What icon is more precious or more Holy? The icon made by man, or the icon made by God that are mankind? A true iconophile remembers that the icons made by God are the most precious and most Holy.

Jesus taught us to love our enemies. He did not make provision for destroying them. Jesus taught us to love our neighbors. He did not make provision for falling short in our love but demanded that we be perfect even as the heavenly father is perfect.

There are those in the East that feel, for geopolitical reasons, they have some sort of right to rain missiles down on their neighbors. There are those in the West that believe they can murder babies in the womb and cast themselves as “liberal.”

The destruction of unique individual human life, even the human life of those we judge as “guilty”, or insignificant or incomplete, is the destruction of an icon of God, made by God, and to be judged properly by God alone.

The wickedness of many modern Russian “Orthodox” in supporting an evil war in the Ukraine is manifest in the behavior of their armies in murder and rapine. The wickedness of those claiming Orthodoxy while supporting legalized abortion is manifest in the horrible manner of the crimes against innocents; dismemberment, slow scalding in saline, and starvation. There is no excuse for murder. There is no pardon for murderers except that obtained in repentance with the blood of Christ.

In the 7^th Ecumenical Council, it is interesting to see that the Iconoclasts were associated with soft raiment and excessive dress. Today we see Kirill of Russia wearing very expensive clothing and a fancy watch. Is it surprising that such a one “justifies” the murder of his neighbors for the most greedy kleptomaniac the world has ever seen? ‘Those who wear soft raiment are found in king’s houses.’ Poor Putin is a man who wants so much for himself that he loses his own soul for he cannot back away from this conflict in the Ukraine and he cannot win. He is now a puppet of his own wealth, his own power, his own system of brutality and in such a system he has lost his very soul.

Modern orthodoxy is sick in its ethnocentric core. Whether in the west with its association with the Democratic party which welcomed immigration, or in the East with its love of the money provided by the maniac Putin, modern orthodoxy is suffering a severe iconoclast heresy. It is an iconoclasm of the most precious icons – human beings created by the living Logos.

Iconography does not end on painted walls under golden onion domes. Iconography is within every human being, believer and unbeliever, saved and lost. The religion must be applied beyond the altar, beyond lighting candles and saying prayers. Those things are good and first, but without loving human beings those things become sick displays of hypocrisy. Our behavior in Church has to be taken out to the world.

Lord help us to love our enemies, remembering you made each and every single one. Good conscience restrains our actions, our speech and our ambition. But when we suppress that conscience, we end up becoming monstrous in our thoughts, in our speech and in our actions. Such monstrosity feeds ambition and elevates us to places where the only movement is off a high tower of our own making. Only with humility can we descend step by step to a wide place where we can be free to be ourselves as God intended us to be. But the devil ever tempts us to despair and take a dive.