The memory of those rivers of blood…makes nature tremble. — Antoine Court, 1756

A boulder toppling into a stream may alter and direct its course ever after. In the same way, certain historical events have changed and channelled the culture and mindset of entire peoples for many centuries. You cannot understand the English apart from 1066, Gloriana, Waterloo, and the Blitz. You cannot understand an American apart from the Pilgrim Fathers, the War of Independence, Gettysburg, and Pearl Harbor. You cannot understand an Australian apart from the Endeavour, Burke and Wills, the Ashes, and Gallipoli.
Marie Durand’s eighteenth-century church community cannot be understood apart from the sixteenth-century French Religious Wars, the Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre of 1572, the Edict of Nantes in 1598, the Dragonnades, the Revocation in 1685, and the Camisard Rebellion of 1702–1704.
The “French Religious Wars” describes a series of eight civil wars fought out between 1562 and 1598. An estimated three million people perished, fifteen percent of the French population. Although the antagonists wore their inherited religious labels of “Protestant” or “Catholic,” social and political struggles were the true causes of these wars. A right devotion to the religion of the Bible—which brings reconciliation with God and our enemies—would have extinguished the flames of war.
French Protestants saw these wars as the necessary armed defense of their property and lives from Catholic aggression, of their right to live and worship as Protestants. French Protestant scholars agonized over God’s purposes in these violent struggles and what form resistance should take: whether to passively and patiently suffer persecution, whether to take up arms against tyranny, or whether to flee. This practical-theological struggle continued well into the eighteenth century and is manifest in a number of Marie Durand’s letters and the dreadful decisions that she was required to make.
The Fourth Religious War erupted from the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which commenced on August 24, 1572. This tragedy needs special mention because of the deep mark it left on both the Huguenot psyche and Catholic-Protestant relations for many generations. Certainly, its reverberations were felt by Marie Durand’s community in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Antoine Court, for example, the leader of the restoration of the Protestant church in France from 1715, wrote in 1756 about “the memory of those rivers of blood […] of that Saint Bartholomew’s Day, the thought alone of which makes nature tremble.” Louis Bourgeon, a specialist on the Massacre, wrote in 1987 how its scale and ferocity had left its mark well beyond the eighteenth century: “The history of Saint Bartholomew’s continues to this day to be the cause of a spirit of passion, conscious or not.”[1]

For four hundred years while the Israelites endured slavery in Egypt, every time they walked past Joseph’s grave, they remembered the promise that one day they’d take those bones to the Promised Land. Joseph’s bones were a visible reminder of God’s promise to the Israelites. Our grave is a reminder to all who pass by that these bones will one day be raised. Every cemetery is a testimony. Every tombstone is a reminder. Every dead body is a promise waiting to be fulfilled.

