QUESTION
Dear Fr, good afternoon. I have been following your enlightenment of our catholic faith on social media. Thanks and keep it up.
Pls i want to ask this question, GOD COMMANDED MOSES TO MAKE THE SNAKE STATUE; WHO COMMANDED THE MAKING OF STATUES OF MARY IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, IF IT WAS GOD OR THE FORMER CHURCH LEADERS, WHEN ? AND REFERENCE?
Thank u
Hop to hear from u soon
ANSWER
Thank you, and keep reading.
Truly, God commanded Moses and those statues were made. This rightly proves that God’s commandment was not actually against the making of statues. If it were, God would have flouted his own laws! His law was against worshipping these statues or images.
To appreciate your question more, you must note that as human beings there are many things we do which are good but are not necessarily in the Bible. Therefore, the fact that God did not directly command something to be done does not make it bad.
For example:
1. I believe you have photographs. Where did God directly command that we should have photographs of ourselves or other things?
2. You just text me your question; where is it in the Bible that we should use the mobile phone or whatsapp?
3. I am yet to see a biblical reference to where God commanded us to use computers.
4. What about bathing or brushing your teeth? Where is it stated in the Bible that God said we should do these or how many times we should do them.
Would you then say that, since we can’t find these verbatim in the Bible, they are wrong or evil?
Have you ever seen Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc, or January, February, March etc in the Bible? Yet no one says it is sinful to use them. You go and take your salary when the month ends, anyway, without arguing.
We have statues of Kwame Nkrumah and other heroes of Ghana, and even of some really bad people in history. We usually don’t have problems with them but we have problem with the statues or images of Jesus, Mary and the saints while we lavishly have images and stickers of our pastors in our churches and homes.
The point is we should not necessarily see something directly in the Bible to make it right or wrong.
The Church indeed has authority on earth to bind and loose by the authority of Jesus, who continues to guide the Church through our leaders by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. (Mathew 16:19). This is why the Church can teach and make pronouncements on faith and morals with the changing of the times. That is why the Church can teach us how to use our modern technology, which didn’t exist when the Bible was written, in the proper way. Acts 15 is the first classical example of how the apostles used this power of binding and loosing.
Interesting enough, even though many people are not aware, it is this same Catholic Church which compiled the books of the Bible as we have it. If the Church didn’t do it, would someone hold that Bible to accuse the Church?
Besides,
“Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”(John 21:25)
Padre Antonio
(WhatsApp number: +233 541 859198)
(You may whatsapp your questions and contributions for further clarifications)
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