The NXR Podcast - THE INTERVIEW - Death, Cremation, & Grief with Michael Foster

00:00:00.000 Hi, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:00:02.300 I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin

00:00:03.720 with Right Response Ministries.

00:00:05.000 We're glad that you're here.

00:00:06.460 Today's episode, I'm welcoming onto the show

00:00:08.740 for, I don't know, third or fourth or fifth time,

00:00:11.680 a regular guest, Michael Foster.

00:00:13.480 He's the senior pastor of East River Church.

00:00:15.660 We're talking about death. 1.00

00:00:16.780 We're talking about the Christian response,

00:00:18.380 the biblical theology and framework

00:00:19.840 for how we should actually view death.

00:00:22.600 We talk about a proper biblical category of grief,

00:00:26.400 but we also talk about the appropriateness

00:00:28.660 of reacting towards death with anger,

00:00:31.700 that Jesus was actually angry at Lazarus' death.

00:00:35.140 There's a lot of things that we get into.

00:00:37.060 We talk about how to treat the body. 0.97

00:00:39.140 We talk about how it's not particularly Christian

00:00:41.440 to cremate, but the body is significant.

00:00:44.660 And we wanna preserve the body

00:00:45.860 because we believe in a final physical resurrection

00:00:48.620 of these bodies that we're not Gnostics.

00:00:51.180 And so a lot of stuff, dealing with death,

00:00:54.060 grieving properly, being angry at death

00:00:56.440 rather than angry at God? How to treat the body? What is a Christian doctrine of a funeral? What

00:01:02.680 does that look like? Important conversation. Death is inevitable. We all deal with it and we need to

00:01:07.760 know how to deal with it properly from the word of God. So if that interests you, tune in now.

00:01:12.740 Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:01:18.120 all right welcome back to another episode of theology applied uh today i'm privileged to

00:01:28.660 have joining the show once again a friend of mine michael foster he is the senior pastor of east

00:01:34.560 river church uh he's a faithful pastor he's also bivocational working outside of the church world

00:01:39.860 he's been involved with podcasting and writing and all those kinds of things and right now

00:01:44.280 He is focusing on many different tasks, but one of them is completing a book that focuses

00:01:49.140 on the topic of grief, loss of loved ones.

00:01:53.160 And it's not just a random topic that he decided to write about, but it's deeply personal.

00:01:58.220 It's something that he's experienced as we all have in various degrees over the course

00:02:01.960 of his life, but especially just one hit after another in these last 18 months.

00:02:07.760 So Michael, welcome to the show.

00:02:08.900 And can you just share with our listeners these last 18 months, whatever you're comfortable

00:02:13.520 with, and then we'll talk about the theology of grief. Sure. Well, the genesis of the book I'm

00:02:19.660 working on was the death of a child. We had a daughter, Nicaea, my first girl, who died on her

00:02:28.200 due date. So she was fine, there was nothing wrong with her, and then her heart just stopped. So she

00:02:34.300 was stillborn, and that was on the day before she was supposed to be due or something. And that

00:02:41.960 through our life into, it's one of those things that changes you forever. It really does. And

00:02:49.480 so I wrote a bunch of blog posts on it as we were processing it. And the sort of outreach that we

00:02:56.300 got was, was incredible. You know, the post went viral. I wasn't on, well, I wasn't active on

00:03:02.700 Twitter back then. It was just like a WordPress or something. And so I've been meaning to turn

00:03:08.100 that into a book for a long time. Signed a contract with New Christendom Press to publish

00:03:11.900 them. And I was hard on it, man, like five or six chapters through. And then things just got

00:03:19.500 really intense. So my brother died in June of 2022. And he died of an overdose. A couple hours

00:03:34.020 before he died, we had a conversation. He was being really aggressive. He was a drug addict

00:03:39.620 and I had a simple rule for him to have access to his nieces and nephews, my children, is that

00:03:46.320 you'd have to be sober for six months and hold down a job of some sort for six months. And when

00:03:51.620 you come from a family of addicts and from a non-Christian family that has those sort of 1.00

00:03:56.860 intense sins, whether it's gambling or drinking or drugs or whatever, you do have to learn how 0.96

00:04:03.720 to set boundaries. You don't want to close the door on them forever, but you do have to control

00:04:09.720 how they enter into your life because it's very easy for you to get pulled back into kind of like

00:04:14.040 a black hole of, of that destruction when you're trying to escape and start a first generation 0.94

00:04:21.020 Christian family that's faithful. So he wanted to come to our house for 4th of July because 4th of 0.98

00:04:26.920 July was a big deal in the foster family. We have like these insanely dangerous firework wars

00:04:32.380 where like we shoot bottle rockets at each other's heads and rum and candles.

00:04:36.680 And so he, that was very, um, a warm memory to him.

00:04:39.780 So he asked if he could come, uh, see them on 4th of July.

00:04:43.080 And I said, no, you can't, you can't, man.

00:04:45.220 You got, you know, you gotta, you gotta stay sober for six months.

00:04:49.040 I'd love for you to come.

00:04:50.080 I'm rooting for you.

00:04:51.460 And, um, so he told me like, I wasn't a real foster.

00:04:54.700 I didn't really love him and to, you know, go F myself and then died four hours later.

00:05:00.480 That's what happened.

00:05:01.300 in the corner of a in the corner of a homeless shelter so then because of where he was at and

00:05:11.960 he was homeless and all this complications my mother and i were forced to have him cremated

00:05:17.400 we didn't have a choice on it also his body had been in with the coroner for a long time because

00:05:24.160 all these complications so that happened that was like really hard because he and i were quite close

00:05:28.760 And the very last episode of It's Good to Be a Man, episode 75, kind of explains that whole story.

00:05:36.780 Fast forward to the beginning of last year, my mom had to go in to have a tumor removed off, removed from inside her cranium that was causing her to lose sight.

00:05:48.880 It was as brain surgery goes, it was pretty simple, actually.

00:05:52.360 And, um, so she went in, I went in with her, uh, and the surgery was successful, but the

00:06:00.220 tools that were used to, um, do the surgery were contaminated and it led to an infection

00:06:07.400 in her brain and, uh, several strokes.

00:06:11.300 And then she was fighting for her life for a long time.

00:06:14.220 We were fighting with the hospital system and, uh, and she wasn't able to talk.

00:06:19.880 So I remember I just had a, I don't know where I saw this somewhere, but I had to go ahead and feed her coffee from a spoon when she was finally able to eat something.

00:06:31.720 I think I had some notes on my phone or something.

00:06:34.700 But she slowly got her ability to talk back and we got her out of the hospital and everything was looking up.

00:06:41.560 She was learning to move her arms again and all this.

00:06:45.200 And she was able to talk in broken sentences.

00:06:47.820 but she was really positive.

00:06:50.300 Like it was incredible to see the work that the Lord did in our heart.

00:06:52.960 My mom had really been into the occult for a long time,

00:06:56.220 vampires and werewolves and ghosts and all that nastiness. 0.91

00:07:00.120 And she had slowly gotten become a more serious Christian.

00:07:03.260 But after the stroke, all she wanted to do was praise God and read scripture.

00:07:07.880 And her heart was full of joy and all these things.

00:07:10.840 And so things were looking up and I got a call at 5 a.m. in the morning.

00:07:15.880 and it was the nursing home that we had her skilled nursing facility. And they said, Hey,

00:07:22.680 your mom's on the way to the hospital. Uh, I'm calling to, you know, let you know, and here's

00:07:29.060 where she's going. And you can always tell with their voice, like they're holding back something.

00:07:33.800 So I suspected, uh, something massive was wrong. Uh, so then, um, it was going to take them about

00:07:41.500 an hour to get her in and, you know, get her situated. And when you've been through this stuff

00:07:46.020 before, you know, um, but, uh, but, uh, so I laid down and I told my wife was going on and 45

00:07:55.120 minutes later, uh, I got a call that she had, she had died in the ambulance on the way to the

00:08:01.000 hospital. It was quite shocking to all of us. And, um, and so all that happened like, uh, you know,

00:08:09.100 within like 18 months, not even really like my mom and my brother died within 13 months of each

00:08:14.120 other. Um, and, uh, it just kind of throws your life. Like it messes everything up. Like Emily

00:08:21.660 and I were going down to the hospital every other day, switching off for four hours for like months

00:08:28.960 trying to be, you have to be a patient advocate. And it was very hard on us. I gained a bunch of

00:08:33.640 weight this past year because you eat when you can eat and you exercise when you exercise and

00:08:39.900 everything's crazy. Our kids probably, we use screens too much to babysit them because what

00:08:46.960 are we going to do? We got a lot of kids and these hours are very strange. And then I was

00:08:53.820 really surprised how broken I was by my mom dying. And that may seem surprising to some people to

00:09:00.600 hear his son say that. But I grew up in a broken home and I had a distant relationship with both

00:09:06.960 my parents until really the last decade or so and slowly have repaired it by God's grace just

00:09:15.340 because I grew up in a home full of alcoholism and abuse and just really being exposed to lots

00:09:22.700 of evil stuff on TV. I remember watching Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Dream Warriors,

00:09:29.140 whichever one that is when i was like seven years old man like that's crazy like that kids were

00:09:34.820 exposed to that sort of thing and uh and so then um so that's that's uh was the last last year was

00:09:43.160 hard and i'm getting my energy back and i'm back to writing this book and all the more convinced

00:09:49.300 that uh we need better books on grief uh better books uh things a more biblical way of tackling

00:09:58.600 issues like trauma, like people use trauma as an excuse, but there is, when something

00:10:06.820 shocking happens to you, the death of a loved one, especially if it's gruesome, if it's

00:10:11.540 unexpected, there is some sort of almost like psychic wound that you bear.

00:10:22.060 And I've seen, I've seen normal people act crazy after the death of a child, like really

00:10:28.280 have kind of a break with reality for, for a long period of time. And it, no one tells you

00:10:34.220 about how uneven grief is like, you'll be numb and normal. And then suddenly something will

00:10:41.700 trigger it. You'll start crying like in a very inconvenient place. Um, no one tells you that

00:10:47.780 there's folks out there that are attracted to your grief and trauma because they've never gotten over

00:10:54.220 of theirs and it allows them to relive it. So I think of them almost like lampreys on the side

00:10:58.560 of a shark. So there are some people, not all people are doing that, but there are some people

00:11:02.540 like that that are just attracted to that. And those sort of people can keep you stuck

00:11:08.920 in a phase of grieving and keep you from moving on. So I wanted to write a book after,

00:11:15.380 there was not a good book for people that have miscarriages or stillbirths and not very many

00:11:20.600 books and the death of children and the ones that are out there are really long, uh, which is not

00:11:26.400 helpful for you when you're in the middle of something like that. You need something kind of

00:11:30.320 condensed. Um, or they're also, um, they're either too detached because they don't want to trigger

00:11:38.800 people emotionally. So it's almost like reading a textbook or the flip side is they're very

00:11:44.860 emotional and sentimental and, and not helpful. So I thought, what's something I'd love to write

00:11:51.060 something that is just very honest about what suffering's like, how to tackle it biblically

00:11:58.740 and to walk someone through the process of, from the first, the first chapter of the book that I

00:12:04.420 have done, I'm about five, six chapters done. First chapter is literally just how, how we found out

00:12:10.120 she died and then walking all the way through the funeral, through coming to terms with

00:12:19.120 it and, and, and the different ways my wife and I reacted and, and then ending with the

00:12:24.340 birth of our daughter, Galilee, who is an Irish twin, right?

00:12:28.660 So Nicaea was born in, in August, Gal was born in July.

00:12:33.320 So that's, that's kind of what's been going on.

00:12:35.200 And that's what I've been thinking about.

00:12:36.600 And I just think we need better pastoral resources.

00:12:39.140 It's hard. People don't – we don't talk about death anymore. People don't go to funerals. They don't see the bodies. They just cremate them. Sometimes you have no choice, but it's important to closure, and Scripture spends a whole lot talking about death as a final enemy, and it's good to be connected to death because it reminds you of the need for the resurrection, why the gospel is good news.

