Dem Dry Bones

Some say ‘What’s all the fuss about?’ A US firm has opened a new exhibition of the human body in London. There are dozens of bodies in varying forms of dissection, positioned in various poses.

More than 260 human organs are also showcased, including a bladder, a spleen, at least three hearts, and a brain. There’s also a five-week embryo and a women, rather absurdly holding a twirling baton.

A year or so ago people were in an uproar when Professor Von Hagens performed live autopsies on television. Then all the furore melted into history. This time, the new uproar is over whether it is ethical to use bodies that were not specifically donated for this purpose.

According to the exhibit’s sponsors, the bodies were acquired from the Dalian Medical University in northeast China. All had died of natural causes, but their bodies were never claimed, which meant, just as with other countries, they became government property and could, by every right, be used for educational or research purposes.

The exhibit is drawing large crowds, but there is an equal number who claim such an exhibit exceeds the boundaries of good taste and common decency. There are even a few doctors who suggest that only medical practitioners should have knowledge of the internal human. You would think we had evolved beyond all of this hundreds of years ago.

To be practical, what difference does it make what happens to the body when that shell that has fulfilled its earthly duty? Surely the soul won’t mind. If you carry an organ donor card, you’re clearly not sentimental.

But it’s an interesting paradox. Unlike other animals, we show reverence for a corpse. There are those who believe it makes a difference with God. I’ve personally had people say to me that they’d never consider donating their eyes at death because when they came to stand before Jesus, they wouldn’t be able to see Him.

As an homage to the deceased, Pharaohs built huge monuments; In Greek mythology, the daughter of Oedipus, Antigone, suffered a horrible execution for burying her brother, so he could rest in peace. She claimed that she owed a longer allegiance to the dead than to the living.

But the reverence we show for the deceased is more often out of respect for the living. Because even after death, we look upon the body as a living person. It is too difficult to separate body from soul and mind from spirit.

So does this suggest that I should preserve and pickle my body in the event that God should want to use it again? I’m sure there’s a plethora of funeral organisations that would promulgate that theory. There’s mega bucks to be made in dolling up old gran and topping her off with a light dusting of rose hips powder. But it’s still the same old vessel that it always was.

We’ve been promised a new body. We’ve been forgiven for our sins. All our wrongs will be corrected regardless of how badly we’ve messed it up. It should make us jump for joy. It certainly does me!

Think of Job and how he transformed his terrible suffering – physical, mental and emotional – into extraordinary faith and hope. Not a fanciful over the top convulsing on the floor type of faith, but a real, physical, flesh-and-blood certainty in a future that is better than today’s.

What more do we need?


Lord, renew me each and every day so that I may serve you better. Help me to shed my worldly veils so that I may be a living testimony to Your love. Amen


I know that my Redeemer liveth. And, though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Job 19:25-27