Should graves be disturbed?

[missmuffet]

Only the bodies of our loved ones are in that grave. That is only a shell of who they were.Those bones decay. The most important part which is their soul has gone on to another place. The memories of those who we love and have died live in our memories and in our hearts.

[Jewels7]

32 minutes ago, BacKaran said:

With costs rising alarmingly, I could hardly afford a cheap cremation.

My aunt spent about $8000 on her casket and funeral 20 years ago, I can't imagine what it costs now.

I got a cardboard coffin that looked like steel, husband and all was cremated. With the excess money, if you call it that which I didn't spend for a casket, I donated to charities.

Like martyrs who are burnt at the stake, beheaded etc, God knows where our souls are and we should take no care as to what the world does with our remains.

I'm not opposed to a open air sun pyre for my remains. Give back to nature after having sustained myself through the blessing that is God's creation. Then when there's only bones left light a humongous bonfire underneath the wooden pyre and celebrate the life ahead amid all my friends and family that gathered to tell me goodbye.  

 

1 hour ago, HisFirst said:

Also, Joseph was removed from Egypt and laid to rest with the Patriarchs - however, he wasn't buried but was embalmed in the Egyptian tradition for Royalty. 

That's  unique point to add in. Thank you.  

[Neighbor]

14 hours ago, Jewels7 said:

Quite a thought given all the museums across the globe that display remains. 

If they're pagan burial sites would it matter? Why? 

If they're consecrated burial sites like say a church closes and sells the land that includes a graveyard next door? Would it matter? Why? Doesn't God have the souls already with him? Remains. What remains there really?

 

 I suggest that  upon greater reflection  one will likely find it is a callous breed, pagan or not, that gives no caring thought to those living that expect their dead to be left undisturbed.  Man sorrows over his dead for a time, and then expects the place of their burial to remain undesecrated by those with competing interests of commerce.

Yes remains are moved. I personally arranged the removal and reinterment of just over two hundred from one Roman Catholic cemetery alone. BUT that was by demand of the family of each person. That all occurred when the Roman Catholic Church finally and formally allowed it's priests to go to  secular cemeteries to bless the place of burial of Roman Catholics.  The families wanting their deceased family members remains to be closer to their own community so that they may  more easily pay kind remembrance  to their dead, and resenting years of demands by the church for burial at only church owned cemeteries up and moved their deceased loved ones

 I would try to talk them into just placing a cenotaph locally and leaving the remains where they were, but no they would not hear of it. And so we went through a rather grim process, one cemetery  to another. Did we ever dislike having to do those tasks!! Similarly,  every week of  my career I arranged for the re-inurnment of cremated remains from Japan, where there was limited space and a time limit on the purchase of  burial spots in their cemeteries. Why did they those families do so at some considerable expense to themselves?  Dignity,  and in some cases religious traditions.

They would come in to the office with the cremated remains neatly  wrapped and a Japan health department "burial" certificate to be refiled  locally.  I was greatly surprised one day, when a lady with  heavy accent explained to me that she was wanting to re-inter her mother's remains from Japan. She had a grocery shopping bag with her and a long scroll in  Japanese characters. I made the general arrangements, asked where the remains were now, she said "in this bag". I said oh okay, thinking there was a box with cremated remains inside. After completion of  the arrangements I took the bag to my office, expecting there to be a  box inside with a health department  permit from Japan to  be refiled  here in the States.   To my great surprise it didn't, and in fact there was no box. I was looking at the dried bones of  an old woman instead. A complete very small skeleton. What a surprise! I had to  work with the health department to get a permit for burial.

 

When one says, what difference does it make? I can say in response- to most people it still makes all the difference. We ( Christians) today are caught in a loop of trying to defeat death  ourselves, by ignoring it's hurt, instead of facing it. So we now do happy talk funerals, life awareness and celebration,  but grief denial.

Thing is we grieve. We know the process of life  and death and of life eternal, but it is our loss when we are separated from our loved ones. Rituals of death  are part of life. It is what we are, it is our history, our proof of existence, the reason we do lineage studies.  To then say,  oh I don't think it important, for the body is not where the loved one is today, well that doesn't work  out well long term for most of us, Christian or not, and  it hasn't for all the history of  mankind. We need acknowledge death, and it's painful separation of us though we may have victory over it. It is pain  to be dealt with if we are to be tender in our own mercies one to another.

Oh death where is your sting, does not mean  death does not hurt the physical family and the emotions of all that cherished the presence of a person  separated by death. It is simply  an  overcoming of the victory that  was death, and a recognition of the great  power  of, and awesome mercy, that is God.

To try to be calloused to the tender mercies of compassion, the rituals that mark a life, by saying where the remains of a person are is not of any value  to those that placed those remains, and their desires need not be honored wrong headed. It is often even  the mark of an enemy not an academic reasoning. For  enemies savage memorials, they deface markers,  monuments,  great works of art, out of hatred for people and their history and traditions. They want to savage all that is tender of a people, to break them of, their spirit, their will to exist by showing they have no lasting importance at all. 

