Cannibal rising - Mark Troughton considers our increasingly macabre society

Is it possible that the age-old taboo of cannibalism is going to fall — like others we could mention — things that were once considered socially deviant because morally repugnant, but which are now ‘part of the wallpaper’?

It seems that anything is possible in these days of moral anarchy. Simplistically put, we know that when people stop going to church they cease coming under the sound of God’s Word. They eventually turn from his absolutes towards absolutes of their own making, in our case relativism and hedonism. This is neither new nor surprising. Autonomous human beings in rebellion towards their Maker have always behaved so. The Bible calls it idolatry, for when people stop worshipping the true God, they end up worshipping their own (Acts 17; Romans 1.18ff).

Real threat?

But how real a threat is cannibalism? Surely no decent, civilised European would ever dream of endorsing this abhorrent deviancy? Granted. But moral degeneracy tends to be a slippery slope, rather than a plunge into the abyss.

A man recently accused of murdering three prostitutes in Bradford announced his name in court as ‘the crossbow cannibal.’ It made the news headlines.

The Internet Movie Database website lists a total of 489 films, TV series, documentaries and video games about cannibalism. Endorsement maybe not. But fascination, tolerance and maybe acquiescence? Perish the thought. But that’s how slippery slopes go. What about out there in the real world? In 2002 in Rotenburg, central Germany, Armin Meiwes (My-vez) was arrested on charges of killing and eating a voluntary victim whom he had found via the internet. I will spare you the sordid details (Ephesians 5.12). But this was not an isolated case. In an interview, Meiwes estimated that today there are 800 cannibals in Germany. Unsubstantiated, but worrying nonetheless. What’s more, the cultural impact of this one crime has been huge in books, films and even popular songs in Germany and elsewhere, and quite independently of the US novelist Thomas Harris’s quartet about Hannibal the Cannibal, the fourth instalment of which, Hannibal Rising, grossed $80,583,311 worldwide at the box office in 2007, with another $23,311,805 in home DVD sales.

So why ought we to treat this as a taboo, a forbidden thing? And how dare we confront moral relativism? Are there not extreme cases where eating human flesh is legitimate, like the Andes plane crash in 1974 where 16 members and family of the Uruguayan rugby team survived by eating their dead team mates? Or is that like the pauper who steals to feed his family — understandable, but nevertheless morally wrong (a certain York vicar notwithstanding). What should Christians think about a cadaver? And how does this bear on autopsies and organ donation (subjects that are also getting a lot of media attention in such TV dramas as Casualty, Silent Witness and Raising the Dead, to name but three)?

Rather than drowning in the sea of relativism, we turn, with some relief, to the solid ground of the revealed will of our Creator and Redeemer — the Bible.

A. Relevant taboos in Old Covenant law

God tells Noah (Genesis 9) and Moses (Exodus 20) that human life is sacred because mankind has been made in the image of God. ‘You shall not murder’ is established on the basis of the sacredness of God’s own image in Adam and Eve (Genesis 1.26). God allows mankind to eat flesh from Genesis 9 onwards — but not human flesh.

There are ten laws forbidding the worship of any other gods but Yahweh in the Old Testament, 45 forbidding the practice or imitation of idolatry found in the pagan religions around Israel. It is a fact of biblical and secular history that many religions across the world have indulged in human sacrifice and cannibalism for various cultic and superstitious reasons. It was not this way in the beginning: ‘Keep my requirements and do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the LORD your God’ (Leviticus 18.30).

This determines how we are to treat the body which God designed and created and which he pronounced ‘very good’ at creation (Genesis 1.31). That a cadaver defiles (Numbers 19.11-16), but must be treated with utmost respect (Genesis 23, for example) is one of the paradoxes of Old Covenant ethics. In this regard, it is instructive to see how post-testamental rabbinical Judaism seeks to uphold this balance: ‘Jewish practices relating to death and mourning have two purposes: to show respect for the dead (kavod ha-met), and to comfort the living (nihum avelim), who will miss the deceased. … After a person dies, the eyes are closed, the body is laid on the floor and covered, and candles are lit next to the body. The body is never left alone until after burial, as a sign of respect. The people who sit with the dead body are called shomerim, from the root Shin-Mem-Reish, meaning “guards” or “keepers”. ... The presence of a dead body is considered a source of ritual impurity. For this reason, a kohein [priest] may not be in the presence of a corpse. People who have been in the presence of a body wash their hands before entering a home. This is done to symbolically remove spiritual impurity, not physical uncleanness: it applies regardless of whether you have physically touched the body.’

