Linkathon!
Church torn asunder over CRT…watch the pastor address it…
Finding God in fictional stories…
What to do when you’re doubting your faith…
Covid hot spots have high numbers of evangelicals…
Those times Jesus changed Scripture…
Experiences of an evangelical theologian…four parts…
Marginalized Christians in a hostile society…a look at 1 Peter…
When should you leave your church?
Jesus and our wounded survivors…
Things will never be normal and that’s ok…
How the media made homosexuality mainstream…
On her deathbed, St. Clare of Assisi blessed God…
Green burial as an act of faith…
Moses Wore a Mask (and Other Reflections on COVID-19)…
Beth Moore: SBC Seminary Presidents Made CRT ‘Witch-Hunt’ Unavoidable…
More later…
I have a daughter who has requested a green butial…. evidently there are such cemeteries… preserving a body with chemicals doesn’t really make sense…. I am scheduled for cremation…. God is able to provide a perfectly good new body in the resurrection, i think…. there is something to be said for just burying bones after the flesh and guts are gone, i guess…
Does Scripture give us directions for dead body disposal?
When I became a Christian in 1973 it was the radical left. Going into the 80s, it was radical humanism. Now it’s CRT. If we knew our Bibles better, we would understand what the actual truth is and avoid the labeling. I’m sure I could be accused of being a CRTer (I’m not, by the way) given some of my views on institutional racism and some of my own experiences (my parents moved into a neighborhood in our city that was not red-lined, I insisted on having my 9th birthday with my best Black school friend when the majority of the guests cancelled, and I grew up in a very racially diverse neighborhood). I’ve spent most of my teaching career educating KOC (Kids of Color). I know what the Scripture says about how to treat people, and I prayerfully try to live that way. If the church took up the last sentence I just wrote as how to deal with folks in general, we wouldn’t need all the discussions.
Em,
I think burial is the norm in Scripture…but as you say, God is able…
“If the church took up the last sentence I just wrote as how to deal with folks in general, we wouldn’t need all the discussions.”
I suspect that the majority of pastors, even if they hold to scriptural ethics, do not have the courage to go against the prevailing racial feelings of their congregation. It can get you fired, or you can lose members, and it can hurt incoming offerings.
Jean,
I know you have to be careful about how you discuss and present things, but I’ve been in churches (including my current one) where just being more accepting and inclusive of different ethnic groups has made a huge difference. When our current pastor came four years ago (and i don’t agree with him on everything by the way!) he took an immediate interest in the Spanish congregation. learned our names, saw to it that we had hired two racially “different” staff in as many years…and the congregation is showing the change, as well, both in our makeup and attitude towards those outside. Modeling can make a huge difference. If you’ve raised/taught kids, you learn that very quickly.
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Em wrote:
Does Scripture give us directions for dead body disposal?
The Bible does not give directions for a whole slew of things.
But be patient, Scripture can be like old MacDonald’s farm, here a verse, there a verse, everywhere a verse, verse… and voila!… some enterprising exegete will manufacture some directions.
In the Orthodox Church, we do not cremate. We believe God can reassemble all that is needed for a bodily resurrection but we also believe we should be respectful of the body.
Orthodox funerals have the body of the departed person present, open casket, if at all possible. The hours before the funeral, members of the parish take turns keeping vigil with the body and read the Psalms aloud. There are many other things we do as well to give the departed person a good send-off to the Afterlife. Rather than being morbid, it is joyfully sorrowful, or sorrowfully joyful. It is comforting.
My husband and I have it in our wills that under no circumstances (Plague being the only exception) will our bodies be cremated. We have alerted our very modern children to our plans and they have agreed to comply because they love us.
An Orthodox funeral is liturgical. If there’s going to be a slide show depicting the highlights of the life of the departed, that will happen at the dinner afterwards, when people offer toasts, give eulogies, and such like tributes.
absent from the body; present with the Lord
appreciate the viewpoint of all on handling the remains of the departed saved…
nothing more sorrowful than not knowing where your loved one stood with the Father…
on the other hand, if they had no capacity to seek or to love God, then the question: “Who do we love most? God or the mortal?”
Failure to recognize creepers in the pulpit. A biggie which could be a cause of many of the woes of the church today. Individual responsibility to learn and know the word seems to have been thrown out of the church along with those who do.
Despite my mother leaning towards a more Judaic type of Christianity in her last years, her request was to be cremated and buried on her 5 acres where we put her husband to rest in 2003.
