THE SHORT ANSWER
Icons get honor, not worship: the Seventh Council (787) reserved worship, latreia, for God alone.
What you'll notice
You'll hear it from friends who visited once: people bow to pictures, kiss the glass, and light candles. It looks like worship.
What it's called
The Church keeps two Greek words apart. Latreia (worship) is the adoration owed to God alone. Proskynesis (veneration) is the honor, bows and kisses included, given to holy people and things.
What's actually happening
The Seventh Ecumenical Council, at Nicaea in 787, drew the line in exactly those words. Icons receive "honourable reverence," but "not indeed that true worship of faith (λατρείαν) which pertains alone to the divine nature."1 The honor passes through the image to the person shown. Icons tells the whole story.
Why it matters
An icon is a confession that God really took flesh. In Christ the invisible God became visible, "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15). If He did, He can be painted.
Where it came from
From what it looks like, and from the Bible's real warnings about idols. The commandment's target is serving a stand-in god: "you shall not bow down to them nor serve them" (Exodus 20:5). The same book has God order golden cherubim for the Ark (Exodus 25:18–22). The iconoclasts made the charge in two waves, roughly 730–787 and 814–843; the restoration of 843 is still kept as the Sunday of Orthodoxy.
What you do
If you're Orthodox: you're greeting the person, not the paint; know why.
If you're visiting: you don't have to kiss anything; Why Do the Orthodox Kiss Everything? explains.
Go deeper
- Exodus 20:4–5 read beside Exodus 25:18–22.
- Icons.
Notes
-
Nicaea II, Decree (NPNF2 14). ↩