This has a bearing on the rabbinical attitude towards autopsy and organ donation: ‘Autopsies in general are discouraged as desecration of the body. They are permitted, however, where it may save a life or where local law requires it. When autopsies must be performed, they should be minimally intrusive…. According to some sources, organ donation is permitted, because the subsequent burial of the donee will satisfy the requirement of burying the entire body… Respect for the dead body is a matter of paramount importance. For example, the shomerim may not eat, drink, or perform a commandment in the presence of the dead. To do so would be considered mocking the dead, because the dead can no longer do these things. Most communities have an organisation to care for the dead, known as the chevra kaddisha (the holy society). These people are volunteers. Their work is considered extremely meritorious, because they are performing a service for someone who can never repay them’ (source: http://www.Jewfaq.org — care for the dead).

While Christians are not bound by extra-biblical tradition (and would clearly part company with Judaism over the idea of human ‘merit’ in salvation), it is still a fact that the human body is made in God’s image, therefore worthy of respect. Death is still a curse far removed from God’s original purposes and yet, in light of the gospel, the hope that is symbolised in burial takes on new meaning. Bodies are buried in the sure hope that they, as an entity, will be resurrected. All of the body dies in hope. Cannibalism is a desecration of the body.

Of the few references to cannibalism in the Bible, Deuteronomy 28 predicts the turning away of Israel from the worship of the one true God and pronounces future judgments on the nation for so doing. One of the signs of God’s wrath on a rebellious culture is the revolting practice of cannibalism (Deuteronomy 28.52-57). A graphic example of this is found in 2 Kings 6.

B. Relevant taboos in the New Covenant

We, alongside old covenant Israel, are likewise commanded not to copy the practices of the nations around us when they conflict with biblical moral law (Romans 12; 2 Corinthians 6: Colossians 2; Ephesians 4; 1 John 5). James warns us not to curse our fellow human being because made in the image of God (James 3.9). Paul reassures us of the preciousness of the body and of the way it should be treated (1 Thessalonians 4.4), ‘with honour and holiness’; 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15, together with Romans 8, tell us that one day our bodies (and creation itself) shall be liberated from their bondage to decay and brought into the freedom of the children of God. The promise of a new creation and a resurrection body does not however negate the value and respect with which they should be treated now (though neither are to be worshipped). Jesus’s resurrection body had elements of discontinuity and continuity with the body the disciples knew. Moses and Elijah were recognisable physically on the Mount of Transfiguration, as was the glorified Jesus. Part of human identity and future hope lies in our body. This is, of course, celebrated corporately at the Lord’s Supper where Jesus takes the symbolic elements of bread and wine and refers to them as his own flesh and blood, which, when eaten in faith, nourish our spiritual life. Spiritual cannibalism? I would prefer ‘spiritual union’. It has been suggested that heresies in false religions are a perversion of truths found in the one true religion. They twist and mimic something that is originally found there. Could it be that Aztec rituals of the 14th-16th centuries, that involved absorbing the virtue and strength of the victim through eating their flesh, are but the twisted imitation of a truth that began in the upper room in the first century?

Endword

Idolatry of the body was not without its devotees in ancient Greece. That culture came under the judgment of God as it became morally degenerate. Is it not significant in our culture, which at one and the same time hates its bodies and yet loves to be obsessed with how they look and feel, that we are seeing perverse extremes in how people treat the body? Idolatry will always receive judgment. Hannibal Lecter ate his victims out of sheer contempt for them. Armin Meiwes, well, who knows what ‘demons’ he was driven by. Romans 1.18ff warns us that societies reap what they sow. If ever we needed liberation from the rat-infested dungeon of our own moral relativism into the glorious freedom of the children of God it is now. The fictional Hannibal Lecter was justly locked away for the murderous contempt he showed to human life. They should have offered the gospel to him — though perhaps not ‘washed down with a fine Chianti’.

‘For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison’ (1 Peter 3.18).