The Girl Who Didn't Like Mt. Rushmore

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.