[ealgeone]

"I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images. Isaiah 42:8 NASB

For My own sake, My very own sake, I will act; for how can I let Myself be defamed? I will not yield My glory to another. Isaiah 48:11 NASB

Roman Catholics might want to read Isaiah.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Isaiah 42? Yes.

You might want to read http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3711490/posts?page=70#70

--- especially the selections from Psalms, the various books of Kings, Romans, and Revelation.

A reasonable person, faced with this paradox, might want to reflect that --- if we assume that the Bible does not contradict itself --- different sorts of respect, reverence, honor, glory, etc. are being referred to here.

Different in intent, different in magnitude, even diffrent in kind.

There might even be different words we could use, to distinguish between the reverence, glory, honor, etc. which ARE idolatry, and that which are NOT idolatry.

Ya think?

[Mrs. Don-o]

Compare, say, a brick from the Berlin Wall, a Nativity scene on the lawn in front of your church, a photograph of a loved one, a wedding ring, a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a military funeral, a U.S. flag, vs. an idol of Quetzalcoatl. They are comparable in some ways (they are material things, they have mass, they exist in space and time, they are used as symbols or mementos, they may even be used in ceremonies with an Order of Service and set words and phrases)--- but only the Quetzalcoatl thingie is used as rival god or demonic would-be competitor to the Blessed Trinity.

So comment, please, on the lawful "HONORS" as seen in the OT (directed toward husband, wife, king, prophet, patriarch, king's wife, king's mother, the Temple, the Ark, Jerusalem). Those are lawful intermediate honors, not idolatrous supreme honors -- and yet they include bowing, kneeling and prostrating. They are not idolatry. They are common, Biblically lawful, Israelite practice.

"Referred honor" means respect to a person or thing, the honor of which is "referred" back to God ("Not to us, not to us, but too Your Name be the glory...")

The Catholic Church has retained (barely) many of the God-pleasing customs of much older societies which had "thick" honor, referred honor: honor given in kiss and candle and ring and gesture, honor to the beloved and betrothed, chivalrous honor, patriarchal honor, the honor of holy attire, the banner, the escutcheon, the honor of being buried in holy ground. All of it "referred" ultimately to God.

Consider what living in a society with many, many layers of honor would be like.

We live in a society with vanishing, threadbare reverence. We can hardly even maintain the thin sharing of tiny civil proprieties --- the U.S. flag, the National Anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance --- let alone the thick layers of our history, culture and heritage.

And before national honor, we have striped off the prior and more foundational "natural piety" related to parents, to the dignity of the marital embrace, the piety which is the good ground which can receive the seed of higher things. "Honor thy father and thy mother" is the good soil which can readily receive "Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name."

You seem to think that in honoring God, all the 1,000, or rather the 10,000 intermediate, referred honors between Earth and Heaven must be spurned.p> You compete with each other showing contempt for people who would like to touch the stones of that little stone house, people who show open affection for the humble woman associated with its small single room.

I am sorry you have no context to understand these things.

[MayflowerMadam]

“Roman Catholics might want to read Isaiah. “

Reading the Second Commandment wouldn’t hurt, either.