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<\/p>\nI bought my first icon this year. It took me about thirty minutes to decide if buying this icon was a sin. It\u2019s funny, but when you grow up with Orthodoxy in the background and the Protestant voice labeling icons as idol worship, you can’t help but pause and question what you’re about to do. The icon is simple. It\u2019s the image of John the Baptist written on dark wood. It\u2019s beautiful!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
When I hold it in my hands I can’t help but think about the man in the picture\u2026 his life, his story, his purpose.<\/p>\n
When I hold it in my hands, I can’t help but think of my Orthodox family who holds this image in their hands expecting a blessing because in turn a beloved priest blessed this image.<\/p>\n
When I hold it in my hands, I can’t help but think of my Protestant family who doesn’t even want to have this icon in their home because they take offense at the idea that a priest has blessed it and others might worship it.<\/p>\n
One simple image written on dark wood evokes admiration, worship and hatred. One simple image\u2026 soo many interpretations.<\/p>\n
As I read through William Dyrness\u2019 book, Visual Faith: Art, Theology and Worship Dialogue<\/em> this week I was reminded once again of how much the church has given up in it\u2019s quest to be set apart from culture. In our quest to live separate yet holistic lives, not tainted by culture we\u2019ve drawn a line between the sacred and the secular. Unfortunately, art has fallen into the secular category therefore we\u2019ve done all we could to keep it out of our religious services.<\/p>\n There are a couple of thoughts that stuck with me from the reading. First, I was reminded of the many Bible verses that describe the building of the tabernacle and later the first temple built by Solomon. These structures were nothing but a work of art. The details, the precision and the time it took to build these structures are a testimony of God\u2019s love for beauty and art.\u00a0 Our fears of idol worship and ultimately our sinful tendencies have caused us to remove something that I believe God delights in.<\/p>\n Second, Dyrness says that, \u201cin some mysterious sense, all art aspires to be worship.\u201d (Loc. 1949) I’ve never thought about it this way before, but guess it\u2019s true. Most art, good art should cause us to look outside of ourselves and have a glimpse into a world that\u2019s not accessible otherwise. Christian art especially is a window into the spiritual realm and should point us to the ultimate creator. I\u2019m not sure why we’re so afraid of it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I bought my first icon this year. It took me about thirty minutes to decide if buying this icon was a sin. It\u2019s funny, but when you grow up with Orthodoxy in the background and the Protestant voice labeling icons as idol worship, you can’t help but pause and question what you’re about to do. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,289],"class_list":["post-2217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-dyrness","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2217"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2222,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217\/revisions\/2222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}