Amazing Earthly Achievements, worth the effort?

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I think that when amazing earthly achievments take the place of the Lord and hinder us from worship they aren't worth the effort.

My children all play music and while they don't earn medals for this they do a lot of times earn the praise of man when people come watch them perform. My stand with them in their music is that I do not expect them to be the best there is, but to be the best they can be. I think that is what honors the Lord. They can still earn the praise of man for their performance and glorify the Lord at the same time. We spend up to three hours a day or more at times with practice, lessons, and orchestra lessons. Is it worth it? I personally think so as long as it isn't taking the place of the Lord. They are also expected to give back with their talents by serving our church with those talents.

My son earned a medal for obtaining Memory Master at our co-op and it was good. For him it represented months of intense work that had a reward.

I think the discipline it takes to acquire these things is commendable, but not at all cost. For unbelievers this all they have, earthly achievements. For the Christian we can have these and honor and glorify the Lord with our talents, time and effort. When it takes the place of the Lord then we have an idol and that should not happen.
 
This is a good question and one I have asked myself in slightly different context. At what point does pursing excellence turn into a waste of time? I think calling has a lot to do with it. In other words, I believe that God calls His children into all sorts of fields including ones that require an enormous amount of time. Being a concert piano pops into my mind. And what ever we are called to do we should do with all of our might.

I think one of the things that we tend to forget is that unbelievers (like the girl sailing) are never going to get it right when it comes to the sabbath or obedience to God. However, I still think we can stand in awe of what God has created when we see what man can acheive.
 
I think one of the things that we tend to forget is that unbelievers (like the girl sailing) are never going to get it right when it comes to the sabbath or obedience to God. However, I still think we can stand in awe of what God has created when we see what man can acheive.

Absolutely! God's common grace falls upon unbelievers and believers. I think this would be one of those areas. Obviously unbelievers have as many talents as we do, the difference is they can't honor or glorify the Lord with those talents like we can.
 
I am glad that this thread is now up. I was the one in the other thread who started this whole thing, but had to take a wee break to cool off.

The point I want to make here is that sometimes we need to engage in some 'nitpicking' in order to discover the categories that God would have us apply based on Scripture. For example, we first need to be able to discern sin vs. not sin, waste vs. not waste. It's not 'nitpicking' with a view to condemn, but rather with a view to discover things about human activities and endeavors.

I think Mr. Bottomly, as moderator has done well to direct us back to the original post.

I would like to pick up on a question Mr. Thornquist posed in his original post:

Also, where in Scripture is an earthly medal seen as valuable, or are the worthwhile treasures only in heaven?

It would seem to me that the dominion mandate must come in to this. Would it have been worthwhile for Adam to excel at gardening? I think, yes. But the difficulty comes when an endeavor is not actually work. That is, when there is not actually a production of anything. Gardening produces food, ocean exploration facilitates Gospel expansion.

But it would seem to me that pure recreation that doesn't have as its aim to take dominion over any area of life, or doesn't carry with it a purpose to revive one physically and mentally, would be in a different category.

That is what I am trying to discover: categories for our human endeavors.
 
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