[CynicalBear]

When you put faith in the artifact to protect you it’s an idol. Crush the artifacts and statues. Call them symbols or whatever you want. If Catholics can’t get by without them and somehow believe that by having them around they protect them they are idols just as the serpent was for the Israelites.

2Kings 18:4 He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan.

[D-fendr]

When you put faith in the artifact to protect you it’s an idol.

So, therefore, you cannot tell if an object *is* an idol without knowing the faith of an individual - that they put their faith in the object to protect them.

Is that a correct statement of your view?