[metmom]

When you can find some pictures of people bowing down to that statue, lighting candles to it, and praying to it, get back to me.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Hey, Catholics don't pray to statues anymore--- now we pray to felt banners...

(Just kidding, my dear metmom!)

Actually, it's fairly easy to find candles, kneeling, etc., at the Nativity scenes all over the Protestant world at Christmas

And here's everybody kneeling at a Nativity Scene devotion sponsored by Campus Crusade members in Children's Ministry (I don't know if you can see it, but there's the Star of Bethlehem):

As for praying to statues, nobody does that. I certainly never thought I was "praying to" some object, even as a 7-year-old. Statues are just wood, plaster --- no ears, y'know!

But here's a veteran praying on Memorial Day. Do you think he's committing idolatry?

Of course not. No reasonable person thinks that. He's praying to God --- I feel fairly confident of that.

[Heart-Rest]

"When you can find some pictures of people bowing down to that statue, lighting candles to it, and praying to it, get back to me."

Just a gentle reminder, metmom, that the commandment also says that you can't even make them.

“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth."    Exodus 20:4

In that commandment, before God says that you can't bow down to them, He says that you can't even make them.

Crosses, paintings of Jesus, other paintings, etc. are all examples of "likenesses of things in heaven, on earth, or in the water". Other than a "Friends" (Quaker) Meeting House (which is pure simplicity) I have never seen any Protestant churches without crosses or paintings of some kind, and I've been in many Protestant churches of many different denominations in many different cities.

Do you think they are all breaking that commandment by having those "likenesses" (crosses/paintings) made, and keeping them hanging there in their churches?