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I had a professor in college who taught that burial was a testimony to the Christian’s hope of a future bodily resurrection. Because of this, he said, a Christian should not be cremated.
Tullian Tchividjian, the senior pastor of New City Church in Southern Florida, posts some reflections from a recent men’s retreat the church had. Mike Wittmer, professor of Systematic Theology at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, was speaker for the retreat, and during the question and answer session someone asked the question:
“Given the fact that upon Christ’s return God will reunite our sinless souls with a sinless body, is it wrong to cremate your body when you die?”
Tullian relays Mike’s response:
Mike’s answer was stellar. He said that it depends on why you choose to do it. If it’s because you think that your physical body is of no value to God, then the answer would be yes, it is wrong to cremate your body. But there are other reasons why it would be fine to do so.
He also quotes a post by Michael Walker on the subject. Walker is the Theologian in Residence at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, TX. Here is some of what Walker has to say:
I think there are good “arguments” for and against the practice of cremation from a Christian perspective. I worry less about whether cremation poses any obstacles for God’s power to resurrect the dead, and more about how the practice can impact our attitude toward the physicality of life in the present. We do tend to treat our bodies as objects apart from ourselves, rather than part of our-selves. Pressing issues in bioethics offer plenty of good examples, and in the evangelical community it tends to be part and parcel of the larger world-denying rather than world-engaging spirituality. If ultimately, God’s plan is to redeem our bodies and indeed all creation, how should that impact the way we treat our own bodies and the creation now?
Do you think cremation is an acceptable practice for Christians? What reasons can you think of for or against it?
To see the question more clearly, consider the difference in capitalization between the ESV and NASB in Psalm 95:7:
(ESV)
“For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.”
(NASB)
“For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.”
I feel like the issue is not altogether unrelated to the style of clothes a person wears to church. The core of the issue is a tension between the transcendance and the immanence of God. Wearing a suit and tie on Sunday morning sends the message that God is “other than,” that he is high and exalted. T-shirts and jeans proclaim that God is near. He is involved in his creation and meets us where we are. Both emphases are necessary, and I think a lot of friction would be cooled if people could see this more.
The same is true with whether or not to capitalize the divine pronoun. When we sing Christmas carols, do we exhort one another to come and adore “Him” or “him”?
By capitalizing the pronoun we stress the transcendance of Jesus. He is the Him of hims, after all. But he is also near. A baby lying in a feed trough. He is most blessedly “him.”
All of this is to say I think the choice is a matter of preference. For what it’s worth, I incline toward a lower-case pronominalism. For example, I feel free to write, “Jesus gave his life as a ransom for many.” There was a day when my conscience would have been very jittery neglecting the shift key, but now I see that a lower-case “h” need not be disrespectful.
What do you think?
Things will be kicking off tonight at 7:00 with Sinclair Ferguson speaking on James 3:1-12. Tyler Kenney and I will be blogging the conference together for the DG Blog. I’m really looking forward to it.
Mike Anderson from the Resurgence blog will also be live-blogging the event. Here’s what he wrote:
I’ll be at the Desiring God Conference this Friday-Sunday, and will be live-blogging the whole thing. You can expect photos, video, updates, and my perspective on the event. You will be able to ask questions and I will be able to respond. This will all be on the front page of theResurgence.com. Keep coming back in the following days after the event—I’ll be posting interviews with the speakers.
I think this is going to be a great conference. Maybe I’ll see you there!
Terry Virgo announced today that Tim Keller will be addressing Newfrontiers leaders in February. He also includes an interview he did with Keller as a bonus. Here is Keller’s response to being asked about his approach to apologetics in his book The Reason for God:
Most apologetic books are really written for Christians, even the ones that purport to be written for non-believers. Almost always they are not careful and respectful enough of non-Christians’ concerns to be plausible at all. One of the most frequent responses I get from non-Christian readers is: ‘I’m not sure I agree with all this, but I must say this is the first book I’ve read by a Christian that didn’t treat me like I was an idiot.’ The book is nothing but a distillation of how we converse with non-believers in NYC. The fact that you consider it ‘unusual’ shows that we aren’t very adept at connecting with such folks.
Feel free to check out the whole interview. Keller talks about engaging culture, people who have influenced his ministry, how he came to New York City, his church, and evangelizing New Yorkers.
- Deadbolts
- Pesticide
- 911
- Counseling
- Open heart surgery
- Barbed wire fences
- Contact lenses
- Aspirin
- Security lights
- Caskets
Of course, I’m referring here to Adam and Even before they ate the fruit. The point here is to remember that the way things are now is not the way they always were, nor the way they always will be. After all, through the cross and resurrection of Jesus, God is bringing his people back to Eden.
The angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. (Revelation 22:1-3)
Are there any other things you would add to the list?
Denny Burk has some strong words for those who try play the “God’s will” card in winning a girl’s affection. He cites a post by S.M. Hutchens as a springboard:
A young woman whose family I have known for years called me for advice. She had just been told by a young man that after long and earnest prayer, after seeking the face of God for days, the Holy Spirit had informed him it was God’s will she form a romantic attachment with him. With little deliberation and equal gravity I informed her she could tell her swain and his Spirit to go jump in the lake, and add a boot in my name to their collective backside with her good riddance.
Then he adds his own frank counsel to the stew:
Since I am the Dean over a school of undergraduates, I would add my own specific application of this advice to Christian college students.
To the Gals: If a guy ever tells you that God has revealed to him that you are supposed to marry him, then you need to drop him like a hot potato. Head for the hills, and don’t look back.
To the Guys: If you ever feel the need to tell a gal that God has revealed to you that you are supposed to marry her, then you need to put your hand over your mouth and repent. It’s almost certain that your “revelation” is really just a baptized form of manipulation. Such talk reveals spiritual immaturity and is unbecoming of a man of God.
It’s very common for believers to pray before eating a meal. I think support for this practice comes from two places, at least:
Mark 8:6 — “And he directed the crowd to sit on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.”
Luke 22:19 — “And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’”
What I find curious, though, is that we don’t usually pray before snacks. I don’t see any qualitative difference between mashed potatoes and an ice cream sandwich. We are indebted to God for both.
What do you think? Does our hesitancy to pray before snacking indicate some mistaken assumptions about dinnertime blessings? Or perhaps a false distinction between the sacred and the secular…or in this case, the meal and the munchies?
Jacqueline Salmon from the Washington Post writes about a study released yesterday by the Institute for Studies of Religion out of Baylor University:
Congregants find megachurches offer more personal worship and sense of community than smaller churches, according to a study released yesterday that challenges the conventional wisdom that some large churches are too big to offer a spiritual experience.
Researchers at the Institute for Studies of Religion, who defined megachurches as those with more than 1,000 worshipers, found that their members were twice as likely to have friends in the congregation than members of small churches. They also displayed a higher level of personal commitment to the church — attending services and tithing more often than small-church members.
Interestingly, one of the keys to achieving a more personal feel is small groups:
To achieve a less impersonal environment, researchers said, megachurches consciously break down the congregation into smaller groups that meet regularly.
Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, which draws 5,500 people to its Sunday services, offers more than 100 types of small weekly groups — choirs, Bible study, sports teams and mentoring programs, the Rev. Grainger Browning said. “We are a large church during the weekend, but it becomes a small church during the week,” he said.
What do you think? Do you feel the size of a church affects the relational potential of its congregation?
That’s short for “Edwards on the Head”, my Thursday afternoon phenomena of feeling like a deflated cerebral whoopie cushion. I have class on Mondays and Thursdays, but Thursdays are the big days. We clock in at 7:45 and hang up our hats at 3:30. The whole day we belly-up to a smorgasbord of academic cuisine, beginning with Hebrew and ending with a class on Jonathan Edwards, who, by the way, has the uncanny ability to make me feel both amazed and dumb at the same time. That’s a good thing.
Right now we’re working through his dissertation “Concerning the End for Which God Created the World.” His point is that God didn’t create the world out of some deficiency or need in himself. Instead, the infinite self-knowledge and joy he has experienced in the fellowship of the Trinity is so full that it spills over. Like a fountain. God desires to communicate or display that fullness, and so he creates. Here’s how Edwards put it:
…[W]e may suppose, that a disposition in God, as an original property of his nature, to an emanation of his own infinite fulness, was what excited him to create the world; and so that the emanation itself was aimed at by him as a last end of the creation. (End of Creation, 23)
This approach may not be directly transferable to our day and context, but I think more men would do well to have Whitefield’s chutzpah:
He [Whitefield] had complete confidence in the authority of his message, and was determined that it should receive the respect it deserved as God’s Word. Once in a New Jersey meeting-house he “noticed an old man settling down for his accustomed, sermon-time nap”, writes John Pollock, one of his biographers. Whitefield began his sermon quietly, without disturbing the gentleman’s slumbers. But then “in measured, deliberate words” he said:
“If I had come to speak to you in my own name, you might rest your elbows upon your knees and your heads on your hands, and go to sleep!…But I have come to you in the name of the Lord God of hosts, and (he clapped his hands and stamped his foot) I must and I will be heard.” The old man woke up startled.
(John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 32-33)
