While I was reading this, Ecclesiastes came very sharply to mind:

“‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’
says the Teacher.
‘Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.’

What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun? ” (Ecclesiastes 1:2,3)

I am also incredibly concerned at the complete triviality of our modern society. It is quite scary, actually. One of our previous Grace Gems was by J. A. James. He said the following:

“I would not rob the believer of his few
brief holidays, nor condemn as irrational or unchristian,
his occasional oblivion of worldly vexations amidst the
beauties of nature, or the pleasures of the social circle.
There is a time to laugh–as well as to weep.

Still, it may be seriously questioned, whether among
professing Christians, the propensity for amusements
and entertainments has not been growing too fast, and
ripened into something like a passion for worldly pleasures.

The very craving after diversion and amusement, which there
is in some people, shows a morbid state of the soul. It might
be supposed, judging from the representations of true religion
which we find in the word of God, and from the general principles
contained in it–that a Christian has rendered unnecessary, all
such sources of enjoyment, which worldly people resort to. ”

He then goes on to say something which has had a MAJOR impact on my life since I read it:

“The godly Christian is very well content to forego many things
in which the people of the world see no harm.”!!

Truly: “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mark 8:34)

In light of such strong words (and to now apply it to what you said, Brett), I think it can be quite safely said that our very career decisions would be made from a point of view of both a willingness to fulfill the second greatest commandment — and to fulfill Mark 8:34!

In Him,

The athleats are paid for they’re skills, which 99.9% of the people in the world donot posses, or have the ability to poses. They are paid for their skills and disciplene to stay at that level for 13, 14 years straight.

I do believe to may be over rating the value placed on sports, and how it is a “trivial” thing.

I must say though sports have their place. Sports stars do not. Sports are a great physical activity that can be played by boys who need a break from working all the time, and don’t want to waste their lives with videogames.

Sports are really about competition, and competition drives people forward.

Watching sports on the T.V. though is far more a waste of time than videogames, if I do say so myself.

At least with videogames, you CAN learn something and improve eye-hand coordination.

Some of my greatest think time came during playing games in the past, but I’ve come to realize that prayer is much better for that.

God Bless guys!

~ John.

But all that aside, the contrast I was making was not based on the skill level. I think Emily Fox has skills 99.9% of people in the world do not possess. So does Takeru Kobayashi. So do many music artists and movie stars. I was not “degrading” any of the activities because they require little to no skill. They obviously require tremendous amounts of skill.

Rather than telling you why I lumped all these activities together, I’d like to let you try and figure it out and/or have some of the other readers take a shot at explaining it.

Thanks for voicing your concern though! It’s good to have an opportunity to clarify.

God bless!

Blessings,

Ben

I am, for example, a very amateur chess player. Given an extra couple of hours in a week (not much) I could improve to a point - and beyond that point I would have to put quite a lot of extra time to gain even slightly. I prefer to do other things with my time, among which is keeping up my own blog. In other words, I’ve decided that my current (lack of) skill is all I need, and I would feel that I’d wasted my time doing more - my conscience would accuse me.

If I had a change of heart (say, in advance of a tournament I wished to enter and do well in) I would have the further question of what my goals were - would I be playing for the joy of playing well, wanting to honor God by performing to the best of the talents He gave, or would I be hoping for a class prize and my picture in “Chess Life”?

These are the two questions for the individual believer in any pursuit. These balance the two errors one can fall into - a dabbler may be surprised to discover that God wants more out of a talent thought purely incidental, while a worthwhile skill can become an idol. (Wouldn’t it be terrible to find, in the end, that one’s passion for theology or praise music had actually eclipsed one’s passion for God Himself?)

In the aggregate, yes, it’s certain that there is vainglory in the pursuit of trivialities, but one never knows if that’s the only or the primary concern of any individual life, unless that individual presents evidence. The pursuit itself is not conclusive one way or the other. And if not for those chasing their odd innocent loves, we would all miss out on some good things that bring us a little happiness, and small graces in a large fallen world.