Playing the Ghoul for Fun and Profit

Redding's Turtle Bay Exploration Park has chosen to exploit the natural human fascination with dead human bodies by hosting Premier Exhibitions' "Bodies Revealed" show. This consists of actual human bodies preserved by a plastination that prevents their decay and permits them to be sectioned so as to reveal human anatomy in great detail.

That the impulse to gaze upon dead human bodies is a from the baser part of human nature was recognized long ago by Plato (in the Euthyphro as I recall). One of the characters in the dialogue confesses that he had succumbed to the temptation to gaze at a body lying beside the road he was traveling and then, smitten with guilt for his shameful behavior, he went on to tell how he rebuked the defective part within himself for its base desire.

But whence this intuitive realization that it is wrong to satisfy that powerful desire to look upon a dead body merely to satisfy that desire. Isn't this just some premodern taboo springing from a superstitious dread of death? That, after all, is the logical conclusion of a naturalistic materialism. If the body is just a sophisticated protein machine, it can be used like a junked automobile for whatever purpose we choose.

But no healthy human culture, let alone any of the great civilizations, has failed to care for and to bury with the respect of ceremony and ritual the bodies of its dead. And for the Christian, the reasons for this are several. First of all, by the mystery of sexual generation, the joining together of two physical entities, the sperm and the egg, calls forth a new person with a human body and a soul complete with mind, will and emotions. And when the human being has been regenerated through faith in Jesus Christ, that being's body becomes a temple of the Spirit of God. Finally, although that body remains mortal, it is destined to be resurrected in an incorruptible state to live forever in the presence of God.

Thus, the taboo against gazing upon a dead body is a reflection of the sacredness of the body as an integral part of the crown of God's creation, humanity, and of its potential as a habitation of God even during its mortal life. To disregard this taboo by making a public exhibit of dead bodies for the entertainment of the public is a step back in the direction of gladiatorial combats to the death. It was Christianity that ended those combats and it is the Post-Christianity of Secularism that welcomes this exploitation of our inner ghouls for fun and profit.