Letter: Life, the body and the soul

Cross. Credit: iStock
I write to respond to opinions presented in your “Asking the clergy” feature on the question of cremation vs. burial [exploreLI, Jan. 9].
The Methodist minister kept strictly to answering the question without a theological argument for a preference. However, the other two opinions appear to insist on elevating the body to a position it doesn’t deserve. The body is not a partner with the soul. It is a coat to be worn and discarded. It’s the soul that is important, not its material representation.
Religions that fail to emphasize this do a disservice to their constituents. Saying someone has gone to a better place while at the same time telling them a part of him or her is still here, buried, to be visited, is wrong.
The apostle Paul tells us we are going to shed this garment and have a new, glorified body.
If we can get past this body worship, we wouldn’t see black and white, yellow and red. We would just see souls. We live in these bodies all our lives. Sometimes they serve us well, sometimes they don’t, but they don’t define who we really are.
Jim Schultz, Lake Ronkonkoma