Idolatry in the Mishkan

A friend of mine spoke Friday night in shul and posited the following question: 

"Why weren't the cherubs considered idolatry?"

I couldn't help at first but feeling that he was missing the point, but on second glance, the cherubs, baby-faced, golden and engraved, seemed to be not very different than the golden calf. 

What, then, is uniquely characteristic of the cherubs that enable them to fulfill their unique function, and not be tantamount to idolatry?

The cherubs were attached to the golden cover, the Kaporet, that covered the holy ark, where not only the broken tablets were held, but also, the fully intact ones, as well as the Torah written by Moshe Rabbeinu. God's voice came down to the Jewish people ONLY through the cherubs, which means, presumably that there was something unique about this relationship between God's voice, the two cherubs, and the Jewish people, symbolized either by the Kohen Gadol who would enter the place of the Holy of Holies once a year, or Moshe Rabbeinu, who would go to the Tent of Meeting where he would hear Hashem's voice, which also came down from between the cherubs. 

I can't recall now in whose name name it was once said, but I remember attending the daf yomi shiur of Rabbi Yehuda Razel (may this dvar Torah uplift the soul of his son who recently died in a motorcycle accident), who asked, "Why is it that little are kids are so sweet, so aidel?" And, then, he answered, "Because they are yet to tell an untruth."

"When," he continued, "children tell their first lie, use deceipt for the first time, they lose their sweetness."

Thus, it could be - and I remember the sweetness of Rabbi Yehuda's son so well, Akiva Z"L, who had gone to Zilberman in the Old City, and who knew the entire Mishna by heart (I remember, Akiva, a boy of 8 or 9 would sit in on the shiurim, and as is the Gemorah's wont, it often quotes another Mishna from another tractate, and Rabbi Yehuda would stop mid quote, and ask Akiva, who sat without a Gemorah what the next word was, and he'd invariably know) - that it was that purity that was sanctified, immortalized, memorialized through the heavenly voice attending the little babes, the little children, who relished each and every word with such thirst, who faced each other as husband and wife, and Hashem and the Jewish people when love prevailed between them, and who turned the other way, when something was awry or remiss. 

The solid, pure gold, hammered into the form of the cherubs perpetuates the idea of the purity of youth, and how Hashem's Torah can continue to come down to us only if we are not disingenuous, which in turn gives us the authority, to continue to craft and shape the Torah she'be'al peh, the heavenly voice that we, the Jewish people shape given the needs of our time in keeping with the consensus of our sages who will continue to steadily guide us through these stormy times.