We are not one with the mud, we are the works of God. It is okay to have loved us and to want to do remembrance of us, even our physical bodies when they die. In fact it is a good thing to care. Just as good as it is to know of the eternal nature of what God has created and has protected, His having loved  enough to give of Himself that we might have eternal life.

 Of course; one might instead argue that even  Jerusalem  has no meaning. The place of Christ's death, burial,  and resurrection no interest, and that  we should just make some condos  over the perceived tomb of His temporary burial. Plus the pyramids, great and not so great, why we should reuse all those stones, don't leave them. Yes, we  can be callous to history, but then we soon come to deny  the history itself, including awful histories too.

At even a simple gut level we ought to recognize some places are significant, even though all will pass and a new heaven and a new earth will come.

Some memorials must remain protected as proof of existence of even the extreme evil within men (The camps of death  for millions  during WWII for instance), as well as  in the contrasting love by mankind for it's own.

When death becomes ignored and we are all happy talk we miss much of the meaning of creation, it's fall and the awesome mercy and grace of our creator.

 

[Neighbor]

As to costs of funerals.

Funerals need not cost anything, but most of us  do want services provided by others, and for that  one deserves their wage.

BUT, that funerals are so very outrageously expensive today  is an understatement! The incredible level of expense is the result of government, and unintended consequences. It started with the FTC declaring it had control over the funeral industry because some remains get transported over State lines.

 They immediately made it necessary for lengthy contracts for services, the guidlines became  so intrusive that  what was a simple agreement became a lawyers dream, requiring many pages and the signing and initialing of paragraph after paragraph of documents. The various ancillary services had to be itemized or passed through without compensation for those services. The legal costs  of compliance zoomed beyond easy capacity of small funeral homes to handle, there just wasn't the scale of economy needed to cover the expenses of compliance. and we all found out we had to charge for every  item of service. We couldn't give  without charge less we discriminate. And so  our prices skyrocketed. Soon small firms were selling out to the new idea, the corporate funeral home chain, with it's stocks. Every little funeral home operator sold out, took in stock in the big company and received a five year management contract to boot. That ended competition for the most part. Plus the stock companies had responsibility to their share holders-  so they raised prices again and again. Then they bought the funeral supply companies and the casket manufactureres and the cemeteries and the crematories.

Most every cemetery and funeral home is now  part of two large corporations. There really is no service in funeral service like there once was. It is business, big big business, all protected by the regulations that made it near impossible for local small funeral establishments to compete for they just couldn't keep up with  the paper work costs of doing business in the environment of federal regulation. And the day of the $120 dollar funeral with the $120 dollar burial  is long gone. Yep in 1964  we were selling complete funerals for a total of $240. Today that  is  comical to comprehend.

Many of us have had to go to cremation without  services of any traditional sort offered by a funeral establishment for there are now often just four packages offered at $8,000 $16,000 and $32,000 dollars for funerals.  Why back in the day we had 32 caskets to select from which included the funeral itself and yes it started at $120, and went as high as $3,200.

So what to do? Our own local body of Christ  generally organizes a support system that starts before death occurs,  then there is a memorial service, a feed, and a follow up of caring for the family's needs. Most do utilize cremation and a simple place of interment or a scattering of the remains at some place of significance to the family. 

As to giving donations to a cause instead of sending flowers, okay I suppose, but there too, flowers say much that a donation doesn't say. A note some flowers, might be nicer than a donation, or do both.

[HisFirst]

4 minutes ago, Neighbor said:

 

 I suggest that  upon greater reflection  one will likely find it is a callous breed, pagan or not, that gives no caring thought to those living that expect their dead to be left undisturbed.  Man sorrows over his dead for a time, and then expects the place of their burial to remain undesecrated by those with competing interests of commerce.

Yes remains are moved. I personally arranged the removal and reinterment of just over two hundred from one Roman Catholic cemetery alone. BUT that was by demand of the family of each person. That all occurred when the Roman Catholic Church finally and formally allowed it's priests to go to  secular cemeteries to bless the place of burial of Roman Catholics.  The families wanting their deceased family members remains to be closer to their own community so that they may  more easily pay kind remembrance  to their dead, and resenting years of demands by the church for burial at only church owned cemeteries up and moved their deceased loved ones

 I would try to talk them into just placing a cenotaph locally and leaving the remains where they were, but no they would not hear of it. And so we went through a rather grim process, one cemetery  to another. Did we ever dislike having to do those tasks!! Similarly,  every week of  my career I arranged for the re-inurnment of cremated remains from Japan, where there was limited space and a time limit on the purchase of  burial spots in their cemeteries. Why did they those families do so at some considerable expense to themselves?  Dignity,  and in some cases religious traditions.

They would come in to the office with the cremated remains neatly  wrapped and a Japan health department "burial" certificate to be refiled  locally.  I was greatly surprised one day, when a lady with  heavy accent explained to me that she was wanting to re-inter her mother's remains from Japan. She had a grocery shopping bag with her and a long scroll in  Japanese characters. I made the general arrangements, asked where the remains were now, she said "in this bag". I said oh okay, thinking there was a box with cremated remains inside. After completion of  the arrangements I took the bag to my office, expecting there to be a  box inside with a health department  permit from Japan to  be refiled  here in the States.   To my great surprise it didn't, and in fact there was no box. I was looking at the dried bones of  an old woman instead. A complete very small skeleton. What a surprise! I had to  work with the health department to get a permit for burial.

