It just seems Jewish and the fact they forbid it has me torn. On one hand they should want to do it so they can please the devil, on the other they get us to desecrate the corpse of our loved ones.
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devotech2 on scored.co
1 year ago6 points(+0/-0/+6Score on mirror)1 child
No. It's not jewish. Not inherently so.
Cremation was in use in Europe for thousands of years (before jews even existed) and most societies would more or less flip flop between their preferred method of body internment: cremation or burial. Whichever one was more popular varied.
It picked up traction among protestant countries in earnest in the 1800s because of the fact that cemeteries were overflowing with bodies and were a source of disease. Eventually the catholic church would permit it as well. The church that still does not permit cremation is the orthodox church. Why? Eastern Europe didn't have corpses overflowing their cemeteries because of lower population density. If an orthodox country had the same problem, someone would have probably canonized it in the orthodox church by this point.
Is it heretical? ...maybe, but I'm sure that God understood the plight of people not wanting to resort to having to throw their loved ones in rivers because they had no burial plots available (this happened. Especially with the river thames and the river seine).
But that's cremation in Europe. In america it never gained traction until very recently because America did not and still does not have a high population density, so there is plenty of land for burial. Cremation only became popular very recently because of growing atheism, which makes it a symptom of jewish atheism rather than something that the jews themselves brought purposefully.
I personally don't have much of a problem with cremation among Christians. There is no biblical passage explicitly forbidding cremation and the forbidding of it started as rebellion against the romans who, at the time, preferred cremation to burial. I would prefer to be interred, and that's the best option, but I don't view it as a biblical issue. Implying that God cannot resurrect an earthly body because it's cremated puts a cap on God's power and also calls into question people who die due to immolation or have their corpse burned after death against their wish.
Frozen ground is another good reason for cremation, Scandinavian countries have plenty of space, more so than the US relative to population, but that doesn't matter when the ground is frozen and you can't dig a hole most of the year.
Swamps and flooding does seem like a good reason to cremate too, not that it's much of a problem up here. But it is a bit concerning watching certain areas prone to flooding, were coffins float up from the ground and slide away in a mudslide. Seems like the very opposite to rest in peace.
Everything you said is very true. Could be another reason that cremation took off so well in the UK, lots of rain and flash floods that could very well have dug up caskets.
The pollution and massive population boom of the industrial revolution caught the unplanned Europe completely by surprise. There was virtually no infrastructure to deal with pollution and the population boom, and no space to deal with the corpses of people frequently dying from the problems brought by it. Paris and London were hit the worst because of high population density and being at the forefront of it. Germany was somewhat intermediate. Low pop density countries like Spain, Russia, and the US were the least swathed but if you lived in Madrid, Moscow, or New York or something you were still dealing with smog, TB, and piles of horse shit everywhere.
The London sewer system was none other than a work of absolute genius and was a (very literal) lifesaver for the city and the river Thames. Another contribution to sanitation was the Model T car, which made it so that there wasn't horse shit everywhere you went, that was a huge one. And among these, cremation was a big contributor to sanitation and public health as well, because you didn't have corpses in rivers in the middle of cities and overflowing burial plots with bodies cruising downtown at the slightest flash flood, or bodies leaking fluids and embalming liquid into groundwater. Decomposing bodies are very bad for public health, needless to say.
Cremation was in use in Europe for thousands of years (before jews even existed) and most societies would more or less flip flop between their preferred method of body internment: cremation or burial. Whichever one was more popular varied.
It picked up traction among protestant countries in earnest in the 1800s because of the fact that cemeteries were overflowing with bodies and were a source of disease. Eventually the catholic church would permit it as well. The church that still does not permit cremation is the orthodox church. Why? Eastern Europe didn't have corpses overflowing their cemeteries because of lower population density. If an orthodox country had the same problem, someone would have probably canonized it in the orthodox church by this point.
Is it heretical? ...maybe, but I'm sure that God understood the plight of people not wanting to resort to having to throw their loved ones in rivers because they had no burial plots available (this happened. Especially with the river thames and the river seine).
But that's cremation in Europe. In america it never gained traction until very recently because America did not and still does not have a high population density, so there is plenty of land for burial. Cremation only became popular very recently because of growing atheism, which makes it a symptom of jewish atheism rather than something that the jews themselves brought purposefully.
I personally don't have much of a problem with cremation among Christians. There is no biblical passage explicitly forbidding cremation and the forbidding of it started as rebellion against the romans who, at the time, preferred cremation to burial. I would prefer to be interred, and that's the best option, but I don't view it as a biblical issue. Implying that God cannot resurrect an earthly body because it's cremated puts a cap on God's power and also calls into question people who die due to immolation or have their corpse burned after death against their wish.
Swamps and flooding does seem like a good reason to cremate too, not that it's much of a problem up here. But it is a bit concerning watching certain areas prone to flooding, were coffins float up from the ground and slide away in a mudslide. Seems like the very opposite to rest in peace.
The London sewer system was none other than a work of absolute genius and was a (very literal) lifesaver for the city and the river Thames. Another contribution to sanitation was the Model T car, which made it so that there wasn't horse shit everywhere you went, that was a huge one. And among these, cremation was a big contributor to sanitation and public health as well, because you didn't have corpses in rivers in the middle of cities and overflowing burial plots with bodies cruising downtown at the slightest flash flood, or bodies leaking fluids and embalming liquid into groundwater. Decomposing bodies are very bad for public health, needless to say.