This external worship of images has, however, been described in all our Shastras as the lowest of all the low forms of worship. But that does not mean that it is a wrong thing to do.
Our Lord approved neither idol worship or idle worship but ideal worship in Spirit and truth.
The world has not gone one step beyond idolatry yet.
Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry.
Some may be helped by images, some may not. Some require an image outside, others one inside the brain.
Many of us do not believe in any form of idolatry; but they have no right to object when others do it.
You become like what you worship
The idol is the expression of religion.
When a man makes a reverent face before a face that is no face - that is idol worship!
Those reformers who preach against image-worship, or what they denounce as idolatry - to them I say "Brothers, if you are fit to worship God-without-form discarding all external help, do so, but why do you condemn others who cannot do the same?"
We may worship a picture as God, but not God as the picture. God in the picture is right, but the picture as God is wrong. God in the image is perfectly right. There is no danger there. This is the real worship of God. But the image-God is a mere Pratika.
