Shroud of Turin.. Jesus or just some guy?

enharmonic wrote:

I wonder if the shroud constitutes a false idol per the word of God? even if it is JC's shroud, it is not JC, and it is not God. that people would hold it up in reverence is exactly the kind of thing that big J was talking about...very un-Christianlike.

If the people were actually worshipping the shroud, then yeah. But people who pray to statues or other "idols" as you put it, aren't actually praying to the object. No one worships the shroud, or the statue of Mary itself,... They pray in front of these objects with the spirit of the person they represent in mind. They are only there for a reminder. Those things are special to people because to them, it means proof on top of faith.

Now there probably are exceptions, and those exceptions are statues or paintings that have produced miracles. And even so, it's still not the statue so much, but the fact that people believe that there is a presence around the statue.