How is Mary not a false Idol?

I am just curious how worship of Mary is not a false Idol? I am not trying to pick a fight. I am exploring my spirituality and trying to understand?

Also, if God knows everything and is the creator, why did he create sin?

a reply to: Xeven
Devotion to Mary is a Catholic thing. I'm not a Roman Catholic myself, but I think their answer will be that what they are doing is not worship.
Most Protestants will think that it comes very close to worship, so that's where the dispute will lie.

God did not create sin. He created people. "Sin" is people trying to ignore him.

a reply to: Xeven

I've read that sin is merely a catalyst for free will

originally posted by: Xeven
I am just curious how worship of Mary is not a false Idol? I am not trying to pick a fight. I am exploring my spirituality and trying to understand?

I know this is a common Protestant criticism of Catholicism, and I have never understood THAT. It's like every time a Catholic mentions a saint, the Protestants claim "False Idol! False Idol!" St. Jude: False Idol! St. Patrick: False Idol! Good Lord, give it a rest.

a reply to: Xeven

Its really no false idiols before me.
So the Father/Jesus/holy spirit is worshipped, since mary was raised up she is honored and prayed to as an intermediary.

I was raised, confirmed Catholic, an alter boy, Catholic school, the works. Ive been in recovery for 30 years

a reply to: ssenerawa

NO free will is the choice to sin or remain holy, Adam chose to disobey (sin) therefore we all have that choice in us (sin). But the fault was covered in Christ for he bare our sins in his own body upon the tree that we should henceforth live for righteousness. Just place your name wherever you read our, we or ye.

1Peter 2:24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

a reply to: Xeven

Mary is God's baby-momma.

So she's able to sit at the big table. At least, that's how I figure it.

Will there be free will in heaven? If not, then we are not "we" in heaven. How is that different than eternal nothingness?

I will go ahead and ask my next question. If God loves us all, and created us all fully knowing some would burn in hell for eternity for not believing. How is that love?

That act alone seems like a Satanic action. Which leads to if all powerful why did God allow Satan to exist if he loves us?

If God is real it appears to me he is one mean SOB.

originally posted by: schuyler

originally posted by: Xeven
I am just curious how worship of Mary is not a false Idol? I am not trying to pick a fight. I am exploring my spirituality and trying to understand?

I know this is a common Protestant criticism of Catholicism, and I have never understood THAT. It's like every time a Catholic mentions a saint, the Protestants claim "False Idol! False Idol!" St. Jude: False Idol! St. Patrick: False Idol! Good Lord, give it a rest.

They are false idols. For example, prayer is to the Father, in Jesus' name, delivered/translated by the Spirit. That's it. Period. The need of anything beyond that strike me as idolitry.

originally posted by: filthyphilanthropist

originally posted by: schuyler

originally posted by: Xeven
I am just curious how worship of Mary is not a false Idol? I am not trying to pick a fight. I am exploring my spirituality and trying to understand?

I know this is a common Protestant criticism of Catholicism, and I have never understood THAT. It's like every time a Catholic mentions a saint, the Protestants claim "False Idol! False Idol!" St. Jude: False Idol! St. Patrick: False Idol! Good Lord, give it a rest.

They are false idols. For example, prayer is to the Father, in Jesus' name, delivered/translated by the Spirit. That's it. Period. The need of anything beyond that strike me as idolitry.

Seems to be a legit point of view. Maybe we discover the real god my questioning what man has decided?

a reply to: Xeven

"I am exploring my spirituality and trying to understand"

I applaud you on this, and I urge you to continue doing so until you die!

However, the next part isnt going to be so nice.

Take the bible you are reading, put it on the bookshelf, and leave it there. It is one single mythology that unfortunately has dominated most of the world with 3 different iterations of itself. There is 100x more to learn than is in that book, and a lot of it is of much higher quality.

"False idol" basically means an old god/goddess that the new mythology of christianity replaced. Obviously trying to get as many people to stop worshipping, or even thinking about the old gods in any positive light, they were all turned into "false idols" and demons.

