![Archangel Michael’s victory over the Devil, sculpture found above the main entrance at St. Michaelis Church in Hamburg [640x1144 - 179KB]](https://pic8.co/sh/hB9BHd.jpg){kind=link}
Its a matter of your heart. If you lust in your heart, its as if you have committed adultery to paraphrase our Lord and Savior. Jesus would look into the hearts of his followers and say, your are healed because of your faith. Having a physical representation of an event or remembrance is not the issue, the issue is of your intent to place the items above your faith. A cross can be a significant remembrance of what Jesus did for us, fully God and fully man living a perfect life without sin, crucified, buried and raised again on the third day for our salvation.... A crucifix, and a lot of Catholicism I think, is portraying the wrong things, putting a remembrance on the death and not the resurrection. Should we as Christians be careful of our treatment of these representations? Yes, should we also question the intentions of others who make such representations? Yes. But we must tread carefully as to where we pass judgement, lest that same measure be held to us, and yet we will all fail, as imperfect sinners in need of our salation...
You've made a good point. I'd upvote you if I could for a well thought out answer.
One thing I don't like about the depiction of angels and statues is they are all based on a certain time frame. In particular when metal armor and swords were the leading military weapons. By depicting them the same now we are depicting them as a joke. They should be depicted with M-16s, rocket launchers, tanks, aircraft, intelligence weapons etc.
I think this plays into why they shouldn't have been depicted at all. Makes me question the time frame in which they were.
Michael looks absolutely NOTHING like this.
This whole "winged human" angel bullshit is so gay, it needs to stop. Real angels are eldritch abominations. Nowhere in the Bible are any angels described like this. The closest thing to a winged human angelic being would be a cherub, and even that's not exactly right.
They're all gigantic things made up of way too many eyes, wheels, fire, lots of fucking wings, etc.. There's a reason the first thing that angels always say when they came to mortals is "Be not afraid"- it's because any sane person who laid eyes upon one of them would be VERY afraid.
Never thought of it that way, you have a point, I think that we hang on to the chivalry that we attribute to the time of swords and armor, so there is that but I like your point nonetheless.
I understand the cross is a representation of a belief in Christ. It still makes it an idol. People will literally kneel to a cross to pray. Or grab their cross/crucifix to pray. God specifically states to not make any idol. He cannot be found in an idol.
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