A friend informed me that she knows of two people who have died recently whilst awaiting heart transplants. The main reason given for their deaths is that there is a scarcity of donors at the moment. Scientists have a rule: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is believed that the main reason for the decline in donation numbers is the negative fallout from the retention of babies' organs that has recently caused public upset.
Humans place a huge importance on the human body after it dies. Ironically, we often think about the dead more favourably than we do about the living. Beliefs range from the Christian tenet that "the body is the Temple of the Holy Spirit" to the Confucian demand that the imperial eunuchs in China be returned their organs at death - the body had to be buried intact. Add to this our abhorrence of cannibalism and the myriad rules of purity and morality that we attach to the body and we can clearly see that we certainly have a huge respect for the physical side of our persons.
The tangible part of our nature is certainly easy to respect, but we also have intellect and will. We are more than simple bodies that will rot in the earth or be burnt when we die. After all, our graves lie empty; the person we love is not there. Yet we visit them because they evoke powerful memories of the legacies our departed ones left us. When somebody we love dies, it is the legacy which grew from their intellect and will that we love and respect. It is this part of the person that is immortal and not the body. The body dies and decays but the spirit lives on.
Death is a tragedy. It leaves an emptiness and a hollow feeling of loneliness. In face of this tragedy there is a generosity in showing some love for your neighbours who are sick.
When a person dies the body is important to those who are left behind. Nothing should happen to that body that is contrary to the wishes of the deceased and his or her family, but to consent to giving somebody else a second chance when you yourself don't have one is a perfect act of charity and kindness. It doesn't offend Christian teachings in the slightest. In fact, it is the perfection of them. Let the opposite reaction to death be the gift of a second chance of life.
After all, a man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends! (John 15:13)
F.MacN.