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DAY 307 Devotional Use of Images
CHALLENGE: “God may permit the use of religious images (see Day 179), but we should not kneel before or kiss them. The Bible says, ‘you shall not bow down to them’ (Exod. 20:5; Deut. 5:9), and it condemns those who have bent their knees to or kissed Ba’al (1 Kings 19:18).”
DEFENSE: These prohibitions apply to idols.
If there is an idol—a statue of a pagan god—then you absolutely should not kneel before or kiss it! However, not all kneeling and kissing falls under this ban. Scripture contains innocent examples of kneeling (Judg. 7:5–6), bowing (Gen. 23:7, 12), prostration (1 Sam. 25:24), and kissing (Gen. 27:6).
These are physical acts that take their meaning from context. They are outward expressions of an attitude of the heart, but they can convey different things. Kissing your father and kissing an idol of Ba’al are different. The outward act may be the same, but they convey different attitudes of heart—one indicating filial affection and the other divine worship.
Even using these acts in divine worship is not wrong. People devotionally knelt (1 Kings 8:54), bowed (2 Chron. 7:3), prostrated themselves in God’s presence (Deut. 9:18), and devotionally kissed Jesus (Luke 7:38).
What makes such acts wrong is using them to reverence a god that does not exist, like Ba’al, or using them to reverence something that is not a god, supposing that it is (e.g., worshipping one of the Roman emperors—like Caligula or Nero—as a god).
If one recognizes in one’s heart that the thing is not a god, these outward acts are not misdirected divine worship and don’t fall under condemnation. In the ancient world, these actions may have been so closely associated with idolatry that they were to be altogether avoided in the devotional use of images, but we don’t live in the ancient world.
Today, Catholics who use such devotional practices (which, it should be pointed out, are voluntary, not obligatory) are in no danger of thinking that a statue or icon is a deity. It’s universally recognized that statues and icons are mere symbols of Jesus and the saints, and kneeling before or kissing them is a symbolic way of expressing affection, like kissing the photograph of an absent loved one.
Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist
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