I understand that reasoning, and how the Orthodox believe that they are guiltless in engaging in these practices. However, you can rationalize anything that you want to, if you are intent on finding a way to justify it. I’d rather be on the safe side, and take God at His word, rather than hope that the rationalizations of men will turn out to hold water with Him.
“So what you’re really asking is that we stop bowing before Christ. We respectfully decline.”
No, I really just asking why we aught not to obey the letter of the commandment, instead of trying to find a way to justify an apparent violation of it. Apparent, meaning it has every appearance of a violation to an outside observer. Perhaps your arguments are correct, and the violation is not real and only apparent. I’m not at the point of accepting that myself, but I’m willing to concede it’s a possibility. I believe, though, in a matter of such grave consequence, we aught to have more than a simple possibility before we throw caution to the wind.
There are quite a few other issues I have with this topic, but that’s the big one. Nobody can demonstrate with any true certainty, in this world, that God won’t reckon these acts to be grossly sinful, while we can demonstrate with certainty that abstaining from these acts would not be sinful at all. Tis better to err on the side of caution.
We have complete faith that God will judge us based upon what is in our hearts and not on the misjudgements of others.
...while we can demonstrate with certainty that abstaining from these acts would not be sinful at all.
Abstaining from humility might not be sinful in and of itself, but how do you think He will respond to you having judged the faith of His brothers?