My husband and I have agreed not to have funerals or memorials. If someone wants to get together for a potluck that would be alright, but no fancy caskets, no slide productions, no expensive gatherings. I have been to so many, feeling like a third wheel having no contact with those relatives after the memorials. There is no Biblical mandate for the way it is done, so why not make everything simple, easy and inexpensive.
I have no dilutions that anyone will understand this, our culture is so locked into tradition, that they may not understand, however that isn't our problem.
In so many gatherings, and we have been guilty of this ourselves, we go to a funeral of someone we had not communicated with in 30 years, never had a relationships with, but was family.
We cannot say goodbye to the deceased person because they are not there, when they were alive we didn't call, they didn't call us, we didn't visit, they didn't visit us, the only reason for the contact was that some of the same blood raced through our veins.
In life we had nothing in common that bound us together as kindred spirits. Our lifestyle choices were very different, we did not agree on matters of faith, nor did we enjoy their company necessarily, but felt the cultural pressure of attending, as they say, "to be supportive" of the survivors.
Support for survivors ought to be those who shared everyday life with them, not those who would never have seen them had there not been a funeral, and will not continue the contact after the funeral.
I am all for doing things God's way, however, I don't see a modern funeral with all the expensive trappings, described anywhere in the New Testament for Gentiles.
So often we place unnecessary burdens on believers to do the cultural thing, when God never commanded us to do it. I prefer to have people contact me if they desire a relationship, while I am still alive.
God made it clear that our companions ought to be those who share our faith. I have heard it said that people have funerals to be able to preach the gospel. That makes no sense to me, why not visit those same people who would attend the funeral, and give them the gospel? Are we so embarrassed to speak to others about the gospel that we hide behind a preacher in a pulpit so no one will persecute us?
If you want a family member to hear the gospel, speak to them directly one on one, instead of cowardly hiding behind preaching to justify our own lack of involvement.
Send a gospel letter or card to them in the mail, call them on the phone, or invite them over for dinner. So often we defer to cultural gatherings to spread the gospel, while cowering in a corner hoping those who attend will not notice that it came from us, that way they can still like us.
I do not say that funerals or memorials are necessarily wrong or evil, I am only saying that we have no right to expect others to do things our way just because it is the practice of the culture. We need to allow diversity in gatherings, when there is no command in the Word to do them a certain way, there is freedom in Christ to do them another way or not at all.
My only purpose in my writings is to show that not everything we are guilted into doing by our families or the culture, is necessary. We are free to do as we are led by the Holy Spirit, to go a different route.
If we love our brothers and sisters in the Lord, we will allow them the freedom to march to a different drummer when there is no command from God demonstrating how to do something. The beauty of our walk with Christ is that we are free, free to obey Him and free from cultural expectations.
John 8:31-35 "31 So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine;
32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
33 They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.
35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever.
36 So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed."
Personally I consider our modern practice of funeraling a colossal waste of money, for one hour of crying and saying only nice things about the dead person who is not there to hear them, while pretending they were perfect human beings without any flaws.
LOL, notice how every person who is memorialized never did anything bad or wrong in their life. Of course the aim is to make everyone feel good about their loss, I understand that, but so often there wasn't anything very good about the dearly departed relative, and yet they were declared as "in heaven now."
I love people, I desire to know people one on one, I am not good in crowds, crowds tend to be superficial and phony, everyone on their best behavior, not the real them.
Perhaps we could remember the whole person, loving them even if they were not perfect, warts and all. Isn't hat what Christ did?
Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
No comments:
Post a Comment