Admiration of Man

...God hates for man to boast in man...boasting in man deflects man's attention from the Fountain of his joy and so ruins his life. It tricks man into replacing Magnificence with a mirror. Man was not made to admire man. He was made to admire God. The joy of admiration is prostituted and ruined when man tries to find galaxy-size Glory in the glow of his own reflection. God does not like the human damage done by boasting in man.

Selection from John Piper's Life as a Vapor (Chapeter 9, Boasting in Man is Doubly Excluded).

Hmmm. This is interesting. I believe that we are to value each other. There is nothing wrong in the admiration or praise of man, only in the worship thereof. Man is not to worship man, and yet the praise of man is, I think, acceptable. Not the praise of oneself but the praise of another. If this were not the case we would not commend a man on his anniversary for having made it that long. Or we would not introduce a preacher with such a glowing report of his ministry. Nor would we speak well of our godly mentors and those who influenced us, such as parents or pastors. But are we only to admire the godliness in others? That would seem to condone admiration with a gentle and patronizing pat on the back. By admiring the godliness in other people we are, after a fashion, admiring the detonator of such godliness - God Himself. Therefore the admiration would flow right back to Him. But we also admire the secular, or ungodly people. We admire various atheletes, actors, and authors (to name but a few selections from a wide array). Yet in our admiration of these people we do not, I trust, admire them for their track record in divorce, or drug addiction, or other destructive sins. No, we admire them for their ability in athleticism, acting, or writing. That is we admire their God-given abilities or potential. Their creative capacity, in the writer for example, are reflective of a divine interference. God interferes in all of humanity and thus causes admiration of His creation. Not to mention He observed His own creation to be good and desires, I believe, that we enjoy His goodness.