Christians and Cremation

In modern times, the cost of an average burial is astronomical, running into many thousands of dollars. In today’s unstable economy, many people can’t afford to pay out that kind of money, even if the deceased is your own husband or wife. The alternative is cremation, which costs far less. The word “cremation” is taken from the Latin word “cremo,” meaning “to burn.” Today, when a body is cremated, it requires intense heat between 1400 and 2100 degrees Fahrenheit. The body is placed into a wooden box (or casket) and both body and box are literally consumed by fire.

Once a body is cremated, an attendant will attempt to remove all the ashes that remain; nevertheless, there is always some small portion of that person’s ashes left inside the cremation chamber, which gets blended with those of the next body to be burned. Cremation has been around for thousands of years and was quite common back in ancient Greece and Rome. In ancient Israel, however, burial was the custom and cremation was rejected. The early Christians also eschewed cremation, due to its link with paganism, and gave their dead a proper burial in graves or underground vaults.

In several passages of the Bible, cremation or burning the dead is associated with evil doers. For instance, Leviticus 21:9 states that prostitutes must be burned by fire. Pagan idols were also burned (Deuteronomy 7:25). We also know that the incorrigibly wicked will be burned in a lake of fire (Revelation 20:16), called in scripture the “second death.” In Old Testament Israel, if a righteous person wasn’t given a proper burial, if was considered a dishonor to them. For these reasons, most Christians choose burial, though cremation won’t affect a person’s salvation.