Organ donation

[Bartato]

On Cremation: Several patriarchs had their bones taken back to a land special to them. This meant the body had to be exposed to, well nature as it were, so the soft tissue was done away with. Cremation is very similar in that only the bone materials remain. I see no difference.

That's interesting. I would take that same passage as an indication that burial is to be preferred to cremation for Christians (the bones remained and were identifiable hundreds of years later).
God will raise all the dead, no matter what's happens to their bodies.

 

[steve]

That's interesting. I would take that same passage as an indication that burial is to be preferred to cremation for Christians (the bones remained and were identifiable hundreds of years later).
God will raise all the dead, no matter what's happens to their bodies.

I don’t think that the bones burn in cremation.
That’s the ugly part, they put your bones through a grinder and give you a small percentage of them. People think that they have all that remains in the urn on the mantle.
The rest of the bone fragments are disposed of with, shall we say, less ceremony.

Edit: I just looked it up, a200 lb body yields 200 cu inches remaining.
About 13.9 cups.
There are 16 cups in a gallon, so a full size urn would be slightly under one gallon size for the average person.

 

[FollowingHim]

We really need less expensive burial options for people. All you really need is a wood box, and about 30 sq ft of land. Unfortunately the funeral industry has persuaded governments to make a lot of restrictions that greatly push up the costs of funerals (and death industry profits).

You may find the regulations are not as bad as you think. The funeral industry has a vested interest in people thinking "this is just what you have to do" and paying for all the things. And, when you're in a stressful situation having just had a relative die, it is actually very helpful to just hand all the details to someone else, I know this well - provided you have the money for it. But I also know that over here you can actually do almost everything yourself and the actual mandatory expenses are quite minimal. You just have to know about this option beforehand so you can consider it when surprised by the need for a funeral.

In New Zealand, if you're interested in arranging a funeral yourself, everything you need to know is on the below website. And although all the information is for free on the website, there's also a book you can buy from there that has everything you need in it, excellent resource to just have sitting on the shelf. For our extended family we have a copy sitting on my parents bookshelf, and we're all aware it's there if we need it.

DIYfuneral - Welcome!

 

[Asforme&myhouse]

Regarding burial, it has always been Christian tradition to bury rather than cremate, because we are looking forward to a bodily resurrection, where the bodies rise from the graves. Although nothing can stop God from resurrecting the body, going out of the way to destroy it and scatter it around to make it more difficult for Him has always just felt like going against His will, to many Christians over history and today.

On Cremation: Several patriarchs had their bones taken back to a land special to them. This meant the body had to be exposed to, well nature as it were, so the soft tissue was done away with. Cremation is very similar in that only the bone materials remain. I see no difference.

If cremation is a hang up for someone then organ donation should be even worse, considering how far apart your body parts might end up being deposited in the end. I think fire just does what natural processes would do, but at high speed.

 

[Asforme&myhouse]

You may find the regulations are not as bad as you think. The funeral industry has a vested interest in people thinking "this is just what you have to do" and paying for all the things. And, when you're in a stressful situation having just had a relative die, it is actually very helpful to just hand all the details to someone else, I know this well - provided you have the money for it. But I also know that over here you can actually do almost everything yourself and the actual mandatory expenses are quite minimal. You just have to know about this option beforehand so you can consider it when surprised by the need for a funeral.

In New Zealand, if you're interested in arranging a funeral yourself, everything you need to know is on the below website. And although all the information is for free on the website, there's also a book you can buy from there that has everything you need in it, excellent resource to just have sitting on the shelf. For our extended family we have a copy sitting on my parents bookshelf, and we're all aware it's there if we need it.

DIYfuneral - Welcome!

The other option is to just not claim the body… it’s a lot less expensive.

 

[Bartato]

I don’t think that the bones burn in cremation.
That’s the ugly part, they put your bones through a grinder and give you a small percentage of them. People think that they have all that remains in the urn on the mantle.
The rest of the bone fragments are disposed of with, shall we say, less ceremony.

Edit: I just looked it up, a200 lb body yields 200 cu inches remaining.
About 13.9 cups.
There are 16 cups in a gallon, so a full size urn would be slightly under one gallon size for the average person.

I saw the remaining bones after the cremation of my father in law (Japanese Buddhist). I was surprised how large some of the fragments remained. It wasn't like what you see in the movies. This was in Japan, and I don't know if their cremation process (temperature and time) is the same as that done elsewhere.

In Japan, family members and close friends use something like chopsticks to take the bone fragments out of the "firebox" following cremation and place them in a special receptacle for taking to the cemetery. It was a very strange experience for me as an American, but was nice for emotional closure.

Off topic, but in Japan there is a serious cultural taboo against passing food from your chopsticks to someone else's (and also against having multiple people pick up food from a shared dish at the same time using chopsticks). These taboos pertain to this funeral practice, where you do have people picking up bone fragments together (my wife and I together, or my two nieces together, etc).

Though not a Christian, Otōsan was a loving father, and always treated me very kindly even though I am a Gaijin. More than a decade later, he is still missed.