Why do we kiss icons? Isn't it idolatry?

The Orthodox nuance

The question is old and honest, because in the Old Testament God does forbid carved images. Except that the same God commands, a few chapters later, to make two golden cherubim above the Ark, and Solomon's Temple was full of carved figures. The ban was therefore not against every image, but against idols, those false gods that people worshipped as a god.

What truly changed is the Incarnation. Before, you could not paint God, because no one had seen Him, He was invisible. But the Word became flesh (John 1, 14), God made Himself visible, He had a face, hands, a gaze. Saint John of Damascus said, in short, that he does not paint the invisible divinity, but God who made Himself visible in the flesh. And if you refuse the icon of Christ, you end up, without meaning to, denying that He truly became man.

And you will notice one thing: people do not kiss the icon on the face. You kiss the hand, the foot, the edge of the garment, out of reverence, just as you would not rush to kiss on the cheek someone you greatly honour. It is a gesture of respect, not of familiarity.

And there is another distinction that language sometimes hides. There is a worship that belongs to God alone, and there is a veneration, a respect, that we give to the saints, to our mother, to a dear friend. When I kiss the icon of the Mother of God, I do not make her a god, I honour her as the person closest to Christ. Idolatry begins only when you stop at the object and make it itself a god. The icon does exactly the opposite: it does not hold you to itself, it sends you beyond it.