I was told that scattering remains was illegal in Cali now, so I signed off that I would keep them at my home address in the city. The empty box, with some dust, sits in the back of my closet with the paperwork.
My buddy, a funeral director in Washington state told me that it was illegal due to knee-jerk legislation: there was a single case where a remains scattering business instead dumped remains on “the back 40,” as it were. So the legislators made it illegal for anybody to do it.
I’m going back to masking up after reading my State’s previous day, positive rests.
Stay healthy my friends.
Just saw the quote of the day.
“Stephen Colbert says the Trump era was so odd and bizarre that it almost seemed as if some sorcery was at play.
Even the Godless unbelievers can sense them.
https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/564119-colbert-trump-era-almost-like-a-spell-was-being-cast-on-the
“Like everybody else in America we were being so swamped by all the strangeness and the weirdness – it’s almost like a spell was being cast over people,”
Yes! A thousand times yes. Lying spirits have come down bring a strong delusion, as Paul taught. God commanded spirits to pass through the field, as Jesus in instructed regarding the wheat and tares.
We are choosing to wear masks again as well…
Stephen Colbert is a huge Tolkien fan. He probably believes, as I do, that the world is enchanted with spirits both good and evil. Or at least, he’s sympathetic to the idea, I imagine.
Yeah, we are sadly donning our much-used masks again in some places.
Phooey.
I don’t know if you folks ever go back and read old PhxP posts, but sometimes I do, largely because I miss some of our old peeps. 🙁 And also to see if I said anything I should repent of. I am pretty much ok with most of what I said over the years but I regret that I announced here that I was going to vote for Trump. A few weeks of madness on my part, based on the devilry the Dems were dealing out at the time. I should not have voted for either candidate.
Politics hasn’t served any of us well…
Covid is ratcheting up here again…and I don’t believe that the government will try to mitigate it. The people would rather be sick and “free”…
Well….
For the record, i voted for Trump and don’t regret it, considering what we are going through now….
It is definitely time for the Church to focus on God’s Kingdom and our mission here
For me us, we have decided, Christian exile means opting out of the political system entirely because it is entirely corrupt. We might vote on some local issues, but we have washed our hands of national politics.
Xenia,
I concur with that plan…we’re going to have to learn what it means to be the church in exile…
For us, it also means paying as little attention as possible to political machinations. Just headline news from as neutral a source as possible, no dwelling on palace intrigues on Twitter, avoiding conversations at Church and elsewhere about politics. We want to know just enough to be marginally informed but not so much that we get sucked in. I find listening to the local police scanner to be more valuable than Fox or CNN or Twitter.
For the American (and world) political system I say: Not my circus, not my monkeys.
Not a circus, but deadly serious…..
As best we can, our Lord instructed us to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s…..
Or so it seems to me….. 🙆
As best we can…
The day came when I realized that my vote had zero effect on the world system. It’s an illusion, Em.
You can have plenty of effect locally.
But being local requires some physical activity on our parts.
There’s a lady in our town who goes for a walk every day with a bucket that she fills up with litter. This woman has done more to improve our country than any vote I have ever cast.
Xenia, i assume you pay your taxes? That IMO, gives us the right to vote…. Does my vote have an impact? You are probably correct, but i still vote AND pick up trash. 😘
Right now we have a steady stream of ORVs going up our road and there is a total burn ban – Fed & State… What is wrong with these ” monkey brained” yayhoos? Should i go out, stand in the middle of the road and lecture them? No. But i do pray. Hopefully, The Father hears and keeps us and our homes safe. He has, so far. 🙏 Thank You, God
Em, I do not think you got the gist of my posts.
But I am glad you also pick up trash. 🙂
Xenia, just because i don’t dance?
Em and Xenia,
I vote (I figure it guarantees my right to complain), but I try to be civically involved in causes that help people (like your friend who picks up the trash). I work with low-income kids through my church, we’re gearing up to restart our ESL classes in the apartments down the street from the church (heavily immigrant), and I translate (written material and “live” sermons from English to Spanish). I should be retiring in a few years, and Lord willing, I am hoping to do more. It may be the proverbial drop in the bucket, but I do believe that God brings big things out of the little ones.
Linn wrote:
It may be the proverbial drop in the bucket, but I do believe that God brings big things out of the little ones.
It’s been said that moving one smooth pebble on a seashore, can alter the course of history.
How much more with the good that you do in this here and now?
Without people like you, we can only look forward to a world of darkness and cruelty.