My ex-RC husband says this is drilled into the heads of RC children from an early age and that to disengage from the mother ship of RCism is like being released into the vacuum of outer space, waiting to eventually ignite in a burst of flames.
What you hear in the voices of the reformed, AG, is a true and deep aversion toward the things you still cling to. I'm sorry for that. You know I think so highly of you and learn from every one of your posts. But part of our sanctification is God cleansing our heart of everything that is not Christ-centered, which includes crucifixes, palm fronds and calling Mary the "Blessed Virgin and Mother."
I think you must have had a lovely childhood, and a rich and exhuberant upbringing. And perhaps you confuse the love you feel for your family and your past with the faith God has given you. They really aren't the same thing. We're explicitly told to love Christ more than our past lives, more than our mothers and fathers, and even more than our children, which seems almost impossible to me. But that's what God tells us to do, and so we should work towards that end.
Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach! Behold, it is laid over with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in the midst of it." -- Habakkuk 2:18-19"What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols?
Idols aren't just made of silver and gold and wood. They are ashes on foreheads and necklaces and calling men "Father" and a thousand other ways men have of putting something, anything, everything before the Triune God.
"Every one of us is, even from his mother's womb, a master craftsman of idols." -- John Calvin
"...whenever Scripture asserts the unity of God, it does not contend for a mere name, but also enjoins that nothing which belongs to Divinity be applied to any other; thus making it obvious in what respect pure religion differs from superstition..."
Zwingli and Calvin's aversion to pictures of Jesus is an excessive reaction to the excesses of Rome. The Incarnation is recapitulative (sp?;word?). There is no reason to find picutures of Jesus, who did live as Homo Vere after all, more offensive to the Faith of the apostles, than the divorce which we allow and condone outside of Jesus' qualifiers or the disgraceful way in which we do not truly honor the Sabbath.
To be reflexively anti-Catholic doctrine, is to embark upon a Romishess of one's own. We often become that which we hate because we don't have the capacity to admit our own error.
We are never going to see eye to eye on this, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.
"Ooohh! Mrs N****baiter's exploded!"
"Oh mother, don't be so sentimental. Things explode every day."