Should Humans Try To “Represent” Their Gods?

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Should Humans Try To “Represent” Their Gods?

What do you think?  Should humans try to “represent” their gods, or do we diminish their divinity by limiting them to tangible form?

From time immemorial and especially in art, gods have been represented in so many different ways and different forms. However, the question of whether it is right to represent god comes as one who needs scrutiny. This is because gods have been represented for a long period, and the desire not to represent god in any way leaves a question of how much we value our God or gods. In the ancient period of Sumeria and Egypt and Mesopotamia and Greek and coming down to Romans, the medieval period and all the different periods of history studied in this course gods have been represented (Schönborn, 1994). They are revered so much, and their representation through art has to be perfect in all ways since they are very important to the people.

Therefore, it is okay to represent gods in our own little ways and through this, we show how much we love them, just like history. Basing the argument of the catholic church’s teaching, representation of God is okay as long as people do not fall into the sin of idol worship whereby they begin worshipping the representations of their God instead of praying to him. Therefore it is important to separate imitation and representation as well as worship. We do not diminish God’s divinity by representing him. However, when the object of representation becomes our worship, the divinity of God is diminished and there is a very thine between representation, imitation, and worship.

Reference

Schönborn, C. C. (1994). God’s human face: the Christ-icon. Ignatius Press.