Summary Of Resurrection From The Mansion Of Happiness

The chapter “Resurrection” from The Mansion of Happiness written by Jill Lepore portrays the power and limitations that the Christian faith can have towards cryonics. The plot is based on the founder of the Cryonics Institute Robert C. Ettinger. Ettinger said, “There are only three ways to go when you die. You can be buried, burned, or frozen. If there is no God, your only chance at an afterlife is option 3” (Pg. 170). As a nonbeliever in God, Ettinger wanted people to be cryopreserved with the hopes that in the future, scientists would figure out a way to revive the dead. This process of cryopreserving is known as cryonics, the freezing of ones legally dead body with the hopes that one day science and technology will have the power to bring

If one is a believer of God, right after death they are destined to the kingdom of heaven, or banished to hell. Ettinger’s movement of the cryonics however, could be a way for nonbelievers in God to be resurrected from the dead in a way that is not spiritual but physical. With the goal of resurrecting and rejuvenating the dead, Ettinger presented four problems that still arise with cryonics: “cure the person of what killed her, reverse the decay that set in between death and freezing, repair the damage done by the freezing itself, and make her younger again” (Pg. 178). All four of these problems you could say are messing with the natural world. Christians have been taught that there is a natural cycle to life: everything is born and given life, the ecosystem and humans depend on each other to survive, everything was placed on Earth for a reason, and once they fulfill what they were meant to do God chooses the time at which to enter them into the next place, being heaven or hell. The idea of cryonics goes against what God has taught his people, the natural life cycle; trying to prolong human life on Earth. Which in the end disrupts the

Cryonics contradicts the Christian belief saying there isn’t a heaven and that it’s better to be alive on this Earth. Freezing the body is basically saying its better to live on earth then it is in heaven which is the complete opposite of what Christians know and have been taught. Philippians 3:20-21 states, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” Why would someone want to relive a life on Earth when life in heaven is so much more