On a Saturday long ago, our Lord Jesus was a corpse. This isn’t natural. Problem is, death seems normal to us. Darwinian naturalism, along with most contemporary philosophies, assumes that death is the natural ending point to life. The Christian gospel insists otherwise, seeing death as an alien invader of the cosmic order, a curse from the Edenic fall, and a strategy of an enemy spirit to crush God’s image-bearing
Sara, a caller to the “Ask Anything Wednesday” segment of the Albert Mohler Program, which I’m guest-hosting as I type this, just asked a question about cremation, and whether it is ever right for a Christian to be cremated. It is a complicated question, but one that Christians should ask. I just wrote an article on this subject for Touchstone magazine. The article, entitled “Grave Signs” can be accessed online here.
For those of you interested in self-proclaimed Christian essayist and novelist Anne Lamott, check out Albert Mohler’s commentary on Lamott’s celebration of having killed a dying man with barbituate-laced apple sauce. One’s first thought is, why is Anne Lamott not in prison after confessing murder? But one’s second thought is, where is the church that could be shaping and discipling Lamott toward a biblical eschatology and a biblical compassion for the dying?
I am surprised by how often Christians are stunned to hear me say that cremation is not a Christian act. Previous generations of Christians would have understood exactly, but today an anti-cremation stance seems at best Luddite and at worst carnal. People will ask, “Can’t God raise a cremated Christian just as he can raise a decomposed buried Christian?”
This week the United States Congress debated whether or not doctors should be allowed to kill a living infant by crushing his head. At the same time, courts in Florida debated whether doctors should be allowed to starve a disabled woman to death. In these headlines, we see some legislative and judicial victories. But we should also recognize that we are looking at the real religious alternative to historic Christianity