Who by Fire?

About a month ago A Simple Jew put up a post entitled conflicting emotions which dealt with his experiences and emotions while attending the funeral of a member of his family. In the post and the comments that followed there was discussion regarding cremation. This is a touchy subject with me. 60 years ago the majority of my family was lost to the flames. My grandparents and my parents wished to be and were cremated. This was their decision. Whether these two things are related, I cannot say for certain, but based upon the way I was raised I suspect that the general feeling was that G-d exists but maybe He was not so much Jewish. This is my opinion on the subject.
If you detect a note of hostility in some of my comments let me first say:
a) I do not deal well with people getting in my face about anything. Whether for my own good or not.
b) I get a little testy if anyone messes with my mispacha.

All things decay. Bones because of their composition can take thousands of years or more to decay. The heavier and denser the bone, the longer it will last. If you want to call the densest bone in the body the “luz” bone, that’s fine with me.

The heavier bones survive cremation and then are run through a crushing machine and the resulting fragments given to the family. If you believe that the “luz” bone is impervious to decay, then it is obviously one of the bones that survives cremation.

The idea that Hashem, Who is all powerful, is incapable of resurrecting a person unless there is a “luz” bone, is an absurd limitation upon His power.

I can not conceive that G-d, who sustains the wicked so that they have the opportunity to repent, would condemn the good to nonresurrection because they exercised the free will they were given and made a, perhaps misguided, decision as to whether their remains should be buried intact or after being reduced to ashes.

In the current Aish HaTorah newsletter there was an article about the first crematorium to be opened in Israel. The following is an excerpt from that article.

Burning, in Judaism, is a declaration of utter abandon and nullification. Jews burn leaven and bread before Passover, when the Torah insists no vestige of such material may be in their possession. The proper means of disposing of an idol is to pulverize or burn it.
Needless to say, God is capable of bringing even ashes to life again. But actually choosing to have one's body incinerated is an act that, so intended or not, expresses denial of the fact that the body is still valuable, that it retains worth, indeed potential life.

Perhaps if someone had taken the time to explain things to my relatives, and myself, in these terms, instead of the shrieking and hand flapping from the shtetl crowd, which drove them to the cold rationalism of the assimilated, different decisions would have been made.