, [and] with the sound of the trumpet:

Keep in mind, this is a PAGAN nation that *transgressed* by burning the bones of the King of Edom into lime! This pagan nation reaped bigtime punishment for what we Christians are ceasing to think twice about doing to our loved ones after death.

We reason it away though. We think, cremation is affordable. It’s sanitary. It’s just their body, not their soul or spirit. It’s easy. Our pastor pointed to Joseph’s bones…wouldn’t it have been easier to burn them rather than keep track of them for the 400 years the Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt, not to mention the hassle of carrying them around with them for 40 years of wandering in the wilderness before finally getting to put them to rest in the promised land? It kind of makes you think, doesn’t it? Why weren’t the Civil War soldiers’ bodies heaped in a big pile and burned after the battles? That would have been easier, cheaper, more sanitary, and less messy. But it would have been so disrespectful. Instead, burial “details” were sent out to bury the dead, because those men deserved a special, honorable burial. Can you see how desensitized we’ve become?

1 Corinthians 6:19 says that our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. Even though our spirit and soul are not there anymore, the temple is. God bought us–He owns our bodies. We should glorify God with our body, whether in life or in death.

Think about this a little more with me. Laws in the Old Testament forbid mutilation of the body. Are we “without natural affection” (2 Timothy 3:3)? A hundred years ago, when families prepared the bodies of their loved ones for burial, they called it a “decent, Christian burial.” Can you imagine them stoking up the fire outside and throwing their dead family member’s body into it? If we had to prepare our child for burial, would we choose to cremate? Could you burn the body of your pet when it dies? Most people, I would hope, would shudder at the thought. But we don’t have to “watch it happen”–so we sanitize it in our minds, we deny the horror of it.

Why did the Roman Catholic Church burn martyrs at the stake? To humiliate and dishonor their bodies. They actually exhumed the body of John Wycliffe, put it on trial, found his bones guilty and burned him at the stake. No doubt their intention was to dishonor this man and his work on the Holy Scriptures.

Romans 14:7-8 sums it up,

For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.

For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.

The Bible may not seem to summarily answer the question of cremation vs. burial for Christians, but it does put forth principles, that when studied, hold the answers. Do you agree?

Part 3 will deal with other options available to us when a loved one dies, because if you recall from Part 1, my horror at the embalming process is what turned me to consider cremation in the first place. So what is a gal to do? Stay tuned!

Read Part 1 here.

I’ve had some reading time lately, being “stoved up” but healing from  brown recluse spider bite after-effects…and came across this gem in a recent book by Christian historical author Jane Kirkpatrick. For context, the book, Where Lilacs Still Bloom chronicles the true life story of  German housewife Hulda Krager whose passion was hybridizing apples, daffodils, and lilacs on her family farm. Sadly, she outlived her husband and all of her children…so she was well-acquainted with death.

In the first half of the 1900′s, it was the family’s privilege to prepare their dead loved ones for burial. My heart went soft and weepy at the thought, as I read the following taken from Hulda’s musings of her daughter on page 301 of the book:

“I thought of Martha and how we’d bathed her body and dressed her, choosing the right dress, weeping as I gently brushed her cheeks, prayed over her, all the acts of reverence honoring her life.”

This musing of Hulda’s was triggered by something an undertaker confided in her when he was over in her lilac garden, collecting starts to give to grieving families who used his services. He said this:

“My work (is) filled with stories told when people are grief stricken and weakened by loss. They let me into their lives in the most intimate ways, dressing and caring for their loved one, something that used to be done at home.”

So by now you are wondering where this is heading, right? Here’s *my* personal context. In high school, I took an English Comp class in which we were required to read a “descriptive” article detailing the process by which a dead person is embalmed. Suffice it to say, that there article convinced me that cremation was much to be preferred over embalming. For one thing…as the undertaker in the above quote said, the process of preparing someone for burial is a very intimate one. I don’t like the idea much, but always thought it was one of those necessary “evils”, if you will. However, that aside, embalming is gory, mutilating…I could go on and on, but feel free to read up on it if you truly want to go there.  Cremation seemed much preferable to me, in addition to being much more economical. I don’t want to leave my family saddled with a lot of funeral expenses and debt. And I didn’t think there were any other choices really. But I’ve always been bothered by the idea of cremation…I don’t really want my children to have to process the fact that their mother’s body was burned up in a crematorium.

I never stopped to think about checking it out in the Bible. What does God say about cremation and burial? How did Christians do it in the Bible? I did have an interesting conversation about it with a friend about 3 weeks ago, in which we both agreed that it didn’t seem biblical, but we couldn’t say why exactly, other than it seemed to have a pagan origin…funeral pyres, etc.

I’ll leave you with the final words of Hulda Krager spoken about the ways she’d prepared her beloved daughter for burial…

“all the acts of reverence honoring her life.”

Is there anything “honorable” or “reverencing” about subjecting a loved one to cremation or embalming? Personally, I think not.

Now don’t take this wrong. I realize state laws vary regarding our options when a loved one dies. And you might have chosen the cremation route for economical reasons, this is not in judgement of anyone’s decisions whatsoever. It is our soul and spirit that go on to heaven, or hell, not our body…and many saints have been burned at the stake (another reason to rethink cremation?) or died in house fires or explosions. This is not about the body being gone, or unable to be resurrected on the day Jesus returns…this issue is merely, does God have anything to say about how we treat the bodies of our dead?

More on this soon, with scripture!