How do you react to the idea of cremating a deceased family member? Does cremation seem like an appropriate way to dispose of the dead during a funeral? Or does the cremation contradict your feelings? Does it seem inappropriate or even a prescription?
Your reaction may have been triggered by the perception of where you live. Cremation is widespread in some countries. In West Germany, England and Denmark, for example, more than half of the dead are cremated, and in Japan it is almost universal. However, only about 8% of the dead are cremated in the United States, which is still rare in other countries. Why these differences?
There is no doubt that local conditions have customs on how the dead can be disposed of. For example, in some areas the ground is frozen most of the year and wood is scarce. For this reason, it is common for the dead to be “exposed” to the consumption of birds or animals. In these countries, only people from the middle and upper classes are buried or cremated. In some countries where earth is scarce, cremation is popular because it costs less than burial in a mass grave.
But religious beliefs also play a role in cremation. Believing that a person has an immortal soul, some of the ancient Greeks and Romans viewed cremation as a good way to quickly free the soul from its corpse.
On the other hand, the Hebrew Encyclopedia reports: "The removal of the corpse by cremation is not a Jewish custom and burial is considered obligatory by traditional Jews." The Roman Catholic Church has also opposed cremation for centuries. At the end of the 19th century, Canon Law 1240 provided that Catholics who ordered the cremation of their bodies would refuse the burial of the Church if they did not repent before death. A papal decree of 1963 revised this position somewhat, but continued to urge him to "refrain from cremation unless absolutely necessary."
So what is the correct view of cremation from the point of view of the Word of God? Is it appropriate for a Christian to be cremated?
In biblical times
In Biblical times, God's servants often buried the body of a deceased person in a cave, grave or tomb. Abraham was one of the first examples. After the death of his beloved wife Sarah, he bought a cave as a family cemetery. (Genesis 23: 2–20; 49: 29–32) Abraham's descendants, the Jews, placed great importance on the proper burial of a person. It was a serious accident that someone was deprived of the funeral. For example, Jehovah's rejection was expressed by King Jehoiakim in the prophecy that the king would “bury a donkey,” that is, they would take his body out of the city and leave it without a grave. - Jer. 22:18, 19; compare it to Jeremiah 25:32, 33; Isaiah 14:19, 20.
With this emphasis on a proper burial, it would be embarrassing for someone not to have the funeral and just burn the body to make it smaller. Regarding certain crimes, the law required that the criminal be killed and his body cremated. When Jesus was on earth, the Valley of Hinnom south of the walls of Jerusalem was a dumping ground where fires were lit to destroy waste. Some criminals who were not considered fit for a proper burial were deported. Jesus used it as a symbol of utter destruction with no hope of resurrection.
But do these examples of cremation suggest that it would be inappropriate to cremate a body?
First, the law does not unite the two, criminals and arsonists, without exception. The Jews use Deuteronomy 21:23 as evidence to support burial in the land. It says that the body of a man who was executed and hanged from a pole would not be left overnight but "must be buried that day." Incineration was therefore only one of the means of destroying the body of a criminal.
And it can be understood that there is a big difference between the body of a former criminal who was burned with rubbish and modern burial procedures with cremation. While the former is intended to express rejection and shame, the latter is a valid alternative for a person returning to dust due to normal degradation on the ground.
In fact, modern cremation is similar to the men of Jabesh-Gilead after rescuing the bodies of King Saul and his sons from the Philistines. They took the bodies to "Jabes" and there they burned them. So they took his bones and buried them. The faithful David did not think it was shameful to have cremated the bodies. It was part of a respectful agreement between the dead. - 2 Saturdays 2: 4-7.
The early Christians continued the Jewish custom of burying in the ground or in graves. In addition to the Jewish context in Christianity, one reason seems to have been that cremation at that time was associated with paganism as the doctrine of the immortal soul. In the centuries that followed, the Roman Catholic Church enacted laws against cremation and forbade according to ecclesiastical law what was not forbidden in Scripture.
What about Christians today? The point is that there is no biblical order for or against burial or cremation. The Bible clearly shows that it does not matter if a corpse is quickly turned into dust by fire or by gradual decomposition. In any case, God's word is true: "Because you are dust and you will return to dust." (Gen. 3:19) It is certainly not as if God needed a mother to revive a person. The apostle Paul taught that a person resurrected in heaven will have a new body that is "transformed" into the dissolved flesh. He showed that "God gives everyone a body he wants." The same is true of those who were resurrected to life on earth in the new order. God will be able to provide suitable human bodies no matter how their ancient bodies are dissolved, either quickly by fire or slowly by decomposition.T