00:13:08.120 it also keeps you sober. And so much of the stuff we see emphasized now, uh, doesn't really have an

00:13:14.620 eternal perspective to it. So that's what I'm hoping to do. That's what I've been thinking

00:13:17.940 about a lot lately. Yeah. That's really good. Yeah. Uh, I appreciate that. And I like what

00:13:23.920 you were saying at the end there, you know, I think sometimes we, uh, one thing that we'll do

00:13:28.320 is we'll ignore death. So, I mean, our, our society is just, you know, um, I mean, even when

00:13:34.440 people are near death we remove them from society we don't want uh sickly uh people you know near

00:13:40.780 death in public view you know so whether it's uh taking the elderly and sequestering them you know

00:13:46.100 what i mean over in a nursing home you know uh uh just that that classic uh uh andrew cuomo move 0.62

00:13:52.900 you know you just you just throw them all in a building lock the door and let them die but

00:13:57.400 somehow you're a champion you know of life um you know so you do that you either avoid death

00:14:02.240 or you try to beautify death or make it somehow romantic and chanting, you know, or trivial.

00:14:12.620 Celebration of life, right?

00:14:13.740 Exactly.

00:14:14.420 And that's, I think, beautifying, but also trivializing.

00:14:17.360 You know, you're minimizing death.

00:14:18.900 Oh, it's not, we're not mourning.

00:14:20.360 We're just, it's a celebration of life where it's like, and so this is helpful for me.

00:14:26.040 You know, having Jesus, you know, thinking of a biblical perspective,

00:14:29.140 Well, one biblical text, having Jesus' perspective on death.

00:14:33.540 And did Jesus ever attend a funeral?

00:14:36.080 You know, and conveniently, he did.

00:14:39.620 Like, now he was a late attender to this funeral by design, by his choice.

00:14:44.420 He had a purpose in that.

00:14:45.500 But he shows up at Lazarus' funeral.

00:14:48.100 And I remember talking to Isker about this, you know, with a recent project that we did.

00:14:52.800 But his position, Jesus' position is, it's the shortest verse that we have in the New Testament,

00:14:58.420 Jesus wept. So there's grief. But there's also, it says he was troubled in spirit. And you go back

00:15:04.240 to earlier translations of that and like King James and the way that it's rendered in the Greek

00:15:08.900 there. It's not just grief. Grief is there. Jesus wept, but there's also anger. Jesus is angry

00:15:16.300 at a funeral. And we don't think about that. We say we should be, we're Christians. We believe

00:15:21.400 death. I've heard guys say death isn't, death is a door, right? What they're saying is death is good.

00:15:27.160 It's just, it's a door into heaven. No, no. Death is not the savior from suffering in life. Jesus is

00:15:32.960 the savior. Death is an enemy, a formidable enemy. And the last of Christ's enemies that he's going

00:15:38.960 to defeat, and he's not going to defeat it gently or kindly. Christ hates death, and he's going to

00:15:44.820 give the death blow to death, and he's going to do so violently. And Jesus is angry. And there's

00:15:50.020 a number of reasons. I think he's angry at death. I also think he's certainly angry at their

00:15:54.740 disbelief, right? He's surrounded by a bunch of people who don't believe that he is the

00:15:59.200 resurrection of the life. So I think he's troubled by that. But my point is that Jesus

00:16:03.100 has both grief, proper, holy grief at this death scene with Lazarus, but also anger.

00:16:11.280 He does not view death as a friend. He doesn't view death as a door. He doesn't view death

00:16:15.220 as a savior taking us out of, I mean, that's every cult leader that you, you can track

00:16:21.520 all these cult leaders. And what do they do? At the end of their cult legacy, they pass around

00:16:29.260 the cups of Kool-Aid and they always, it's some kind of speech of like, let's just be done with

00:16:33.740 it. Aren't you tired of how the world is going to hell in a handbasket and how corrupt it is?

00:16:39.580 And they make life the enemy. Life is so hard. Life is filled with wickedness and evil. The

00:16:46.720 world is, is, is too far gone. Um, let's just be done with it. Death. And so, so life becomes the

00:16:52.660 enemy. Death becomes the savior. And, uh, and that's demonic. That is literally, I mean, that's

00:16:57.740 the pitch of Satan. You know, you will not surely die. And so, um, yeah, so I think, I think that's

00:17:03.200 so helpful for people to say, number one, it's appropriate and right to grieve and not minimize

00:17:08.320 death and say, oh, there's nothing to be sad about. Yes, you should be sad. And then number two,

00:17:12.180 not only sad, but I think a biblical argument can be made for being angry, righteously angry,

00:17:17.640 indignant. I think of the Psalms where David says, do I not hate those who hate you? It's good and

00:17:25.360 right when we hate God's enemies and death is one of God's enemies that God hates. And when we hate

00:17:31.260 death too, we're pledging our allegiance to Christ. We're properly viewing death, categorizing

00:17:37.380 it properly where it really belongs. It's not our friend. It's not a door. It's the curse of sin

00:17:44.620 and God's righteous, appropriate judgment. But for sin, it's an enemy of Christ and he's going

00:17:50.880 to defeat it. And I think that helps people move on. People don't move on as well from grief

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00:19:51.860 Well, recently I had a friend die a couple of weeks ago.

00:19:56.440 So we go way back.

00:20:00.460 He was an atheist for a long time.

00:20:02.180 Then we came in agnostic through reading Jordan Peterson of all things.

00:20:06.180 And we met at a bar.

00:20:07.680 I went to some sort of celebration.

00:20:09.500 And we met at this bar.

00:20:10.780 And I hate loud noise.

00:20:12.200 I get really overwhelmed by music.

00:20:14.240 So I went to a corner and he was there. He was pretty drunk. And he started arguing with me about Christianity or whatever. So it was funnier than the party. So I just hung out with him and we ended up becoming friends from that. And that was about a year or two before Obama got elected. So however long that was, he slowly, he became a good friend and he supported me in the ministry. It was kind of funny how this happened.

00:20:38.460 And he called me up and – or he sent me a message.

00:20:41.920 He said, hey, are you still into abortion ministry?

00:20:44.680 Are you still trying to stop abortion?

00:20:46.260 And I said, yeah, I am.

00:20:47.540 He's like, I'd like to support you in the ministry.

00:20:49.500 And I was like, okay, that's cool.

00:20:51.460 Why?

