They mean that.
I saw a hospital owned by a Christian organization: over the wall: over the head of every patient bed there was a cross.
For what reason? To imply that it gives the healing and it protects man from evil.
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I saw a hospital owned by a Christian organization: over the wall: over the head of every patient bed there was a cross.
For what reason? To imply that it gives the healing and it protects man from evil.
Ah, you know what Christian people mean by their use of symbols, do you? You're free to put whatever interpretation on it you want, but that doesn't mean you're right, and even if you are, so what? Idolatry is the worship of an image, or idol if you prefer, as if it were the deity; some belief systems allow that, but both Christianity and Judaism forbid it just as Islam does. The cross and the crucifix come in for a degree of veneration by Christians, as symbols of Christ's suffering and the message of redemption they believe he brought, but nobody worships it. Besides, by your own arguments, the cross can give healing and protect us from evil if god wills it to be so. I'm sure you'd argue that he hasn't done so, but you can't possibly know that, that would be claiming to know the mind of god, which is a bit extreme even for you.
Doesn't really matter, it's all just empty superstition anyway.
Doesn't really matter, it's all just empty superstition anyway.
You always object, even if it is the clear truth.
Anyhow, it is against the First Commandment: to make any engraved image to glorify and worship.
Moreover, many Christians (and Muslims) bow down to the statues of Jesus and his mother and ask their prayers and needs from the statues, and when you ask them, they say it is only a symbol which is the argument of idolaters, that their idols are symbols of angels or dead kings and saints.
The glorification leads to worship.
Generally people will sanctify and glorify the statue by time especially if it is a symbol of a sanctified man like Jesus or his mother.
Some strict Muslims objected that Abu Abd-Allah put his picture on some of his books, and that he was a photographer, while I think he was not the man to boast or love appearance and glorification, but he put his picture so that all people might look to his features and marks inscribed in books written hundreds of years ago about the marks and features of the Awaited Mahdi: about the description of his forehead, nose, brows, the mole on his right cheek and his look like the men of the Children of Israel among many other fulfilled features of the awaited Quran interpreter. So this might be why he put his picture on some of his books, while later on he came to not putting his picture on the latest of his books.
When I told him about their objections: that he was a photographer and he put his photograph on some of his books, he said: I did not draw the photograph, it is printed on the film by the light rays. Later on he stopped putting his photograph on the latest of his published books and even he omitted his title: Al-Hilly so that it might not imply sectarian belonging.
By the way, one of the narrated features of the Mahdi is that he works with images and pictures in two stages: the old photography was done in two stages: the negative picture then the positive one.
I have witnessed other-centered self-denial in first-responders who risk life and limb to search for and rescue people in peril.
More recently, I have observed other-centered self-denial in volunteers going out and offering spiritual and material support to people experiencing homelessness. https://www.ourcalling.org/