Mary, is the end result of two things: a seething hatred of the Divine Feminine, and the inability to totally eradicate it from peoples minds. Mary basically is a heavily reduced version of the Greek Isis whose worship went well into the first millennia in christian controlled territory. Greek Isis is of course the the Egyptian Aset, who is almost certainly (and IMO, is) the Sumerian Inanna.

Following this chain, you have Inanna, the original "Queen of Heaven", who in Her earliest forms was basically all-powerful, and in later forms became less and less powerful with society beginning to favour male deities and patriarchy over matriarchy. Slowly the legends built that She was immature, arrogant, a killer of men, etc, until you get the Gilgamesh rant about Her.

She goes through various names down through time, until legend finally gets Inanna, Queen of Heaven who answers to no male authority figure, more or less "God", to Mary, a simple subordinate who can do nothing but pray to the new all powerful male god and beg him on your behalf, has absolutely no power of her own, is no longer even recognized as a deity, and her list of traits whittled down to I guess what patriarchy really wants all women to be, and only be: a mother who yields 100% to the father and has no power of her own.

But why have her even be an interceder? Her very existence, as some form of Divine Feminine, no matter how chained and bound, is still anathema to some. Thus, she is labelled "false idol" now, with all the rest of the ancient gods.

I say all this to you, to get you to start thinking about the situation very broadly, and to pique your curiosity into just how things managed to get to where they are now, legend/myth/religion wise. Things are not as they seem.

Explore, discover, question, and never believe anyone or any institution who tries to coerce you into a certain belief using fear as their delivery tool, no matter how polished or covered up the fear is.

-

To your second question, this may be getting beyond the scope of what you are ready for, but "God", as in yahweh, is not the creator. Yahweh is not a/the primordial/cosmic being. Yahweh is little more than a usurper and an over-bloated psychic parasite (check my signature link)

Primordial beings, of which there is probably only one and logically would be either feminine or dual natured, is the only being who is omniscient. Even the gods and goddesses are not that, though their knowledge and power is beyond our mortal comprehension and their limits farther than we could ever possibly imagine, they are effectively omniscient, but technically not. Even they themselves grow and learn.

So with that, the question becomes "why did the primordial being create sin?"

The somewhat silly answer is, because without Sin (Sumerian Nanna, the moon god, and probably the moon itself), the Earth would be barren because it would have an unstabilized wobble and unpredictable seasonality, preventing complex plant life from evolving.

The more to the point answer is, She/It didnt, because "sin" was created by man to control man.

How is every cross or crucifix not an idol?

a reply to: Xeven

Every single saint the Catholic church idolizes is a false idol.

originally posted by: schuyler

originally posted by: Xeven
I am just curious how worship of Mary is not a false Idol? I am not trying to pick a fight. I am exploring my spirituality and trying to understand?

I know this is a common Protestant criticism of Catholicism, and I have never understood THAT. It's like every time a Catholic mentions a saint, the Protestants claim "False Idol! False Idol!" St. Jude: False Idol! St. Patrick: False Idol! Good Lord, give it a rest.

That's generally how Protestants think about the Catholic faith.

I'm not saying they're right. I'm not even saying I care -- for the record, I find all religion silly.

originally posted by: tkwasny
How is every cross or crucifix not an idol?

Some people think it is.

originally posted by: Greggers

originally posted by: tkwasny
How is every cross or crucifix not an idol?

Some people think it is.

Well, I can accommodate this as a representation of Christ who is supposed to be god.

a reply to: DrStevenBrule

So is Jesus, seeing as how a greek name would never been given to a Jewish child.

a reply to: Xeven

Yes but we know not what that will be. It is a mystery and you wont know until you get there. But there is only one way to get there and that is through faith on Jesus Christ finished work of the cross.

originally posted by: ChesterJohn
a reply to: Xeven

Yes but we know not what that will be. It is a mystery and you wont know until you get there. But there is only one way to get there and that is through faith on Jesus Christ finished work of the cross.

But why so much faith in human writings? I cant get there. I do not want to live in hell but just having faith in human writings is beyond me. I need god to say hello to me or something?