00:20:52.320 And he said, well, I went overseas and met this girl and got her pregnant.

00:20:57.500 And she's over there in Eastern Europe.

00:21:01.000 I'm over here. 0.96

00:21:02.440 And she was struggling about whether she should keep the baby or not.

00:21:05.740 And I begged her, I begged her to keep the child.

00:21:09.880 And I told her that if you keep the child, I will move over there.

00:21:13.880 I will marry you and I will raise that child.

00:21:16.580 Right.

00:21:16.820 Wow.

00:21:17.580 And I said, well, awesome, man, I'll be praying for you.

00:21:19.420 So he gave to, I don't know, like 15, 20 bucks or something for, for a long time.

00:21:23.820 And he did move over there and he did marry her and she did have the baby.

00:21:28.900 And about a year ago, I called him an agnostic and he got really mad at me.

00:21:34.140 He was like, I'm not an agnostic.

00:21:35.740 what do you mean you're not agnostic he's like i believe in god and i said so which one like the

00:21:41.540 god of the bible right and i was like all right all right but he wasn't really going to church

00:21:45.480 or anything so then um a couple months ago he um he says hey i'm coming to the states

00:21:52.660 and um and i'd like to get baptized and i was like all right well let me know when you're coming

00:22:01.260 So then it turns out he's got cancer.

00:22:06.220 He's got a form of cancer, but things are looking up like they thought they could have it tackled or whatever.

00:22:12.900 So he flies into town.

00:22:14.900 I'm helping him find a church over there.

00:22:16.840 I get special permission from my elders like here's what I'd like to do.

00:22:19.700 We have a small service at his mom's house because he's in a lot of pain.

00:22:24.700 And he came back home to do fundraising and have money for his cancer treatment.

00:22:29.400 So we do a baptism service, all the words that you'd use from like a traditional Presbyterian service.

00:22:37.100 He cries, his mom cries, his dad cries, we all cry.

00:22:40.260 Some of our friends there cry.

00:22:41.820 He gets baptized and pray for him, you know, and so then he flies home.

00:22:47.900 He flies home and dies like within days, right?

00:22:53.220 The cancer was just way worse than anyone realized and that's that.

00:22:56.460 um so then his mom uh called me up last week and just was crying on the phone and she's like

00:23:05.760 uh is it right for me to be angry with god and i said it's right to be angry but not angry at god

00:23:15.920 right it's understandable why you're angry at god that's a lot of people feel that way but

00:23:22.360 But had your son died months ago, he would be in hell.

00:23:29.060 But God, in his kindness, changed your son's heart.

00:23:32.840 And now he's having a better time than we are, right?

00:23:36.160 So we should be angry at death, and we should be happy that God called him to himself.

00:23:41.700 And we should remember that we are happy to receive God's blessings, but we also have

00:23:47.400 to deal with his severe mercies and that the tests and trials he brings into our life is for

00:23:53.320 our good and his glory. And it's difficult to understand it. So I think your point about anger

00:23:58.720 is good. It's just, and people say it's okay to be angry with God. It's understandable, but no,

00:24:05.500 God is good. It's good. Yeah, I'm sympathetic, but it's not permissible. Yeah, exactly. So people

00:24:10.440 are angry when, and that's why I bring it up as one, because I think we have a good biblical

00:24:14.780 example, but two, you know, from Christ himself, but two, grief is not the, you know, the only

00:24:20.800 emotion. I think it's one of the deepest. I think the anger a lot of times stems, it's a result of

00:24:25.660 the grief and the grief is more of the underlining deeper emotion. But still the point is grief is

00:24:30.660 usually not the singular, you know, monolithic feeling that's going on when someone experiences

00:24:35.800 loss and death. I think anger is part of that too. So for us to be able to have a biblical perspective

00:24:41.020 on anger and to be able to, instead of just saying, don't be angry, or like a lot of pop

00:24:47.120 psychology today would say, you know, which sadly evangelicals have largely adopted, they would say,

00:24:52.340 oh, you know, like you go girl, slay queen, you know, or you go boy, like you're, oh yeah,

00:24:57.620 of course you're angry and you're justified in every ounce of your anger. No, it's neither

00:25:03.400 of those options. It's not stop being angry. And it's also not, oh yeah, just lean into your anger

00:25:10.920 and you're totally justified to be, no, it's the anger makes sense and the anger can be righteous,

00:25:17.000 but it needs to be righteously directed. Who are you angry at? What are you angry at? And so I think

00:25:22.760 that to be able to have a book, you know, and a testimony to be able to help people know what to

00:25:27.820 do with the anger side of loss and not only grief, I think is really helpful. And then the last thing,

00:25:34.100 cause I know you'll have to go here in just a moment, but I would love, you know, we were

00:25:36.840 talking a little bit offline before we started recording. This is something that you've spoken

00:25:40.880 to recently, and I've spoken to a couple of years ago in one of my podcasts, and a lot of guys have

00:25:47.300 spoken to. John Piper's talked about it, and I agree with John Piper's position, actually. I think

00:25:51.160 he gets it right. I don't agree with everything with Piper, but I think he gets this one right.

00:25:55.480 So you and I, you're not the first, I'm not the first, nobody's the first. Well, somebody might

00:26:00.040 be, but the point is, what about the body, right? So with grief, we're talking about the relationship,

00:26:05.380 the sense of loss, a proper view of death, grief, anger. But in terms of the physical body,

00:26:11.640 you mentioned multiple times now in your own story, in regards to your brother,

00:26:17.460 you mentioned very quick and passing, but you said, you know, we cremated him. And I know that's

00:26:22.840 not a coincidence that you mentioned that detail. And you also mentioned along with it,

00:26:26.960 it wasn't our choice. We didn't want to cremate him. So why did you not want to cremate your

00:26:32.060 brother, why does a burial matter, a physical, literal burial? So let me give you kind of a

00:26:38.000 odd analogy. So I did abortion ministry for many years, as I've already mentioned.

00:26:47.000 And how that, the form that took is that when I was engaged in trying to change the law in South

00:26:54.400 Carolina, but we also went down to the Greenville Women's Clinic, which is just, you know, a 0.74

00:26:59.200 slaughterhouse. We stood out front and almost no one – it's very difficult to get people to – by

00:27:05.620 the way, it's designed, you can't get people to stop and talk to you very often. It's got this

00:27:09.740 huge wall that goes all around it. You can't really talk to people. It's really well tucked

00:27:14.280 back. And so one of the reasons you're out there is not just to save babies and preach the gospel.

