“Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”  
- 1 John 5:21 
 
An idol isn’t an object; it’s an outlook. Yet iconoclasts of every age believe idols are images. In ours, they denounce the Golden Calf that charges down Wall Street. Others condemn the commercials of Mad Men and their brands that have replaced Mammon and Baal. For them, ads are anathema. The iconoclasts believe in smashing these pictures and replacing them with portraits of Jesus and Mary, yet this doesn’t solve the problem. Religious art can become an idol just as easily as a commercial can become an icon, a window into heaven. Destroying depictions doesn’t change hearts. Idols and icons are not illustrated but imagined. 
 
The twilight of the idols will arrive only at the dawn of their transfiguration. Idolatry is conquered not by might but by sight. Sacred art is less about looks and more about looking. Its holiness is not found in what it resembles but in how it reveals. Idols become icons not by changing their appearance, but by changing how they appear to us. For anything, whether an advertisement or an altarpiece, can disclose the divine. Just as Jesus, a carpenter from a no-name town, is revealed to be the Image of God at His Transfiguration, perhaps these profane pictures that grace TV screens can broadcast real grace. What if advertisements that shape our desires could illuminate our deepest desire? What if commercials that insist on consumption offer us Communion? What if promotions that push products can introduce us to a Person?