On Permanence

I was randomly thinking about Mount Rushmore.  Faces of the past etched into granite.  Go back further and the oldest known depiction of a human figure in stone dates back to the prehistoric era.  Selfies of the paleolithic age.  I wonder about this uniquely human desire to create monuments that will outlast us...  Maybe intrinsically we recognize our own impermanence and this is the closest to some sort of immortality humankind can get. 

Statues in turn bear history.  We're able to look back at the busts of Roman Emperor's (I said "busts" hehe...) and know...very little about what they actually looked like.  As it's purported that sculptors idealized their figures- ancient Photoshop.  Since these statues were often used for political propaganda.  

So what does the Bible say about such monuments...well it gets a bit complicated...

In Exodus 20:4-5:

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.”

Perhaps that passage speaks more against idolatry than stone selfies, since a few chapters later in Exodus 25:18 comes the Ark of the Covenant, where God commands moses to build statues:

“Thou shalt make two Golden Cherubim out of beaten gold.”

Long story short the Bible contains several such instances of God commanding the creation of graven images leading to the conclusion that he truly only forbids the creation of images of worship.  

I still find Mount Rushmore a bit odd...