Bits and Bobs - Cremation, Autocracy and Creationism

Cremation

Russell Moore has written an interesting article on cremation. I'm still not convinced either way about cremation, even (or perhaps especially) after presiding over a fair few. My worries aren't to do about the question of resurrection - it's to do with the attitude to humanity, the importance of the physical body, and respect for the dead. Moore concludes:

Sometimes the “culture wars” that really matter aren’t the ones you’re screaming about with unbelievers in the public square; they’re the ones in which you’ve already surrendered, and never even noticed.

Church Autocrats

On a not intentionally connected note, Mark Meynell has written about how church autocrats work. Interesting, true to my experience, and a worthwhile checklist for ministry.

As I may have mentioned before, one of the main things I've learnt from coming through some quite traumatic leadership experiences in Christian circles is that godliness is the most essential quality for leaders, especially humility.

Evolution Argument Gets Worse

Once again, possibly connected is this really sad bit of news. Bruce Waltke, who is a seriously good Bible scholar, has left his job at the Reformed Theological Seminary after a video he made about evolution attracted a lot of hostile attention.

In an earlier version of this post, I incorrectly stated that he was sacked (sorry!). RTS's comment on the issue is here, but from my POV the seminary should have stuck by him if they thought he was right to be allowed to say what he said. They try defending their corner by saying they're a confessional seminary. Confessional in the sense of sacking someone who doesn't believe something the Church has always agreed on (like the divinity of Jesus) - fine. Confessional in the sense of not sticking up for a seminary professor who points out the intellectual and apologetic difficulty of taking a popular but contentious line on the interpretation of one Biblical passage - mad and bad. And I thought RTS was meant to be OK...

Holy Sonnet X

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow
And soonest our best men with thee do go
Rest of their bones and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppies or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swellst thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die!

John Donne

Death and Society

There's an interesting story here. In brief, a Hindu has been refused permission for his cremation to be in the traditional Indian style of an open funeral pyre.

What is especially interesting is what the judge said.

Mr Justice Cranston said that Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who had resisted Mr Ghai's legal challenge, argued that people might be "upset and offended" by pyres and "find it abhorrent that human remains were being burned in this way".

Why is it any more abhorrent that human remains are being burnt in an open pyre than in a crematorium? The only reason I can think of is that we want to hide death away.

Ecclesiastes 12

To my mind, these are among the most evocative words I've ever read anywhere.

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, I find no pleasure in them—
before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain;
when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim;
when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint;
when men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets.

Remember him— before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

Just a breath! Just a breath! says the Teacher. Everything is just a breath

Ecclesiastes 12:1-8 (v1-7 from NIV, v8 is my own translation)

R.I.P.

It seems odd to me how in popular culture funerals have become an occasion to speak to the dead person. I'm aware that the popular mood (and quite possibly the default human position) is in many places pantheism, but I wonder how much of it is down to not learning Latin properly...

I'll explain. The traditional prayer for the departed goes something like this:

May he rest in peace and rise in glory.

In Latin, the first half is requiescat in pacem, which is famously shortened to R.I.P. It isn't talking to the deceased person; it's actually a prayer to God, or conceivably if used by non-Christians, a declaration of what you hope will happen. Technically, it's a third person singular present subjunctive, meaning "may he/she/it rest in peace".

However, the practice of praying for the dead was suppressed at the Reformation, because of the abuse of the (false) doctrine of Purgatory. far as I can tell, it was a good idea to get rid of the doctrine of Purgatory, but a bad idea to suppress praying for the dead completely.

Anyway, my point is that the main way the prayer was then remembered by the general populace was via the inscription R.I.P., which then got translated as "Rest in Peace", which is a second person imperative, looking like it is talking to the dead rather than the Latin which means "May (s)he rest in peace". And so (this is the speculative bit) it seems possible that the traditional practice of praying to God for the dead turned into talking to the dead, in part because we can't speak Latin properly and in part because of the Reformation overreaction against Catholic excesses.

Yes, I'm being speculative as to the causation, and I can also understand why people would want to say goodbye to their loved ones. It does, however, seem ironic if this idea is true, that in rejecting the Catholic idea that it is possible to pray for the dead and ask the dead to pray for them, the Protestants ended up talking to the dead which the Catholics didn't.

Memento Mori

Last Sunday, a friend of mine who had been at theological college with me died. He was 32.

As I reflect on the state of the Church in the UK, I think that one of our fundamental problems is that we forget we are mortal. I don't mean that anyone would deny it - I mean that we are not continually conscious of it in the way that past generations were. We hide from it, and we hide death away where we cannot see it. Christians I know hardly talk about it, even when they are the oldest generation and therefore most likely to be the next to die. We put off thinking about it until the doctors tell us we only have a few months to live, with the result that we only get a few months of life lived in the proper perspective, most of which is spent struggling with the pain of a terminal illness.

But as we see with Jade Goody, life lived in the knowledge of impending death is life that is lived much nearer to the full than at any other time. All of a sudden, she has gone from an object of ridicule to one of the most respected people in Britain, and what she says has gone from the ridiculous to the profound.

The Christian need not fear death, because we trust God. We have living inside us the Jesus who beat death in others, and who triumphed over death in himself. He promises that we have nothing to fear in death.

Moses, realising the reality of his own mortality, wrote these words:

Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12, NIV

If we remembered that we were mortal, would we be spending all our time being entertained and seeking to be entertained? Would we be wasting our lives on things that make no difference?

And why should we, who are Christians and have no reason to be afraid of death, be complicit in the world's denial that we are mortal when it is perfectly plain to everyone that we are not? Why should we not be speaking about it and reminding people of the fact that one day we will die, that our lives are not endless and therefore we should not be living as those who have time to kill, but as those who should be redeeming the time from death?