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"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?

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

How about we use the whole concept God was intending here.

Genesis 20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

God said not to make them to bow down to them. Surely you aren’t insinuating that there are now 11 commandments are you?

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

The Hebrew word that is sometimes translated *image* is also the word for *idol*. An image is not by default an idol.

http://biblehub.com/exodus/20-4.htm

In the Hebrew....

http://biblehub.com/text/exodus/20-4.htm

http://biblesuite.com/hebrew/6459.htm

pesel: an idol, image

So the command is to not make oneself and idol nor to bow down before it.

Even if the argument is made that the statues of Mary are not idols because nobody is sacrificing to it or *worshiping* it, people are still breaking the second part of the commandment by BOWING DOWN before it.

Bowing is bowing.....