Having Statues In Church - Catholics Violate God's Command On This

Exodus 20:4-5 - [4] Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. [5] Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me:

Leviticus 26:1 - 1] I am the Lord your God: you shall not make to yourselves any idol or graven thing, neither shall you erect pillars, nor set up a remarkable stone in your land, to adore it: for I am the Lord your God.

Deuteronomy 16:22 - 21] Thou shalt plant no grove, nor any tree near the altar of the Lord thy God: [22] Neither shalt thou make nor set up to thyself a statue: which things the Lord thy God hateth.

Protestant Christian Understanding: We are not to have statues in Church.

Catholic Christian Understanding: Looking at the context of this verse, God is saying that He does not want us doing what the Pagans did and worship the actual material or structure itself.

There is lots of proof in the bible on this and God cannot contradict Himself because if you look at a few chapters later in Exodus 35:1, God tells them how to make the Ark of the Covenant and to engrave the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant.  Not Only does God give them the blueprint on how to engrave the cherubim, but also instructs His people on how to make a physical sacred structure to His liking.

God also told Moses, in the book of Numbers, to make a graven statue of a bronze serpent and that those who would look upon it, would be cured of their poison from the serpents that were released into the camp. In John 3 Christ himself speaks positively of the serpent image when He refers to it saying, "Just as the serpent was raised up by Moses to cure the people, so is the Son of Man to be lifted up to cure all sins and those that look to Him will be cured and saved."  It can be clearly seen here that God himself encouraged images and "statues" through these examples of the bible, which makes proper use of statues biblically proven and sound.

So … what was God prohibiting in Exodus 20:4-5, Leviticus 26:1, Deuteronomy 16:22?  He is saying that you CANNOT make anything and then bow down to it and say that IT IS GOD, as the pagans did.  This thing made out of wood, gold or whatever is nothing in and of itself and to give it any more significance than that is sinful and idolatrous, which is what these passages are teaching. 

Paul condemns an actual ideal which was being used improperly in Romans 1 where he says, "you are worshiping the creature, instead of the creator who is forever blessed."  No man is to bow down to a statue itself, which Catholics do not do at all.  The actual item is not divine, but what it represents or depicts is divine.

This is another example of verses being taken out of context.  

As a counter thought, there is a big statue of Martin Luther in D.C. So is this statue exempt from the objection because it is not Catholic?  There are also many Protestant statues in Geneva of Protestant founders like Calvin, Knox and others.  Are those statues approved by God and exempt from this objections because they are not Catholic?  

The point is that the statues are not wrong in and of themselves for what they stand for, however, if one worships them as being God, then that is sinful and is the exact message these verses are speaking to.