Dr. Khan said:
i'm not interested in shredding your beliefs just enhancing them that you might consider what is Jesus position on the matter. I for one don't believe that we can persuade the world with the many different ideas which are contrary to sound doctrine. While we may be different in cultures and every thing Jesus came to make us the seed of Abraham that our blessing might touch every family. I wouldn't care about the cross except I believe that when we get rid of all of them we will them see how to remove the speck in the muslims eye. You see we got a big beam.
Many of us want to cling to the traditions of the past. I say well if they are ancored in the traditions of the apostles. I ask you which one of them ever use a sign or an image? Dosen't it usually mean that when the sons of Isreal departed from walking with their God that they would use images? and what not? remember Ackan's sin and how it harmed Isreal, he saving images inhis tent? when they went out to battle they had no idea that they were going to lose, they didn't think it was posible.
Do you think that any movement that takes in new cultures is not going to be changed and need adjustments? Don't we realign our cars wheels. If you think that the use of images and signs is not harmful you need to then consider the fact that your cross though it doesnt talk is saying something entirely different to that muslim or that agnostit or atheist or Indian or many who have been injured by the sign. The muslim might say to himself (crusader). There your cross spoke and you didn't even know what it said. Though it can't speak only lie.
The first point to address here is that it is true that when the Israelites went astray, they worshipped
idols, but it wasn't images that were a problem. The bronze serpant illustrates this perfectly. God commanded the construction of the bronze serpant. When the Israelites were bitten, He commanded them to look to it for aid, which is a form of veneration. However, it ceased being a visual focus or aid and became almost an avatar of God. It became an idol, something which was associated so closely with the God that it was almost a manifestation of that god. God, then, had it destroyed.
The problem that history illustrates is not images, but rather the worship of them as opposed to veneration. This is the theology in the Old Testament: images as a whole were never banned. This is true in the New Testament with the language of the cross. It is most true with the Incarnation. It has always been a part of Christian theology. When we excavate the earliest Christian churches in the catacombs and things, we find images, and the same holds true to early Jewish synagogues.
I cannot change sound doctrine in exchange for people's perceptions. When the Christians were accused of having mass orgies, because of their emphasis on love and greeting each other with a kiss, they didn't change it simply because it caused the Romans to perceive wrongly. When the Romans accused them of cannibalism, they didn't stop quoting Christ as saying "This is my Body," but continued in it.
They did not do so, because it was sound theology. It was what they had always believed. In the eigth century, when the Roman Emperors turned on images, they murdered those who venerated them and broke all they could find. The Christians didn't abandon images either, and of all places, the Church had help from the Muslim world: it protected St. John of Damascus. He, under Muslim rule, did not compromise his teaching for either the Roman Empire or the Muslim ruler (who even cut off his hand once, but God miraculously healed it).
That is the nature of sound doctrine. It must be firm, and it must be what the Christians before had taught. We can't simply change something, because a group opposes it and will condemn it. If a Muslim sees the cross and thinks "crusader," he need remember that Christians see the Quran and see only "holy war." If he calls the image an idol, then he need remember the same theology that protects the Kabaa protects the icons, and that many iconoclast groups in the west teach they worship the Kabaa. They don't compromise their devotion to those things on account of how it is perceived. Rather, they continue, because they respect their faith. Christians must do the same to maintain credibility. We cannot change with the times or with popularity (which is sadly easy for me to say in the West, but my time may come to be on the chopping block).
Ultimately, the image is a guardian of the most sacred teaching of Christianity: that God became man. We cannot compromise this, and it is just as blasphemous to the Muslim. We cannot compromise that. However, if we ban images, then we also ban the incarnation. For what is the incarnation but a heavenly, living, and fleshly image? That is the ultimate charge against Christianity by both Judaism and Islam: faith in the risen God-man is idolatry. Compromising images ultimately compromises that, and a compromise on the Deity of Christ or His work destroys Christianity.
