Are Statues False Idols?
This question gets declined in every Christianity group I am a part of 😅 I suppose it is considered "blasphemy." In my opinion, that's just all the more reason to ask it! There is nothing blasphemous about asking genuine questions.
I was on a local Facebook group, posting a photo of a church I had seen on my walk, when somebody left an interesting comment: "Leave it to the Catholics to practice idolatry."
(The church that I saw, dedicated to St. Charles)
I was extremely put off by this comment. Idols? JESUS?? He is the begotten Son of God; of course we can worship Him ... can't we?...
We began to discuss things some more. He explained that saints, especially, are merely mortal men. They are the same as you and I: repressed desires and impulses, made mistakes.
For example, St. Thomas Aquinas, who lived during the Middle Ages, declared that 12-years-old was an appropriate age for girls to marry. Obviously it was a different time, but I'm sure that many today would view it as detestable. It is why we cannot practice man's law; only God's Law can withstand the test of time.
So I gave things some more thought... Jesus may be the Son of God, but He never asked us to honor Him with physical symbols. Statues can never be "historically accurate," which means that, in a sense, we are just worshipping a random man. We associate this specific image with Jesus and then worship this man in our hearts; I think this is very blasphemous!
(This is the image that we typically associate with Christ)
God warned us not to put our faith in mortal men, for no matter how righteous a man can be, he will still fall; his innate human nature will cause him to sin. Jesus told us that in spite of all His miracles, all power resides only with the Father.
Both beings instructed us to only follow God's Law, which is the Ten Commandments. And the second commandment very clearly tells us not to conjure any graven images.
Anyway, this whole topic has caused me to completely reevaluate my faith. I was raised Roman Catholic, and now I've come to find out that I was participating in a grievous sin! Our Father told us that only prayers in His name are credible; meanwhile, I was praying to the Virgin Mary my entire pregnancy, up until my miscarriage.
I am told that prayers to the dead are also superfluous, that it can go hand-in-hand with false worship. I have seen people dedicate altars to deceased loved ones, which I think is a bit overboard, but I don't see how talking to loved ones and checking in with them is "idolatry." I think it only has a real impact when that person forgets to live, and instead ONLY focuses on the dead.
I think God would probably laugh. Surely any way to visualize the messages of God and Christ would be fine by him? It's only when you start to worship something without the message that it would be a problem. If he made us to be creative creatures who get so consumed by the love of him they must create an image to help them show how much they love him, surely it can't be that much of a drama. I find your posts really interesting as they do question some of these religious practices. Sure, you might not follow a mortal man, something LIKE God's image, but the statue or idol might give you pause to contemplate what it means to be good or godly.
I think it is a great thing to be able to have mortal men and women that we can strive to become, someone to look up to in order to do better. From what I am learning about my faith, Jesus is ultimately the only one we should strive to become though, for He was meant to portray the perfect MAN 🙏 we can never be perfect in the way that God is, but Jesus gave us an earthly example.
And thank you again for your comments, I really appreciate it 🙏❤️ I'm happy to keep you engaged in these topics. I hope to learn and share more!
100% idol worship.
And I'm praying that your questions continue to come up, because talking about Scripture is always a blessing :)
So you hit it on the head, when you said you have been praying to Mary your whole life. You have to ask yourself why? She's not God. In fact, she's dead and buried. So she has nothing to do with your salvation.
It's 100% God. That's who we worship, and when God said no idols (which fancy enough that commandment is not in the Catholic 10 commandments, they changed it, removed it and split the 10th commandment into 2), He knew we would get ourselves into trouble when we make gods out of stones and wood.
This is a great question and I appreciate you bringing it up!
It has been a very eye-opening experience 🙏 I was born and raised Roman Catholic and never bothered to question any of these things. To think that this entire time I was committing a grievous sin...
But it's always better to have our eyes opened SOONER THAN LATER 🙏 we must always keep our faith in God, especially during these strange times.
And thank you very much for running this group! 🙏 This is great, I'm glad to see a religious group that is actually ACTIVE on here 😄 I look forward to posting and engaging more!
Awesome to have you here!
Yeah I completely understand. I grew up secular but my family was Anglican....Catholic Lite is what I called it lol God called me out of the world and into truth about 12 years ago, and I'm forever grateful.
There's been a few active communities here that are faith based. But I'm always trying to fire this one up and keep it active :)
I would not travel to the Philippines, because there are many psychopaths working in the government: [Philippines: the islands of evil] Altar of Secrets Sex, Politics, and Money in the Philippine Catholic Church 4/93