00:27:22.180 That's certainly one of the reasons. But another reason is to be a public testimony to something

00:27:26.780 horrible is happening here right and you stand out front with the signs people honk their horns

00:27:32.320 it's it's we can't you know these things are always tucked in these beautiful looking buildings

00:27:37.600 and whatever and but it's a horror house right and and to have people out front to testify to

00:27:43.520 that's good right it's being salt it's being light it's a good public testimony burial in a similar

00:27:50.520 way is a public testimony, but a public testimony of something for the righteous, for those

00:27:57.860 who have been born again, that is wonderful, which is the resurrection at the end of the

00:28:02.600 age, right?

00:28:03.160 That we all will be resurrected to life forever, or if we don't know Christ, to death forever.

00:28:10.180 So when you go to a graveyard, it's a reminder that you shall rise again.

00:28:20.120 And so my mom's gravestone, I just put until the resurrection.

00:28:24.140 I've never seen that inscription, but I've seen things like that before.

00:28:28.180 And I want to go when I go to – I mean it is weird when you go to a cemetery.

00:28:36.960 You are tempted to talk to your dead loved ones.

00:28:40.040 You just are.

00:28:40.780 It's strange.

00:28:41.480 They can't hear you, and it's not good.

00:28:43.420 right but there's something about that you feel connected to them and part of it's because their

00:28:50.840 body's there and it's a natural desire and it's a reminder if you have the right way of looking at

00:28:57.380 it's a reminder that if they are in christ i will be with them again because of the resurrection

00:29:02.000 so cremation the destruction of the body down to ash uh is something that doesn't align with

00:29:10.900 the normative practice in scripture so throughout scripture um the destruction of the body down to

00:29:16.660 particles but purposely uh uh is is seen as something as judgment is something barbaric

00:29:24.360 so amos chapter two verse one makes a big deal that they uh they burn the king of moab's bones

00:29:30.620 to lime down to nothing and that was that was uh amos saying this is terrible you don't treat

00:29:36.180 your loved ones this way. Calvin's got some really helpful comments on that. Think about

00:29:40.460 Jezebel, her body being ripped up by all the animals and spread it to us. She didn't have 0.99

00:29:44.140 the dignity of a burial. And of course, she'll still be resurrected. God can pull all those.

00:29:49.600 She'll be resurrected to death. All those particles can be pulled together. That's not 0.96

00:29:54.660 the point. The point is that burial is the norm and part of burial is to testify to the world

00:30:02.720 that there is a judgment coming of of the of the righteous and unrighteous there is going to be a

00:30:09.460 separating of goats and sheep and there's going to be this uh thing for us which is the blessed

00:30:15.260 hope that we look forward to and so it's a way to testify that burial and jesus was buried the

00:30:21.300 patriarchs were buried think about how important it was for the patriarchs uh to not be buried in

00:30:27.700 some foreign land it's a big deal about like even carrying the bones of joseph right out of egypt

00:30:33.600 back into the promised land and so burial is something that is really important the other

00:30:38.300 reason it real quick even angels um arguing over the body of moses yeah over the body of moses so

00:30:46.060 even angels have this perspective that yeah well moses is dead his spirit at that point was you

00:30:51.860 know, in Abraham's bosom, this paradise, you know, and shield, but his body still mattered.

00:30:58.460 It wasn't, it wasn't inconsequential. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's, that's a, I hadn't even

00:31:04.320 thought about that connection. And the other thing that is important is at funerals. So I was

00:31:13.100 preparing my children for their mother's funeral. I preached my mom's own funeral, most intense

00:31:17.920 thing I've ever done in my life so far in terms of a sermon. I kept it together somehow. Um,

00:31:23.240 but, uh, I told my sons, I said, look, your grandma, when you see her body, it will be

00:31:30.060 as clear as possible that humans have souls. You'll look at the body and the body will not

00:31:35.960 look like a person. It just won't. It'll barely look like your grandma. It'll look something like

00:31:41.000 a wax figure too. And I said, that's because it's only part of her. It's her body. You know,

00:31:46.880 A man is a spirit body composite and her spirit's departing to, you know, when you die, you're with the Lord immediately. 0.52

00:31:54.760 And so, so I told him that.

00:31:59.400 And then they came and my one son, Athanasius, he said, dad, you're right.

00:32:03.140 He doesn't even look like her.

00:32:05.120 And I said, well, it's part of her.

00:32:07.360 It's just not the whole person.

00:32:08.600 Right.

00:32:08.880 And when you have – when you go through like the proper processes of burying someone, you get to see their body, it brings a sort of closure to it that's very important.

00:32:22.500 So my grandmother, who I was very close to, she died and I was still a teenager.

00:32:27.060 I wasn't able to make it to her funeral.

00:32:28.720 They kind of rushed it.

00:32:30.520 And I never saw that she – I never saw her body.

00:32:33.860 And I can remember calling her, like trying to call her for months.

00:32:37.000 And I'm like, oh, she's not alive.

00:32:38.720 she's not alive uh i think it's we need to see the body we need to go through sometimes we can't

00:32:45.220 do that i one guy in my church after i preached on cremation recently he told me that his dad

00:32:50.120 died in a plane crash and there was just no way to have it really didn't make sense to to do the

00:32:55.020 burial the way they they ended up cremating him and he never got to saw the body and um and and

00:33:01.700 with my brother just it didn't it didn't uh make any sense but there's incredible pressure put on

00:33:08.480 funeral directors to do cremation because it's a higher profit margin.

00:33:16.380 And, and then I think there's, it's, it delays the pain.

00:33:23.460 It's good to lean into the pain, to have the wake or something like it,

00:33:29.460 visitation, whatever you want to call it, have that open casket.

00:33:32.720 If you can let people say their goodbyes,

00:33:35.020 lower them down into the ground.

00:33:36.980 if you can, you know, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, right?

00:33:41.100 Do all that stuff.