 

When one says, what difference does it make? I can say in response- to most people it still makes all the difference. We ( Christians) today are caught in a loop of trying to defeat death  ourselves, by ignoring it's hurt, instead of facing it. So we now do happy talk funerals, life awareness and celebration,  but grief denial.

Thing is we grieve. We know the process of life  and death and of life eternal, but it is our loss when we are separated from our loved ones. Rituals of death  are part of life. It is what we are, it is our history, our proof of existence, the reason we do lineage studies.  To then say,  oh I don't think it important, for the body is not where the loved one is today, well that doesn't work  out well long term for most of us, Christian or not, and  it hasn't for all the history of  mankind. We need acknowledge death, and it's painful separation of us though we may have victory over it. It is pain  to be dealt with if we are to be tender in our own mercies one to another.

Oh death where is your sting, does not mean  death does not hurt the physical family and the emotions of all that cherished the presence of a person  separated by death. It is simply  an  overcoming of the victory that  was death, and a recognition of the great  power  of, and awesome mercy, that is God.

To try to be calloused to the tender mercies of compassion, the rituals that mark a life, by saying where the remains of a person are is not of any value  to those that placed those remains, and their desires need not be honored wrong headed. It is often even  the mark of an enemy not an academic reasoning. For  enemies savage memorials, they deface markers,  monuments,  great works of art, out of hatred for people and their history and traditions. They want to savage all that is tender of a people, to break them of, their spirit, their will to exist by showing they have no lasting importance at all. 

We are not one with the mud, we are the works of God. It is okay to have loved us and to want to do remembrance of us, even our physical bodies when they die. In fact it is a good thing to care. Just as good as it is to know of the eternal nature of what God has created and has protected, His having loved  enough to give of Himself that we might have eternal life.

 Of course; one might instead argue that even  Jerusalem  has no meaning. The place of Christ's death, burial,  and resurrection no interest, and that  we should just make some condos  over the perceived tomb of His temporary burial. Plus the pyramids, great and not so great, why we should reuse all those stones, don't leave them. Yes, we  can be callous to history, but then we soon come to deny  the history itself, including awful histories too.

At even a simple gut level we ought to recognize some places are significant, even though all will pass and a new heaven and a new earth will come.

Some memorials must remain protected as proof of existence of even the extreme evil within men (The camps of death  for millions  during WWII for instance), as well as  in the contrasting love by mankind for it's own.

When death becomes ignored and we are all happy talk we miss much of the meaning of creation, it's fall and the awesome mercy and grace of our creator.

 

Very thought  provoking post Neighbour. Thank you.

[Neighbor]

Oh, just remembered the dumbest thing I ever said. It relates to the emotions that individuals have over the security of the remains of their deceased family members.

 I had arranged for the cremation of a famous individual an author of several books on a topic of interest, one that had a near cult following. 

 The family got to wrangling with each other over the inscription to go on  the urn before it was to be placed at the columbarium at our cemetery. Two heirs of equal standing got into an argument that had much more to do with other issues than just an inscription. As they battled, they asked  of me how long I could hold onto the cremated remains? I told them I could wait for them to  settle and come to  an agreement.

Little did I realize that  they would be battling for two years, and calling me about their mother's remains every week mostly to tell me of the other person's insensitivity. There were five of us in the office, it got so  the others would just say hey's it's YOUR family on the phone again. I sought legal counsel and  we determined that at some point the remains would be considered abandoned and I could place the urn without any inscription at th ecolumbarium.

Now the dumb part; One family member called me all distraught, she was really working up an emotion and asked "just how safe is my mother's remains? Where do you keep them while this is going on?" 

Exasperated and without thinking, I said, " Do not worry we keep your mother's  cremated remains in our "fireproof" safe. I could just have said safe, but no I had to emphasize the security of our walk in safe by adding "fireproof". With that the whole office of directors hearing in the background came unglued with laughter. I nearly lost it myself.

For years  every time a cremated remains was brought into the office pending  inurnment the other directors would say to me, "should I put them in our fireproof safe"?

 Other than to share of a bit of funeral humor, there is the second point, that  being the remains of our own loved ones is  often of very great concern, so much so that  we will do  rather serious battle over them with even our siblings. -Or perhaps we will use them  in our sibling battles. 

[Jewels7]

[HisFirst]

9 hours ago, Yowm said:

Volcanoes disturb graves nearly every time.

C'mon now Yowm!!

[HisFirst]

I think in the OT, places and markers where people were buried etc were regarded as sacred. Well they were remembered by family members anyway.

[Neighbor]

8 hours ago, HisFirst said:

I think in the OT, places and markers where people were buried etc were regarded as sacred. Well they were remembered by family members anyway.

Still are, ask of the Sioux at South Dakota if they consider their burial grounds to be sacred today.

"Jesus Is Buried

38 After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body.39 Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. 40 So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. 41 Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. 42 So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there."