One Reason I Prefer Burial Over Cremation

I’ve been asked a few times about my stance on cremation. When asked I usually point them to these articles by Russell Moore: here, here, and here. Moore’s position is that burial and not cremation better symbolizes the Christian hope of the resurrection.

I understand as well the arguments for cremation. Most of the arguments are financial—which quickly become just as theological when the word stewardship is brought in to the discussion. Furthermore, a casket in a burial plot with a headstone takes up far more precious land than a few ashes in an urn. For the sake of stewardship—both financial and ecological many Christians are finding cremation to be the responsible choice.

I strongly lean towards accepting Dr. Moore’s arguments for burial. I hesitate to call it “sub-Christian” as he does, but I still like his words here:

Recognizing that cremation is sub-Christian doesn’t mean castigating grieving families as sinners. It doesn’t mean refusing to eat at the dining room table with Aunt Flossie’s urn perched on the mantle overhead. It doesn’t mean labeling the pastor who blesses a cremation service as a priest of Molech.

It simply means beginning a conversation about what it means to grieve as Christians and what it means to hope as Christians. It means reminding Christians that the dead in the graveyards behind our churches are “us” too. It means hoping that our Christian burial plots preach the same gospel that our Christian pulpits do.

But there is one other reason that Moore doesn’t mention why I would prefer a burial over cremation; namely, for the sake of my family.

I have done funeral services with urns and with caskets. And the experience of the family is different based on which of these options was chosen.

Granted, my sample size is relatively small, but I have noticed a theme emerge in the way families talk about their dearly departed. Almost without exception when folks are able to see a corpse or even a closed casket, they say things like, “I can’t believe she is gone.” But they know that grandma is gone because they can see her—they are just having a hard time swallowing the hard truth.

When there is an urn at the front I hear things like, “It all just seems so surreal. It doesn’t even feel like he’s gone”. There isn’t closure in these statements. It just feels like grandpa has gone on another vacation to Florida. Grieving is harder.

And I suppose that one could argue that such a feeling might better picture the truth that death has lost its sting because of the resurrection of Christ. But the beauty of the resurrection and the victory of Christ is that he conquers an actual death—the cold hard reality that we are really dead in the grave and not just vacationing for a season in Florida.

For me I prefer burial over cremation. Not only for theological reasons but also because it helps the family to grieve better. They are able to truly grieve. And as that very real pain of a very real death threatens to swallow them they are able to grieve as one with hope because of the very real resurrection of a Christ that was also buried in a grave.