00:33:42.780 And in doing that, it brings a sobriety to your life and a connection with death and

00:33:51.880 the need for the gospel that changes you.

00:33:54.020 What I see on Twitter, like take all this stuff about getting in shape, right?

00:34:00.540 Let's not be fat.

00:34:02.420 I agree.

00:34:03.160 I don't want to be fat.

00:34:04.600 It makes you think about yourself too much.

00:34:06.780 It's hard to buy clothes.

00:34:07.900 It's not good for you.

00:34:08.980 You shorten your life, but you will die. 0.99

00:34:11.680 You will die.

00:34:13.020 And you may live 10 years longer than a person that hasn't taken care of themselves because that's the power of death right now.

00:34:22.120 That's the sting of death that we are – the world is under a curse.

00:34:26.260 And when I see people talking about optimizing and all the time they spend in the gym, while I think it's good, all this stuff needs to be disciplined by the fact that we are falling apart, by the fact that our testosterone is going to decline regardless.

00:34:44.840 The amount that it's at is not good.

00:34:47.100 Your HGH is going to decline.

00:34:49.040 You're going to die, dude, right? 0.59

00:34:51.440 No matter – you can't stop it.

00:34:53.020 And some of this I see as coping with not wanting to face down mortality and death.

00:35:02.440 Like balding is helpful, right?

00:35:04.860 Balding is – no dude wants to go bald, right?

00:35:07.720 But it's helpful.

00:35:08.880 You are dying, right?

00:35:10.360 Looking in the mirror and seeing all those wrinkles, especially for a woman, it's very hard.

00:35:15.160 She smiles a lot. 0.69

00:35:16.300 She'll have all those wrinkles from her smiles.

00:35:18.540 If you've had lots of kids, you'll have stretch marks on your stomach. You are dying. You are getting closer to being with them every day. And the significance of that is incredible. And death is all around.

00:35:48.540 last night in a house fire. Death is everywhere, guys. And so when you start being, I say,

00:35:57.140 bring your kids to funerals. Don't be weird about it. Don't be morbid. But I remember that we went

00:36:05.200 to this funeral, this little boy in our church, he was 18 months old or something, maybe two years

00:36:13.780 old. He had some sort of convulsion. Mom came in, blood was coming out of his mouth and all this

00:36:18.800 stuff and he died, right? She was in our small group. And so we went, we went to the funeral.

00:36:25.080 I took a little tiny casket and I took my three boys and Hudson or Athens, I can't remember which

00:36:33.980 one, said, is Nicaea going to die? Because Emily was pregnant with Nicaea about six months at the

00:36:39.380 time i said no no no she's not gonna die she's fine right and she died she died and going to

00:36:46.580 that funeral did prep my kids for that reality and so we we hide death right we worship health

00:36:56.540 right like there is a real risk of worshiping health and fitness and youth but that's not a

00:37:03.580 justification to not care about the body right like it's just the the body's precious that's

00:37:10.920 why we take care of it and that's why at the end of the age we're not going to be

00:37:14.420 little spirits with harps flying all around we will be what we are always meant to be which is

00:37:20.740 a body spirit composite i think it's beautiful so burial gives us all the benefits of of coming

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00:38:40.180 Yeah. Amen.

00:38:41.840 Yeah, the body matters.

00:38:42.780 And I think a lot of the guys who are advocating for,

00:38:46.420 because the common denominator, I think right now is, um, over the last 60 years, and obviously

00:38:51.620 there's been 2000 years of this, of heresy, but, uh, over the last 60 years, there were a lot of

00:38:55.980 battles. I think that evangelicals were facing when it came to a doctrine and orthodoxy, right?

00:39:00.600 So the battle for inerrancy of scripture, right? The battle for the hypostatic union, uh, the,

00:39:04.780 the deity of Christ, the humanity of Christ, um, all those kinds of things, the, the virgin birth.

00:39:09.680 Um, and right now it seems like in this given moment, um, it's actually shifted in a lot of

00:39:14.380 ways that the the attacks levied on the church are from uh guys who would say um you know i'm i'm

00:39:20.520 orthodox and affirm the nicene creed but they're a sodomite i i affirm the nicene creed uh but

00:39:27.580 they're you know uh transing you know for transing kids you know or i affirm the nicene creed but

00:39:32.780 they're pro-abortion um so right now i think there's uh an attack not so much on some of

00:39:37.860 the dogma, creedal dogma, but there's an attack on nature. And so I think that's part of it is

00:39:44.740 guys, you know, in your camp and my camp, and I know you would agree with this, they're coming

00:39:48.740 out and saying, no, no, no, nature matters, right? Grace, you know, Stephen Wolf has reminded and

00:39:54.660 continued to beat the drum, grace does not eradicate or erase nature, but it elevates

00:40:00.060 nature. And exactly what you're saying, we're not going to be eternally spirits playing harps on

00:40:04.880 clouds in the 17th dimension and some ethereal plane. We will be in a physical place with physical

00:40:10.880 bodies, namely these physical bodies. We're going to have to wait for that resurrection. So there

00:40:16.060 will be an intermediate period. I don't believe in just a sleep. I believe that to be absent in

00:40:22.680 the body is that day to be present with the Lord. As Jesus said to the thief on the cross, today,

00:40:27.320 you will be with me in paradise. And so there's an immediate presence with the Lord that is

00:40:32.120 spiritual as the body is waiting that resurrection. But eternally speaking, eventually that body will

00:40:39.580 rise again and a rejoining of spirit and body for an eternal physical existence. So to say

00:40:45.680 the body matters and I want to, all it is is proper stewardship. Now you can err on, there's

00:40:52.120 two ditches on either side of the road. So you can err in vanity and too much appreciation for

00:40:58.980 for the body where, where it actually becomes idolatry. But I think part of what we're seeing

00:41:03.180 is just, you know, the gospel coalition is, you know, well, family is an idol. A church can be

00:41:07.080 an idol. A theology can be an idol. The body health can be. And I think what we're seeing

00:41:11.540 is just a reaction to that and saying, stop calling every single good, positive thing in

00:41:15.960 idols. We're sick of it. You know, calling things an idol can be an idol gospel coalition, you know,

00:41:21.200 so like, so just the gospel coalition's idol. Exactly. So just cut it. So cut it out. And,

00:41:25.900 And so some of the young guys may be overreacting, perhaps, but I think that's in terms of, you know, the sons of Issachar, they knew the times.

00:41:33.820 And I think, you know, recognizing the time that we're in right now, I think if anything, by and large, the tendency within the church, not within the culture.

00:41:40.420 So the culture, I think vanity is the way they lean, ignoring death, beautifying death, sweeping death under the rug and pretending as though, you know, like, you know, we're young, we're never going to die.

00:41:52.460 I think it's the culture's problem, but within the evangelical church, especially within the

00:41:58.160 reformed world, I think there is a Gnostic kind of tendency that says, oh, of course we're going

00:42:02.900 to die. And because we're going to die, the body is of little to no consequence. And the reality

00:42:09.180 is the truth is somewhere in between, which I hate every time that turns out to be true,

00:42:13.220 because I feel like Tim Keller, but sometimes it really is somewhere in between.

00:42:16.800 Oh yeah, I hate that because we're not allowed to have a moderate position or a third way,

00:42:22.060 because it's been abused.

00:42:23.860 I think the point I just want to emphasize

00:42:25.820 is that I think once all you got to do

00:42:28.420 is discipline your doctrine of fitness

00:42:33.380 with the doctrine of death

00:42:35.920 and you get pretty close to a healthy view,

00:42:39.720 which is what, in a simple,

00:42:41.340 Paul was like, I'm going to stick around

00:42:42.840 as long as I can,

00:42:43.960 even though it's better to be with the Lord.

00:42:46.120 Because I want to, like, for example,

00:42:48.520 this Emily's, uh, do we have a baby due, uh, April 28th. Right. Uh, so I'm 43. I'll be 44

00:42:55.960 when that baby is born. That means when that baby's, uh, 18, right. I'm going to be, what's

00:43:00.760 that make me 64, I guess. Uh, 62, 62. Um, and so I'll be 62. That's crazy. I would really like

00:43:10.460 to meet her husband. I'd really like to be around. And so that means you got to drop the pounds or

00:43:17.580 whatever but also what it does when it brings focus to why why am i living why do i want so

00:43:27.920 paul is like it's better to stay for your good right right and so death the fact that death is

00:43:33.800 right around the door means like hey i gotta god teach me to number my days uh and and to make

00:43:40.240 every minute count and um what's hilarious to me is these guys that are anti-fitness

00:43:46.200 will get less done for the gospel in this life they will they will pass away sooner they'll just

00:43:51.680 have heart attacks you know um that's what that's what kills people is heart disease that's like the

00:43:56.020 number one killer in america it's not you know i don't know what else uh even comes close to it

00:44:01.540 it's going to get worse too as these uh you know vaccines help people along but um yeah but yeah

00:44:07.840 So I just think a good doctrine of death right now is needed also because people have been shielded from it.

00:44:15.960 They're not ready to deal with it emotionally.

00:44:19.480 I've got tons of friends.

00:44:21.220 I've got a really good support system, and I've got a great marriage, and God has been very kind to me.

00:44:29.120 And it was hard, man.

00:44:30.820 Last year was hard.

00:44:31.740 It was a really hard year.

00:44:32.920 It was like harder than I thought it was going to be.

00:44:35.080 And I think about these people who grew up in broken families and these people who have not had a good church that they've been part of.

00:44:42.080 And I think about what they're facing down right now.

00:44:44.840 And as they age and they move in, people start dying a lot as you get to your upper 30s and 40s, car accident, whatever.

00:44:53.520 Like I knew someone who was driving down the road and a tree fell on them and killed them.

00:44:57.800 They were just driving somewhere.

00:44:58.840 A tree fell for no reason, right?

00:45:00.560 You know, these crazy things are someone that brought their kid to an airport and this kid got crushed while they're waiting for somebody in between this cart thing that pulled carts together and the kid got stuck in there.

00:45:14.440 You know, these are things that happen that are horrific besides just a normal death.

00:45:20.460 And if we don't have a teaching on death and a teaching on grief, and the other thing, again, trauma, is that I've got – I'm pretty good at little phrases, county before country.

00:45:34.600 It's good to be a man or whatever.

00:45:37.280 I thought, man, there's something to this obsession with trauma.

00:45:41.760 So I tweeted out, like, you are not your trauma just because it felt like something.

00:45:47.780 I was like curious where this would go.

00:45:49.100 And it got a ton of attention, like, well, how dare you? And I think we don't know how to help people through. That makes us want to reject trauma as a category because it's like the sacred cow and I'm not allowed to challenge you on it.

00:46:07.060 But I do think it's a real thing where you can get like something's not right.

00:46:13.440 And so these are areas that as a church, we need to rediscover good biblical teaching.

00:46:18.200 We need to expand on it.

00:46:19.560 I think areas, anthropology, technology, these are two areas where we really, technology, we don't have a good doctorate at all.

00:46:27.940 Someone needs to write a lot on that.

00:46:29.380 With AI, all this stuff coming, we need to be more thoughtful.

00:46:33.060 With anthropology, we've lost some.

00:46:34.780 One book's called God's Light on a Dark Cloud.

00:46:38.920 That's by – I can't remember his last name.

00:46:42.860 Kyler.

00:46:43.380 Kyler, C-U-Y-L-E-R. 0.98

00:46:47.500 And that's a good book.

00:46:48.460 It's free on Grace Jams.

00:46:49.560 You can get a little version of it off Amazon.

00:46:54.300 But there's still not a lot of stuff for our world today for people that are coming from total broken families that have been exorbed in Instagram fitness culture and haven't seen any death.

00:47:04.780 Right. And so I think as pastors, it's our job to start engaging these issues without becoming

00:47:11.640 morbid, without becoming weird about it, but also introducing and prepping people

00:47:16.200 for the reality of how difficult life gets as you move through it.

