Bodies of Death

I have to confess that I've always found the body, though fascinating in how it works, to also be repulsive. I don't like the reminder that we are just really food processing machines, not so different from earthworms: food in one end and excrement out the other. I don't like that initial slice during surgery, where you cut through the wholeness of the skin and see the stuffing of a person, the messy, squishy, bloody, pulsating mess inside. If only humans could look more like plants, with their neat compartmentalized structures and pretty colors.

So I guess it's pretty ironic that I'm going to medical school, huh? I'm already steeling myself for anatomy. Dissection tresspasses completely on the sanctity and dignity of a person. Curiosity, I think, will be the only motor pulling me forward to cut and examine, while the rest of me grimaces and digs in my heels hard. It's hard not to think that when you cut off chunks of a Bob's pickled body and throw it in a trash bag, you aren't also carving up Bob himself. After all, this was the physical form that Bob's family and friends hugged, shook hands with, and knew to be Bob.

But, we reassure ourselves, this is not Bob we're dealing with. This is simply his physical shell, left behind in this mortal world. It's okay if we take it apart. The real Bob is in a better place. Or, if you're an atheist, Bob, well, Bob is no more.

I was horrified the first time I passed by a body parts shop as a kid. I imagined spare arms piled on the shelves, and extra heads lined up against the wall. But you know, beyond the freaky image (and increasing possibility!) of human body shops, being a doctor is really not so different from being an auto mechanic. You get in there, adjust some valves and pipes, give it a good kick, and send it on its way. And eventually it's not worth it to replace the parts because it's just too expensive, and you might as well junk this car and get a shiny new one. A doctor, however, is a poor man's auto mechanic, who ends up patching up decrepit old jalopies just so they can chug painfully along. The poor man's never going to be able to afford trading in his car until he dies. And unfortunately, people are taking a whole lot longer to die now. All and all, a pretty depressing situation. Bodies that start dying from the day they are driven off the lot.

The resurrection of the body lends a new dignity to the human body, for it means that there is something essential about the body to being human. The body is necessary for us to serve in the role God designed us for, because if we could better glorify and serve him by being simply spiritual beings, God would not have given us bodies in the New Heaven and New Earth. The resurrection of the body means that there is something to caring for the body and providing for the needs of the body here and now, in this world. It gives significance to all of creation. The redemption of all of creation means that our work on this earth isn't just done on old jalopies that will be traded in. If it will pass through fire and not go up in flames, it will last and become part of the New Heaven and New Earth. We can store up eternal treasure.

Yet if we exchange our Platonic view of the body as a shell for the sanctity and importance of our bodies, indivisible from who we are as humans, what does that mean for dissection? Can we in reverence reduce a whole human body down to parts, small scraps of muscle and bone? It's hard not to imagine that you're not fragmenting the soul itself.

If you trace the history of anatomical dissections, unsurprisingly, it reflects the history of thought on the resurrection of the body and soul. Dissection was suppressed by the Catholic church, and it reemerged with the Reformation. How does our reconsideration of the resurrection of the body affect what we think about the practice of dissection?

When you consider that cremation is not so different from dissection, just faster and with less careful observation, perhaps we need to think more carefully what cremation might imply about the current thought on the resurrection of the body and soul. Cremation is growing in popularity: one in four deaths end in cremation today. While it is true that God's resurrection of our bodies is not dependent on our preserving our dead bodies, what does the popularity of cremation reflect about our culture's current attitude towards death and life after death? Cremation is mandated by Hinduism and Buddhism, and in the scattering of ashes, there is a sense that one's life will join in the life of the rivers, oceans, and trees. There is also a sense of final obliteration in cremation - there is nothing more left of the dead person, so why waste space and hurt the environment for the living? Personally, I find the idea of cremation attractive because I don't want to be remembered in cold, still death, and I rather don't like the idea of having my body decay in the ground. Better to hasten the process of nature and go to ashes directly, rather than linger in the ugly in between stages. And I remember one impression I had of cremation, is that the last time you loved ones will see your physical body is when it's shoved into a furnace and goes up in flames. Perhaps you think of a Viking king going out in glory. Curious how the hell-fire imagery doesn't seem to scare anyone anymore.

Read more...

A Human God

The part of Jesus that I find so easy to forget is His humanity. I can believe that He was God, that He is Lord of all and existed before time. What's harder to remember is that not only am I to be like Him, but that He actually became like me.

Why does this matter? Because if Jesus wasn't very human, I would find it hard to understand His suffering. To be human would mean that He could doubt, He could fear, He could know what it is to plunge into a bottomless pit of pain and despair. And it means then that He could pay the price for sin with a pain that I could understand.

That is why I found The Passion so powerful. There are always going to be inadequacies and failures in trying to depict Jesus, but I think one thing I think is good about depicting Jesus in movies is that you realize that Jesus wasn't just an abstract nice idea, but Jesus is a human. I could see what it cost Him to lay down His life, to not deliver Himself from each lash of the whip, from the coarse sharp mockery, from the excruciating pain. And this is where His divinity does not lessen His sacrifice, but makes it deeper. He was not helpless in the face of His suffering - He could have ended it at any moment - and yet He chose to endure the pain because He loved those who inflicted the pain on Him. He sought to win for them something they neither desired nor deserved - reconcilement with God. And the blood spilled by Christ - the blood that poured out of the wounds from His body, the pools of it staining the white floor, the blood that spattered and dripped on onlookers - this is the blood that won us life. This is the blood that cleansed us of our sin and freed the earth from the curse. The Passion was gory and it was violent, but the torn up body and oozing blood we see is the self-same blood which we are to remember:

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matt 26: 26-29)

Last Sunday, my chief thought when we were passing the bread around during communion was how to tear off the piece of bread where every else's germy hands hadn't touched. With the shiny silver sterility and pretty ceremony of the communion we receive on Sunday mornings, it's easy to forget how ugly and visceral Christ's death was. Experientially, it seems more akin to the act of cutting a lamb's throat for the Passover supper, draining it of its blood, and smearing it over your doorway. It's even a little sickening as you read it:

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. ..Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old...and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. (Exodus 12:1-10)

It is significant that for the first time, we are commanded to drink blood, and the blood of a human who is God, no less. God had declared, “If any one of the house of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. " (Lev 17:10-11) This time, it is not just God consuming the blood offered on the altars as atonement. It is we who drink the blood. Physically, His body and blood become nourishment as they are incorporated into our bodies. We take His life into ourselves, and it is His blood that runs in our veins, and we are His body.

Jesus was physical, he was a human. And the sacraments which commemorate and make God's work real to us - baptism, the Lord's Supper - are physical acts too, which care and renew our bodies. A burial and washing away of our filthy selves, a rising and blessing with water. A slaking of hunger and thirst through eating His body and drinking His blood. We have a new Spirit because of our reconciliation with God. But Christ's humanity - His incarnation, life, crucifixion, and resurrection - all point to a renewal and redemption of our bodies as well.

Read more...