An icon isn’t just a religious painting. It’s a window into heaven, a theological statement in color, and a means of grace used in prayer and worship.
Religious paintings can be beautiful. They can inspire or move us. But they’re essentially illustrations, created by an artist’s imagination to evoke feeling or tell a story. Icons work differently. They’re written (not painted) according to a living tradition that goes back centuries, and they make present the person or event they depict. When you stand before an icon of Christ, you’re not looking at someone’s artistic interpretation of what Jesus might have looked like. You’re standing before Christ himself, who meets you through the image.
That’s why we say icons are written, not painted. An iconographer isn’t expressing personal creativity or trying something new. She’s copying established prototypes, following the Church’s visual language, transmitting revealed truth in the same way a scribe copies Scripture. It’s a spiritual discipline. Iconographers pray and fast while they work. They’re not signing their names in the corner because the icon isn’t about them.
The Rules Matter
Icons follow what we call canons or typology. These aren’t arbitrary rules. They’re the Church’s way of making sure icons teach the same theological truths everywhere, whether you’re in Beaumont or Bulgaria. You’ll notice certain things: flattened perspective, stylized faces, halos, specific inscriptions like IC XC (Jesus Christ) or MP ΘΥ (Mother of God). Colors mean things. Gold backgrounds represent divine light. Red often signifies divine life or martyrdom. Blue can indicate heaven or humanity.
This isn’t about stifling creativity. It’s about preserving truth. The tradition is alive, not fossilized. Different cultures and eras have produced variations. But changes get tested by the Church, and they have to preserve the theological content. An icon of the Nativity should teach you the same thing whether it was written in the eighth century or last Tuesday.
Religious paintings don’t work this way. An artist can paint Jesus however he imagines him. He can add details from his own time and place, experiment with technique, try to capture emotion or drama. That’s fine for art. But icons aren’t primarily art. They’re theology you can see.
How We Use Them
Walk into St. Michael’s and you’ll see icons everywhere. The iconostasis (that’s the icon screen separating the nave from the altar), the walls, stands holding icons of the feast or saint of the day. They’re not decoration. They shape our worship. They mark the liturgical seasons. They guide our prayer and teach us the faith without words.
At home, Orthodox Christians keep icons in a prayer corner. You light a candle, make the sign of the cross, maybe kiss the icon. You’re not worshiping the wood and paint. You’re venerating the person depicted, asking their prayers, remembering their witness. The honor you show passes through the image to the prototype. That distinction matters. It’s the difference between veneration (what we give to saints and their icons) and worship (what we give to God alone). The Seventh Ecumenical Council settled this back in 787, and St. John of Damascus wrote extensively defending it during the iconoclast controversy.
A religious painting might hang on your wall because it’s pretty or meaningful to you. But you wouldn’t kiss it or light a candle before it. You wouldn’t expect a priest to bless it before you brought it home. Icons get blessed precisely because they’re set apart for sacred use, recognized by the Church as vehicles of grace.
Why This Matters for Inquirers
If you’re coming from a Baptist or non-denominational background, icons probably feel strange. Maybe they make you nervous. That’s okay. Most of us weren’t raised with them. The key is understanding that we’re not worshiping images. We’re honoring the people they depict, and we’re using material things (wood, paint, gold leaf) to encounter spiritual reality. That’s possible because of the Incarnation. God became flesh. He made matter holy. So matter can bear witness to him.
The best way to understand icons isn’t to read about them. It’s to stand before one during Liturgy, light a candle, and let it do its work. Icons are meant to be experienced, not just explained. Come early on Sunday and spend a few minutes before the icon of Christ on the iconostasis. You might be surprised what happens when you stop analyzing and just pray.
Metropolitan Kallistos Ware wrote that icons are “theology in color.” That’s exactly right. They’re not optional extras or ethnic decorations. They’re how the Orthodox Church proclaims the Gospel visually, how we remember the saints, how we teach our children the faith. They’re windows we look through, not just at. And on the other side is the Kingdom of God, closer than you think.