00:47:20.580 Yeah. Really helpful. Well, thank you, Michael. I really appreciate it. The only other thing I

00:47:26.180 was going to say in terms of going back to the burial with the body versus cremation is

00:47:30.120 uh one one reason why we bury is because we're saying the body's not done it's going to be

00:47:34.780 resurrected the body matters uh we're not gnostics but then another is um i think i think that uh

00:47:41.140 at some level i know christians have done cremation so i'm not i'm not trying to accuse 0.98

00:47:45.640 them it could just be you know they had they were ignorant theologically ignorant on this 0.98

00:47:49.440 particular point they hadn't read calvin they you know they they just didn't have a a theology of 0.95

00:47:53.640 burial um so i'm not accusing but i do think that one of the reasons is um not just the gnostic

00:47:59.680 factor, because some of them, they're not Gnostics. They know the body's going to be

00:48:03.800 resurrected. But at least for outside of Christians, non-Christians who would opt towards 1.00

00:48:09.720 cremation, it's because very much for them, the cremation, it signifies annihilation, the end, 0.94

00:48:17.240 a final end. And as Christians, we're saying, no, no, no, no, this is not the end. Death is not our

00:48:23.760 friend, but death is also not a finality. Death is not the end of the story.

00:48:29.840 1 Corinthians 15, man, where does that sting death?

00:48:33.260 Right.

00:48:33.560 Amen.

00:48:34.040 Right, exactly. So death is not defeated, it will be, but the sting is defeated. The sting of death

00:48:39.260 is defeated now for those who are in Christ Jesus. And when we bury, rather than cremation,

00:48:45.520 we're saying the body matters, we're giving it significance, we're avoiding the Gnostic heresy, 0.85

00:48:49.880 but we're also, we're tipping the hat to eternity.

00:48:54.940 We're saying cremation is kind of like, and it's over.

00:48:59.660 No, it's not over.

00:49:01.380 This is not the end of the story.

00:49:03.080 It's not annihilation.

00:49:04.460 And that gets, you start pulling on that thread

00:49:08.280 and without opening a can of worms

00:49:10.840 because we need to land the plane,

00:49:12.120 but you begin to ask questions,

00:49:13.720 okay, now not just looking to the physical body,

00:49:16.500 but also now looking to the physical earth.

00:49:18.420 is, is that a biblical doctrine of annihilationism? Um, is, you know, does hell, uh, I mean,

00:49:24.480 even John Stott sadly, you know, kind of embraced. So does, does, is hell, uh, is there an

00:49:30.080 annihilation for the damned? Do they cease at some point? Is there annihilation for this world?

00:49:35.080 Do you know what the Puritans thought on that? So the Puritans, um, few of them taught that,

00:49:40.240 so in resurrection in a glorified body, um, it's the same, it's the self-same body would be the

00:49:46.900 language that the confessions would use but it has different qualities right so apparently the

00:49:52.600 ability maybe to even phase through matter or whatever the body is different the spiritual

00:49:56.740 body is a body that can be in a heavenly realm and somehow still exist in the presence of god

00:50:02.140 so uh some of the puritans it may have been rile so very late right kind of the last of them but

00:50:10.100 i'm trying to think who it is uh that taught this but they taught that not only will the righteous

00:50:15.180 have their bodies go through a change uh but so will the unrighteous and that the unrighteous

00:50:22.240 bodies will be resurrected in such a way that it can experience destruction forever

00:50:27.020 this isn't that intense so when you go to our our sort of puritan protestant forefathers not

00:50:32.680 only do they reject and now uh be annihilated like so like a flame being extinguished they

00:50:39.360 would say well actually the body goes through such a change that it can be in eternal death

00:50:44.300 forever so yeah where the worm you know the worm is not destroyed the fire is not quenched

00:50:49.980 and but but part of that is not just the the context the fire the worm but the body

00:50:54.020 yes is is is undergoes a change in such a way that it can be tormented forever and never it's

00:51:00.940 never done so that so the damned there's no annihilation for the righteous there's certainly

00:51:05.180 no um annihilation there's no end um and and then even when you think beyond just people and their

00:51:10.800 bodies. And you think about the world, is the new heavens and new earth, is it a new earth in the

00:51:17.000 sense that it is another earth, another rock that God's going to create, and that's going to be the

00:51:23.620 new heavens come to a new earth, or is it this earth made new? And creation groaning with eager

00:51:30.640 expectations for the sons of God to be revealed. There are guys within the reform camp, unfortunately,

00:51:35.080 that would say the groan of creation is that they want the sons of God to be revealed. Trees and

00:51:39.320 rocks and rivers and mountains want the sons of God to be revealed because in the revealing of

00:51:42.920 the sons of God will be their mercy killing. They'll be put down. They're groaning and suffering

00:51:48.780 because sin entered the world and what they want is to be annihilated. And in the revealing of the

00:51:54.200 sons of God, God will mercifully go ahead and put the creation out of its misery. Whereas we say,

00:51:59.960 no, they're groaning the creation itself. So not just human bodies, but even creation outside of

00:52:05.100 humanity is groaning because in the revealing of the sons of God, in their restoration,

00:52:09.860 the creation itself will be also restored. And so to have this big picture of, the Bible doesn't

00:52:16.180 teach annihilation at any level that the physical world, the world is on one hand, we're not

00:52:23.300 Darwinian, we're not materialist. The world is not just stuff. There is a spiritual dynamic and

00:52:28.100 it's significant and it plays into our everyday lives. So we don't need to just be secular humanist.

00:52:35.100 But at the same time, the world is not just stuff, but the world also is stuff.

00:52:39.900 It's not just stuff, but it is stuff.

00:52:42.500 It is material.

00:52:43.540 It is flesh.

00:52:44.320 It is dirt.

00:52:45.160 It is rock.

00:52:46.420 And the dirt and the rocks and the flesh and the bones, it matters.

00:52:51.280 So much so that angels argue over the body of Moses.

00:52:54.320 So much so that Jesus says, the rocks will cry out if the suns don't praise me.

00:52:59.080 And the earth sings, the sky, Psalm 19, pour forth speech.

00:53:04.260 uh it god is um a most pure spirit without body parts and passions um but he cares about bodies

00:53:11.700 and parts and so so he is the most pure spirit but he created a physical world with physical people

00:53:17.480 and uh and he said it's good he said it's good so all right michael thank you so much for coming

00:53:22.420 on the show appreciate it always a pleasure man thanks

00:53:24.280 We'll be right back.

The NXR Podcast - March 11, 2024

THE INTERVIEW - Death, Cremation, & Grief with Michael Foster

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