We've been thinking about disposal of human remains lately, particularly our own when eventually it needs to happen: what do we want to do? Mostly our thinking has been around it being ecologically righteous as far as possible, starting with the body itself not polluting or being treated in a way that will hinder the natural recycling that nature has been doing for millions of years with dead bodies. And then also the processes of funeral rites not contributing to pollution or global heating (or at least minimising that impact).
But/And, as Christians, we also want funerals to be consistent with Christian discipleship. So this article when I happened across it, caught my attention. It did so because the article had no consideration of the environmental dimension but rather mainly a -forgive me for the slight disparagement- a narrow individual-salvation concern as shown by this couple of sentences early in the piece.
Some believe that the Bible says you can’t go to Heaven if you’re cremated. This isn’t what the Bible says. There is nothing in the Bible that forbids cremation as a means of disposing a person’s body.
Fair enough as far as it goes: our hope of salvation lies in God's grace and remembrance (both in the sense of knowing us 'timelessly' and of re-making us eschatologically) of us beyond death not in a particular treatment of human remains. A few moments reflection will show up problems with the idea of the physical remains being necessary to ultimate participation in the new creation: many, many people's bodies do cease to exist after enough time. eventually in most conditions even bones' molecules are dissipated into the environment. A theology of reconstruction, if I may characterise it like that, means that after a few hundred or thousand years, there is nothing to reconstruct. It also implies a reconstruction using 'new' material to replace decomposed flesh, so why not simply replace everything? Especially if the new creation's material basis is different to the current material basis?
Anyway, to return to the main focus: I think that a more wholistic consideration of disposal of our remains should take place; it isn't just about whether we 'go to heaven' or even whether we are being consistent witnesses to Christian teaching. Actually that last clause in the quote includes, in reality, noticing that being good witnesses to Christian perspectives should include -prominently at the moment- doing right and justly by the ecosystem and climate.
With the following quote from the article, however, I see both a positive basis for thinking about corpse-composting and also I find a quibblesome point.
Cremation, however, subtly suggests that our bodies are of no significance. Burial, on the other hand, communicates something far more consistent with the Bible. It affirms not only that the human body has dignity, but also that it has a future. It affirms that death is not the end of the body.
The positive basis is the appraisal of human bodiliness as good and having dignity as well as having a future and those things I definitely affirm. I'm not convinced, however, that cremation really does suggest lack of significance for bodies; I think that's a value judgement that doesn't make sense from 'my' (ecological) perspective -I can see why someone might say that but it lacks force because it only communicates those things if you come from a certain cultural background or with a certain way of looking at life-processes narrowly focused on individuals in an industrial system.
I'm not convinced that the means by which a body is decomposed do in themselves suggest any such appraisal. Because that's what we are talking about -burial, cremation (or whatever) are all about what processes we entrust a body to for return to the elements. We need to see the bigger picture of molecules and elements returning to the wider ecosphere. What gives a body significance (which is a cultural construct) is how we treat it in terms of 'fare-welling' and how we link that fare-welling to whichever 'bigger picture' of life and cosmos we are beholden to.
I want to suggest that it is also important to affirm bodiliness by recognising that 'from dust we are created and to dust we shall return' -"dust" being matter, essentially, and the energetic means for its decomposition back to 'dust'. We can do that slowly, by letting bacteria, fungi and biochemical processes work through their life-cycles with the body as raw material. We can do that quickly by oxidising using heat. (And there is another option mentioned below).
More important in terms of Christian ethics and witness is surely making the process most consistent and compatible with the Creator's designs of energy and matter cycles and flows. So, if there's a problem with cremation, it's not really that it disrespects the body or a Christian appraisal of bodiliness. The problem with cremation as I see it, is that it uses methods to accelerate bodily decomposition that are noxious for the environment (ie usually fossil-fuel in the form of methane based gas jets). It may be possible to mitigate that, and to do so would help return to a more positive appraisal of cremation.
As a related side-note here, I would also point out that embalming is a pretty bad thing to do from the perspective of environmental impact.
And while we're considering less-direct issues of body preservation, we might want to consider how a body is stored pending burial, cremation or whatever. Cold-storage often does have a carbon footprint or dangers around coolants' storage and release. So the title of the article that stimulated my response here might also ask "is it OK for Christians to be embalmed?". I think that embalming is far less good than cremation in the bigger picture.
As a Christian, I believe that we honour our Creator by playing our part in good creation-care practices. And this includes disposal of earthly remains. That is a very body-respecting and material-creation-affirming thing to do. It is good biblical theology to recognise the dust from which we come and to participate well in the systems of life-and-death in which that dust plays its part -to 'tend the garden' with our remains as well as our living effort. The practice of embalming seems to me to be not only dishonouring to the living flow of the ecosystem but also to speak, perhaps, of an overemphasis on appearance and human convenience which is not easily consonant with Christian teaching and virtues. Perhaps that's a harsh thing to say, but maybe we need to be sober about such things rather than simply sentimental and revise our funereal practices in the light of the bigger picture I'm trying to work with in this post.
Personally, I'm looking into Water Cremation to recommend and/or enable for my 'relicts'. It seems to overcome the difficulties associated with conventional cremation and offer a way not to take up lots of rooms with a grave plot. And, as a Christian, I'm trusting in God's recreative promises not the condition of my corpse for a share in the resurrection to Life.
And as a PS -as I've looked at what internet search brings up in relation to the environmental impact of cremation, I've noticed that much of the find is backed by funeral industry with an interest in promoting cremation. One of the effects of this is to not quite compare like with like and be low oncomparative detail, giving the impression that hot-cremating is better than burying. Admittedly this is perhaps true if you take in embalming, plot-maintenance etc. But the simple act of burying a body is less fossil-fuel energetic than firing a body. What needs to happen is to factor-in the ecological impact of the 'extra' acts to corpse-disposal: travel, preservation, storage, containment etc of the body and things like travel by mourners. And these need to be accounted for side-by-side in whichever disposal means is chosen. It's hard to believe, ceteris paribus, that like-for-like accounting would put cremation ahead. The one exception may well be so-called water cremation mentioned above.
