unTapped Topic: Top of the List

this week from Drew!

Top of the List.

March Madness started today. It is the college basketball tournament that see who the best is each year but before the tournament can even start the teams must be ranked. Forbes magazine comes out with the richest people in the world list. People magazine and others have the 50 sexiest people. In school, we compared our grade with the other students. When sales reports come out, we check to see where we are on the list.

Why do we feel the need to rank ourselves and others? Do you feel a need to be at the top of any ranking list? What does ranking each other say about how we value each other?

unTapped Topic: The Next Big Thing

this week topic comes from Andrew:

As kids we look forward to the next year in school. “When I’m in first grade, things will be great because I’ll be able to write…when I’m in sixth grade things will be better because I’ll be in middle school…when I’m in high school things will be better because I can drive…when I’m in college things will be better because I’ll be on my own.”

Many of us take this attitude throughout our lives, always looking and striving for the next big thing. “Things will be better when…”

That “when” might be married, with kids, retired, in a new job, out of an old job, when you move, etc.

Are we ever satisfied in the here and now? Do we ever feel like now, at this moment, is the happiest I can be? Existentially, when do when are we content? How does our faith play into this? Are we always looking for the next big thing?

Virtually Lost

I was pointed to this horrible and sad story by Blake Huggins:

South Korean police have arrested a couple for starving their three-month-old daughter to death while they devoted hours to playing a computer game that involved raising a virtual character of a young girl.

The 41-year-old man and 25-year-old woman, who met through a chat website, reportedly left their infant unattended while they went to internet cafes. They only occasionally dropped by to feed her powdered milk.

"I am sorry for what I did and hope that my daughter does not suffer any more in heaven," the husband is quoted as saying on the asiaone website.

According to the Yonhap news agency, South Korean police said the couple had become obsessed with raising a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online. The game, similar to Second Life, allows players to create another existence for themselves in a virtual world, including getting a job, interacting with other users and earning an extra avatar to nurture once they reach a certain level.

"The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life because they didn't have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby," Chung Jin-Won, a police officer, told Yonhap. "They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby."

This story is so incredibly disturbing. It is so sad to think that we as human beings would forsake the love and nurture of a child so that we could enjoy a virtual pseudo-reality.

Is life so unsatisfying that we prefer the reflection of this life in the cyber-verse? Are we that lost?

Topic: Naughty By Nature?

What's the problem here?

We trample eachother, kill eachother, hate eachother, kidnap eachother, overpower eachother, etc.

Something is wrong. There seems to be a problem with people. What is it? Some think that we have a sin nature, which gives us our urges to do wrong. They believe that we are an evil mess at our core level. Others, believe that we are forgetful or ignorant of what is right and good, but we are intrinsically good.

What do you think? What is the source of sin and human evil?

We meet at Shorts Brewing, in downtown Bellaire, every Thursday at 7pm! See you there!