Icons Versus Idols

Drawing (Close To) God, Declaring The Mystery

Dear Friends,

I love icons.

In fact, one of the great joys of my summer was having a lengthy talk with Kristen Wheeler, the artist behind Ministry of Saints: Modern Iconography at the Wild Goose Festival; her Pauli Murray icon now sits in my office. I’ve got my pre-order in for Kelly Latimore’s 2024 Calendar. But, as I’ve talked about before in regard to saints, icons weren’t always a part of my life or something I felt drawn to. Rather, in a streak that combined a certain literalism and just a general lack of understanding of the role of icons, I grew up with a sense that icons fell under the heading of idolatry, rather than as a means of drawing closer to God.

Often, when I talk about my childhood church, I describe the space to people as being somewhat counter to traditional Lutheran aesthetics. As a child in the ELCA, I understood that in general, we were not people who considered elaborate visual elements to be necessary or even appropriate – yet our particular church had large, detailed stained glass. No, I was taught that a lot of religious art could create greater distance between us and God, and that art of “saints” was particularly harmful because it would lead to worship of people instead of God. Luther’s work was to ensure we had direct communion with God, that we did not require the intervention of priests for confession and absolution. I had internalized a broad notion of idolatry and a deep fear of it.

It wasn’t my fault. I was a child and it was what I was taught. But I had it wrong.

Icons, Golden Calves, & Encountering God

This week (at least in Track 1), we read the story of Moses, the Israelites, and the Golden Calf from Exodus. Let us recall that the Israelites are a long way into a truly miserable journey. They have been complaining endlessly to Moses about their suffering in the desert. By the time that they decide to melt down their gold to create that golden calf, they are overwhelmed by their own despair of every reaching real freedom. As we describe it sometimes in Godly Play, they were trapped in their freedom in the desert. Both freedom and a feeling that they are stuck are true at the same time – and so they do something radical.

They try to supplant God with something they can see, something present, something in their control. And while this remains a problem thousands of years later, icons certainly aren’t the reason. We make idols of money, celebrity, sports, technology. Idols separate us from God. Icons can draw us closer.

In the course of teaching over the years, I’ve found that children are drawn to icons from across the ages, in part because they are so distinct from other types of art that we see today. The novelty is important, but so is what we get to discover together when we look at icons: images of people who helps us understand something particular about God. The Golden Calf didn’t do that.

Returning to the idea that we can be trapped and free at once, I think it’s this exact state of being that leads us to create idols. We have freedom – we get to lead lives of our own making. But that much freedom is scary. What do we do? How do we anchor ourselves? Idols let us do that. They are the result of an existential struggle.

I’ve written a lot over the years about how art can help us come closer to God, particularly by calling on Sybil MacBeth’s Praying in Color, but there are a lot of other ways to use art to pray, too. For example, did you know that we’re just a month away from World Drawing God Day? Consider this your cue to grab a copy.

Drawing God by Karen Kiefer, illustrated by Kathy DeWit has been around for a few years and it even has its own museum. Yet the idea of drawing God may, for us adults in particular, feel stressful or wrong or just impossible. What does God look like? But maybe joining in this practice with the children in our communities might help us interrogate our ideas about God in a low-pressure way. There’s a whole packet or ideas for participating in World Drawing God Day available for download here.

Art shapes how we think about our faith (I had a whole conversation with a third grader this weekend about why we tend to think about the fruit in the story of Adam & Eve as an apple, even though the Bible doesn’t tell us what kind of fruit it really is). So, when we look at art, such as icons of holy people, we can learn more about how they lived and how they model faithful lives. And when we try to create an icon or even try to draw God, we learn more about our internal experiences of faith.

‘How do I know what I think till I see what I say?’

This famous E.M. Forster quote has always, for me, always been about writing. I process on the page (though, ask my therapist, I also process verbally). I don’t know what I think until I bring language to bear on it. But for someone like me who actually can’t think visually, how could I know what I envision until I put it on the page?

I am a creature of language. I always have been – my autistic profile is of the hyperlexic sort – I spoke in full sentences by my first birthday, wishing myself a happy birthday. I could read by the time I was three. Language is my core sphere of functioning, but it isn’t everyone’s. Rather, however we come to communicate, with words or without words, visually or physically, reveals what we believe. It is with that in mind that I turn to an article from the Christian Citizen, published earlier this spring, entitled “Nonverbal Proclamations of Faith.”

Written by two clergypeople who are also the parents of a mostly non-speaking teen, “Nonverbal Proclamations of Faith” interrogates the ways in which we approach sacraments, in this case baptism (one writer is an American Baptist, the other is ordained in the Disciples of Christ) – though certainly we could certainly extend this to confirmation. If you cannot declare the creeds, how do we witness and affirm your belief? Why is it not enough for us to witness those beliefs in other ways?

As a late-diagnosed autistic who tries to make sure I’m centering high-support needs individuals in my advocacy, I think a lot about what it means to give AAC users access to language that would let them reflect on their faith. What language would I want a non-speaking child in a Godly Play circle to have access to? As my favorite advocates and neurodiversity-affirming speech language pathologists describe, non-speaking individuals deserve access to language that is as robust as any speaking individual does. Saying yes and know, asking for what they want or describing their needs are obviously priorities, but let us remember we are wired for faith and speech isn’t a prerequisite for that. As such, I consider advocating for robust access to language that relates to faith to be part of my work and my call.

Let us stay attuned to what helps us draw close to God and let us seek out practices that help us better understand who we believe God to be or be like. As Kathy Mattea professes, “I remember feeling sad/That miracles don't happen still/But now I can't keep track/'Cause everything's a miracle”

Let us pay attention. Professions of faith are everywhere once we sort the icons in our lives – the things we create in our pursuit of God, the art that is nature – from the idols we place to shield us from the freedom that is redemption and belovedness.

Peace,
Bird