Present-Day Funerals
One obvious symptom of the spiritual declension of today is the increasingly worldly and irreverent manner in which funeral services are often conducted in many other branches of the visible Church. This has become such a concern to serious-minded people that the laudable intentions that may lead one to attend such services, such as respect for the deceased and sympathy with the mourning, seem to be increasingly outweighed by the offensiveness of what is witnessed on such occasions.
Irreverence and levity are sinful at all times but such sin is more aggravated in the presence of death and bereavement, and especially when it occurs during the worship of God. It seems almost inevitable that, where the Word of God is not believed to be Divinely-inspired and authoritative, the solemn teachings of Scripture concerning death and eternity will be ignored and that this must have an effect on the manner in which funeral services are conducted. Examples are all too common, and many of them ought not even to be mentioned on account of their profane and blasphemous nature. One may suffice: at a recent funeral in a Church of Scotland congregation in the West Highlands, the coffin was lifted out of the church building while a recording of frivolous and crassly-inappropriate Scottish dance music was being played. It was explained to the people that this was the deceased woman’s favourite kind of music. We wonder whether the ministers and elders of such congregations have any sense of the dignity due in the presence of death.
What is even more troubling, however, is the noticeable trend among professedly-Evangelical ministers and congregations to encourage addresses which serve to exalt an ungodly course of life and introducing unscriptural items during worship such as musical interludes, readings of secular poetry
and foolish jesting. It is noticeable also that the focus in the prayers has become increasingly man-centred in contrast to the “reverence and godly fear” that becomes sinners in the presence of the Judge of all the earth.
Perhaps we need to familiarise ourselves again with the reasons for having worship at times of bereavement. God is to be acknowledged at all times as the God of our providence, the One who gives and takes away life at His own appointed time. Since death is the wages of sin, we ought to acknowledge our sin and frailty at such a solemn juncture on our way to eternity and seek the mercy of God through Jesus Christ. In sympathy with the bereaved, we gather with them for worship, seeking to comfort them in their loss, praying that the precious truths of the everlasting gospel may be blessed to them, so that they might become partakers of “everlasting consolation and good hope through grace”.
We must resist the tendency to regard a funeral as a memorial service for the deceased, as such services are not warranted by Scripture and are, by their very nature, overly man-centred. God will not give His glory to another, and we should therefore shun anything that in practice gives man a place that does not belong to him. Families should thus be very careful to avoid, for example, permitting undertakers to print orders of service which may tend in that direction. We also avoid the custom of engaging in prayer at the grave, as it has tended to encourage superstitious and erroneous notions of committing the soul of the departed to the Lord.
AWM
Assisted Dying
There is a relentless push to make it legal to help a person to end their life, be it by a friend, relative or doctor. In early February, Isle of Man politicians rejected a private member’s bill to allow assisted dying, the members of the House of Keys voting 17 to 5 against the bill. A supporter of the motion said, “I am not afraid of dying, but it’s how I die that worries me. It should be my choice. I am bitterly disappointed but I won’t give up”. “It should be my choice”, is also what we hear regarding abortion. “My body is my own, and I will do what I want with it,” is the constant argument.
The Christian response to assisted dying, or euthanasia, is to oppose it unequivocally, as in direct contradiction to the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”. It may be called “mercy killing”, or the compassionate response to a call for help, but man has been made in the image of God (Gen 1:26,27) with a precious immortal soul, and there can be no justification for ending the life of a sick person prematurely or enabling them to do so themselves. The Shorter Catechism states, “The Sixth Commandment requireth all lawful endeavours to preserve our own life, and the life of
others”. God has sovereignty over us, and our life is not our own to dispense with, however difficult or distressing the circumstances. As Job said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).
Being against euthanasia on the grounds of Scripture does not mean we lack compassion towards those who, in God’s inscrutable providence, may have long illnesses and extraordinary suffering. The Saviour was full of compassion for the sick and the outcasts of His day and we in our times have a Christian duty to follow His example. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows” (Mt 10:29-31).
The sad fact is that, as far as this generation is concerned, God is not in all their thoughts. “They have forsaken Me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jer 2:13). It is Satan’s work to put suicidal thoughts into the minds of those who are downcast, making them feel they are at the end of their tether. But God, who is the “Father of mercies and the God of all comfort”, is able to uphold all those who call upon His name and enable them to say, “Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor 12:9). FRD
US Supreme Court
A correspondent has drawn attention to the religious composition of the US Supreme Court: of the nine members, five give their religion as Roman Catholicism, three as Judaism, and the ninth attends an Episcopal church but was raised a Roman Catholic. This is not a new situation – there has not been a clearly Protestant member since 2010 – but it is extraordinary none the less. It is also in complete contrast to the past: of the 114 justices who have been appointed since 1789, 91 have been Protestants, 13 have been Roman Catholics, and 8 have been Jews. It is a testimony to the secularisation of the US, and to the success of Vatican II in making Romanism palatable to liberal Protestants.
Members of the Supreme Court are not elected by the public, but they have enormous power in some situations, for example in imposing sodomite marriage on the entire nation. Christ allows Satan’s kingdom great apparent strength, but down it will come at last. “If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgement and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they” (Ecc 5:8). DWBS