The girl who didn’t like Mt. Rushmore
A young girl was recently asked about our national monuments, and was asked if she had ever visited Mt Rushmore. Her reply was yes. Then she was asked if she liked it. Her reply this time was a flat out “NO”. She then was asked what she didn't like about it. Her reply now was “Because its a ROCK.” and adding ”Because all you can do is stare at it.”
I have to admit myself that I've seen hundreds of pictures of it and have seen portrayed in the movies a few times, most notably the ones starring Jimmy Stewart in “Vertigo” I believe and the Nicholas Cage movie “American Treasure”, but I've only visited the site once. Which is kind of a shame, because where I live, I'm about an 8 hour drive from there down I-90.
Each time I've seen Mt Rushmore, whether it be in pictures, the movies, or my one time visiting it I'm awed by the shear size of it and how , particularly how one man had the vision of carving such a thing into a mountain.
I also understand why he would put who he did on the mountain. George Washington fought for the United States Liberation from the British, Thomas Jefferson who was one of our founding fathers and authors of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln Who brought back together a divided nation, and Theodore Roosevelt who was a Nobel Pace Prize winner and a solid conversationalist
Anyways, back to the young girl. When I first heard it I had to laugh for her staunch straightforwardness on the subject. The honesty in her statement then got me to thinking about what she had said.
My thought was how can anyone not appreciate the natural beauty of one of nature's/mankind's greatest achievements? The more I thought on it, the more I realized this young teen girl for her own reason was at least right in her thinking pattern, on a biblical standpoint for couple of reasons.
Gen 11:4
And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
In the book of Genesis (Chapter 11) it tells the story of the Tower of Babel, and how mankind gathered together to build a great tower to reach to God and be in heaven with him. God seeing this, then scattered en’s language so that they couldn't communicate with each other and once again attempt to reach heaven through man made devices.
Anther reason I believe she was on the right track is this. Although a great achievement in the construction of this particular monument..what 's it a monument supposed to represent? I would think , and you may differ on this, but I think it represents to the world the power of America. In doing this we come just short of not worshiping God, but rather worshiping man/men.
We have to ask ourselves what actually made this country we live in a great country? I don’t for one second try and take away the great deeds of some of the people in it, but don't you think that maybe God had a hand in helping make it a great country?
If you go back in history from the pilgrims and their search for religious freedom and Indians that had helped them survive the strange new world, to George Washington at Valley Forge, to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the navel task force that fought in the Pacific theater, outgunned and under manned along with the men who fought so bravely during the beach landings at Normandy and during the Battle of the Bulge, to the brave people of New York City in 2001. And these are just a few of the things I could mention of when we as a country were under the gun and in great danger of losing all that we had.
It sort of seems to me those men and women along with others, had a divine helping hand in accomplishing successfully the tasks at hand. Even in our Pledge Allegiance we mention God or in some of our most patriotic songs God is mentioned..”God bless America..Land that I love....”
We as Americans have suffered some up and downs in our history, but we have always remained steadfast in our belief in God, but it seems that we are losing that way of life in recent times. Our economy is is in hurt, we have wars and skirmishes in a lot of different parts of the globe, we have shootings within our own borders that end with tragic results, the government itself it seems is going behind the back of us Americans and implementing strategies that are against our constitution, even our own political parties are fighting for the right of the last word and catering to special interest groups and not America as a whole, which is in of itself dividing this country even more.
I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to solutions to all these problems,but in logic I have to ask my self “What has changed?” “What seems to be the common denominator here?” I think people are basically good and try at least to do the right thing, so I'm not sure if thats it.
The one item that I think it could be, and I think is a big factor , is we are taking God out of the equation. We have taken prayer out of the schools. I even heard where in one place instead of using the word ”God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, they have replaced it with the “love”. Now mind you, I have nothing against love ,but that's just plain wrong if you ask me. We are so afraid of stepping on any ones toes we seem to be in fact stepping on every ones toes. We are spending to many resources on being “politically correct” and in doing this we have overlooked what is the truth. We are “whitewashing” a lot of areas in our lives for the sake to not offend anyone.
We are to busy with our own lives to not include God into our lives, but we expect Him to bail us out of every little jam we may get into.
All we need to do is read the Bible and look at Israel's past. When they rejected God, some bad things had happened. They were conquered by the Assyrians, by the Babylonians, by Rome. The people were dispersed forcibly in whats called the “Diaspora” and only up to recent times have regained control of their own manifest destiny.
We in America shudder at that thought and say it could never happen to us, but I got news for you...It already is happening to us. We think we are a rock of a country of all countries in the world,but I believe we are more fragile than we think
We need to stop the personal greed, stop making bad choices. We need to look out and start caring for one another and think of how God would want us to act as a nation. We also need to start considering our Country and our World and its resources. We as a whole burn a lot of the resources God has supplied to us each and every day.
I believe , truly believe this starts in our own homes such as with installing sound ideologies into our children, and then to our extended family, then to share it with our community, and all the way up to our nation and the world.
We seem more interested in catering to the needs of a small minority of people as to what is really better for the nation and to treat all equally, with love and compassion one would show a brother.