The postmodern axiom that utilitarianism is the highest virtue has been part of the reason some faithful Christians are opting for cremation when they die. Cemeteries, after all, take up precious land. Others opt for cremation because it is usually less than half the cost of burial. And still others choose to be cremated because cemeteries are just too eerie. They would rather be spread over their favorite mountainside than reside in a macabre cemetery. One man put his father’s ashes in a finger hole of his bowling ball, so his dad would be with him when he bowled a perfect game.
Environmental enthusiasts affirm California recently joining Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Vermont in legalizing human composting. After all, according to one estimate, cremation releases an average of 534.6 pounds of carbon dioxide into the air per body, totaling 360,000 metric tons of greenhouse gasses a year just in the U.S.
In composting, the body is put in a container and covered with straw, wood chips and alfalfa that allows microbes to break down the body in about 30 days. After curing for another 2-6 weeks, the family can use the cubic yard of composted-loved one to fertilize their flower bed.
Composting denies that each individual is a special creation made in God’s own image and precious in God’s sight. Treating the body as nothing more than part of the material world, denies the uniqueness and worth of each individual. Composting is not a new idea although its widening acceptance is new.
In the 1958 movie Houseboat, widower Cary Grant teaches his son the meaning of death. Holding a pitcher of water while they sit on the side of his houseboat, Grant tells his son, “The pitcher has no use at all except as the container of something. In this case a container for water which you can think of as my life-force.” Pouring the water into the river, Grant explains, “The river is like the universe, you haven’t lost it [life-force/water]. It’s just that everything constantly changes. So perhaps when our life-force, our souls, leave our bodies they go back into God’s universe and the security of becoming part of all life again, all nature.” In other words, the human body is just matter that can be recycled into a tree or garden.
Radical Feminist Rosemary Radford Reuther in the 1980s describes what happens in death in more academic prose:
[O]ur existence ceases as individuated ego-organism and dissolves back into the cosmic matrix of matter/energy, from which new centers of the individuation arise. It is the matrix, rather than our individuated centers of being, that is ‘everlasting,’ that subsists underneath the coming to be and passing away of individuated beings and even planetary worlds.
I recently explained to my young grandson that in the past churches often had cemeteries located next to them. As people entered the church, they were reminded that life on this earth is short, thus forcing them to adjust their earthly priorities in light of the eternal. I asked my grandson what it would mean if the church had a swimming pool next door rather than a cemetery. He answered, “Life is short, enjoy it while you can.” Perhaps that’s another reason for composting. The dead are out of sight and we can get on with our fun.
Composting and even cremation destroy the individual. They deny the truth in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting”. They deny Scripture’s truth, “For he [God] chose us in him [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons….”
Read More
Related Posts:

The Bible itself also warns and sometimes describes evil in some amount of detail. But it does so out of love for others. Warning of the many dangers and threats that exist is always the most loving thing to do. So some believers need to stop shooting the messenger. They need to start being offended by the real evil that is out there, and not taking offence with the one who in prophet-like fashion seeks to warn against it.

It happens all the time: those who should know better will take offence at all the wrong things. Primarily, instead of taking offence at the many great evils and dangers that are all around us, some folks – including some rather clueless Christians – will take offence at those who point out these evils, at those who sound the alarm. They are happy to shoot the messenger while ignoring the danger.
The very fact that you are trying to act as a watchman on the wall and warn of impending danger will upset some people. Many are Christians, and they seem to prefer having their heads buried in the sand and not knowing anything about the threats and risks that are all around us.
They just want to live in their own little quiet bubble and not be bothered by a world that is not only going to hell, but is having a very real impact on them and their loved ones, whether they know it or not. Examples of this are many. And I have dealt with them for decades now as I seek to warn and sound the alarm.
For many years the mainstream media would contact me about various issues, including sleazy programs on television (this before the internet had really taken off). Whenever some controversy broke out, I was given a call by the media to give the conservative viewpoint on things. So that I would do.
Yet I even had those who should have been onside making complaints or running with the world’s point of view. ‘If you don’t like what’s on TV, just turn it off’ was a common response I would get from both friend and foe. Hmm, these folks were completely clueless.
I can turn off the TV all I like, or even throw it out the window. But that completely misses the point. My neighbours and their children are still being exposed to all this free-to-air sewage constantly. And as they get contaminated by it, that will have an impact on me and my children. So simply ‘turning it off’ was a rather useless bit of advice. Stopping the rot at the source was the way that we wanted to proceed.
Other examples are easy to come by. How often do we hear both believers and non-believers complain about pictures of aborted babies and the like. They seem to get really offended by this. Well, guess what? They really should be taking offence at abortion! Killing unborn children IS offensive. Warning and trying to raise awareness about it is not.
Indeed, I would suggest that these folks – be they Christians or not – who get more upset and bothered by pictures showing the result of an abortion than the abortion itself have a very skewed moral compass. Their values are wrong – even upside down. Recall that when the Allies won the war they made German citizens go and view the concentration camps. They HAD to be made aware of this gross evil. It should be the same with abortion.
And some Christians will get upset about the least little things, with very little provocation. I recall once when I was working for a pro-family ministry and editing their publications, I ran with an article warning about so-called safe sex and the condom culture.
Read More
Related Posts: