T. A. McMahon & Carl Kerby, Jr. (Part 1)

Program Description: Tom welcomes his guest Carl Kerby, Jr., of Apolomedia ministry as they discuss the subject of video games and explore the dangers as well as the positive side of the games.

Transcript:

Gary: Welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring T.A. McMahon.  I’m Gary Carmichael. Thanks for joining us. In today’s program, Tom welcomes Carl Kerby, Jr. of the ministry Apolomedia. Now, along with his guest, here’s TBC executive director Tom McMahon.

Tom: Thanks, Gary. My guest for this program and next week, should our Lord tarry, is Carl Kerby, Jr. (not to be mistaken for his dad, who I recently interviewed). Carl Jr.’s area of expertise and research involves issues that we here at TBC consider to be of prime importance, especially regarding the upcoming generation: it’s the entertainment media, and specifically video games. Carl is the co-author with Drew Thorwall of It’s Not Just a Game: How Parents and Gamers Can Apply God’s Word to Video Games. Carl also has a DVD called Game Over: It’s Not Just a Game, and when this program airs, we will definitely have information on how you can order the DVD and the book.

So, Carl, welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7.

Carl: Thank you so much, Tom, for having me.

Tom: You know, Carl, the subject I discussed with your dad had to do primarily with movies, and it’s a subject in which I‘ve had a good deal of training, and, really, professional practice. Video games, however, other than my ineptitude in playing Pong and one of the golf video games one of my sons bought, well, that’d be in the category of—well, I call it…I’d characterize it as being semi-clueless. That is why I’m talking to you. Now, I know your dad feels somewhat similar regarding his own experience with video games, but he has been instrumental in raising your level of discernment, so I want you to tell us about that.

Carl: You know, don’t let my dad cut himself short. He did play games with me!

Tom: [chuckling] Okay.

Carl: But the key word is with me. And that was always the key. My dad—we watched movies, listened to music—but he never let an opportunity pass him by where he could be the teacher and he could take me back into God’s Word. Some of my best memories growing up are playing video games with my mom and my dad, and my dad even pausing some games and saying, “Hey, did you catch that message in the game? Let’s go into God’s Word and study and find out if it’s true or not.” We would do that in all areas of our life, so that’s why I started the ministry with my friend Drew Thorwall called Apolomedia: that idea of apologetics, having an answer for why you believe what you believe, and applying it to all areas of our life. I have a media arts degree; I’m also a youth minister, and Drew played games with my father and I growing up, as well, and he is an associate pastor. And so we wanted to take our ministry background and combine it with our specialty in media and apply the lessons that my dad taught me growing up, and so that’s how Apolomedia was born.

Tom: Mm-hmm. You see, the wonderful thing about that, Carl, is that that’s where my generation has sort of dropped the ball with regard to our children. You know, we’ve kind of turned them over to the church; we’ve let the church be the spiritual babysitter to the degree that even by not watching that—watching what was going on—entertainment overtook the study of God’s Word, discipleship, those things; they went by the boards very quickly, and now we’re reaping what’s been sown in the lives of our young people—not everybody. I know there would be exceptions to that; however, the exceptions that I’ve witnessed are really few and far between.

Carl: I grew up with a father in ministry, and growing up, what I always heard being taught was the number one influence on our younger generation today is a public education; it is the schools. And you know what, I do think the public education has had a huge impact on our culture today, and you see it around the world. However, I think I could even make the case that media, including video games, movies, music, and everything we see on TV is having just as much of an impact as the schools today—if not, I’d say, even more.

Tom: Sure. Well, I know from my background in film that movies are the number one influencer, if that’s a word; maybe I just made that up. But it certainly is incredible in terms of its influence not just on our young people, but in the world. Now the part that I have dropped, because I’m not there—I’m not a gamer; never have been, as I mentioned, admitted to—so I sort of…and our kids…we have five children. Now they’re in their twenties; that was never a part of our lives—little Nintendo here and there, but nothing huge—and our kids didn’t continue on to be gamers. So I missed it, honestly, and the Lord willing, Carl, that’s why I’m so excited about interviewing you—not just you, but your cohort in your ministry, Drew, because you guys, you know what’s happening, and you’ve had experience not only—you know, it’s kind of like we have a skateboard park here; now, that’s a whole other world, those young people. [laughing] To begin to know how to talk to them—not that it can’t be done, and certainly God’s Word can cut through anything and everything, but how we go about it—I think experience in certain areas are really helpful, so I’m just totally blessed that we can have this discussion.

Now, you know, I know we’re not talking about all video games, and I know there will be people out there saying, “Well, they’re all of the devil.” I mean, I’ve heard you say that on your DVD and so on that there are people like that. However, that’s not the case. They can have their opinion, but some are at worst just time wasters, you know, if you’re going to say something bad about them—not that there might not be some really good ones out there, but…

So let’s start with that aspect. Can even video games with harmless content develop into a compulsion or an addiction?

Carl: You know, you hit on a lot of directions and points that we can touch on. First of all, I want to touch on what you were saying about the older generation and the parents of today not really understanding the culture and the gaming culture. You see, I’m going to make this argument: a lot of times, we like to paint gamers in a box, that they’re the ones that play video games all day with their X-Box, Playstations, connected to their TV. But I’m going to tell you that even people who may be in the camp of banning video games are gamers themselves and don’t even realize it, because, see, I went into a church and I asked everyone to raise their hand, “Who in here is a gamer?” And I had a couple teenagers up front admit it. No one else raised their hand.

And I was like, “You know, that’s—all right, I don’t know if you all realize it, but I think a lot more of you are gamers, because who here has a smart phone? Who here has an iPad or a Tablet? And who here has downloaded a game before—maybe they play Words with Friends, or Angry Birds? Now raise your hand, because you know what, just because it doesn’t have a controller doesn’t mean it’s not a video game. Raise your hand: who in here is a gamer?” And almost all the hands went up after that.

You see, we have a gaming culture, and so can people get addicted to it? Definitely, even if they are harmless! I mean, you can’t walk into a grocery store today without seeing people stuck on their cell phones wherever they go, and they can’t put it down. And anyone you talk to, that’s a struggle they’re going through. And so if you’re going to the point where you can’t let down your cell phone and converse with your children and play with them, or do your day-to-day activities, maybe it is an addiction. But everything can become an addiction, and we know that as well. And so I think the first point is to recognize that you are addicted, and so I think we’ve got to get our culture to realize that—you know what? They’re gamers whether they realize it or not, and so we need to start prioritizing our time and what we do with it, and that includes our cell phones, video games, movies, books, and all media.

Tom: Carl, have you got some statistics, time-wise, with, let’s say, the average gamer might be playing video games?

Carl: Definitely. The average time a gamer spends playing video games every week is 18 hours a week, and 65 percent of all US households admit to playing video games. Now, does that bother parents? Well, not really. Sixty-three percent of all parents believe that video games are a positive part of their children’s lives, and you know what? I can see the positives. I told you before, my dad had taken the opportunity to sit with me and play games and discuss. I believe that was a positive part of my upbringing. Now, he made sure that I did my homework first, that we got in the Word, that we prayed, and that we gave God time, and I think we have to prioritize our time. But it can be a positive part.

But the key is—I told you my dad always put the video games in the living room where everyone was walking by, and we could sit and we could talk, and we could watch how much time we were spending in it. But a lot of families today, they just give their children a Tablet, put a TV in their room, they lock the doors up, and they’re just playing games all day long. And so it can become a very bad, negative part of your children’s lives as well, so it does take work and effort to control it.

Tom: Yeah. You know, we’ll be using the term, or we have used the term “addiction,” and you know, some people say, “Oh, well, addiction means that they have no control or whatever.” Folks, what we’re talking about is a habit, and when it becomes habitual, you still have control. You can still say no. You can still stop; you’re not determined to do these kinds of things; it just makes it more difficult the more you practice it. But, again, Carl, just a side note here, I’ve been taken to task—I spoke at a conference in which I—I’m trying to encourage people to get into the Word of God, to do it on a daily basis, to get into a habit of it, and I said, “Look, 15 minutes, just get into a habit of just 15 minutes.”

And somebody said, “Well, you can’t spend just 15 minutes in the Word of God. You’re not going to get anything out of it.” The guy missed the point. The point is start with something! Get the habit going, because I know from my own experience that the more I do something, especially when it’s something like the Word of God—hey, 15 minutes, that’s not enough time; I need more time, and I’m going to get more time, because the habit is going to encourage that, and that’s my point with—you know, I mean, that’s the other side of—say, putting in 18 hours as a gamer, could I put in habitually, in a good sense, could I put some of that time into the Word of God on a continual basis?

Carl: Amen!

Tom: Yeah.

Carl: One thing I want to add to that is my “tent-making job,” the job I do to support my work and ministry as a youth minister and going out with Apolomedia is a banker, and there’s a saying in the banking world: they say, “Show me your checkbook, and what you spend your money on, and we will be able to tell you what your priority is in life.”

Tom: Right, right.

Carl: And I think the same thing goes with our time. Show me how you spend the time in a week, what you do with the time—we’ll be able to tell you what your priority is depending on that time and if you’re spending all this time in the world and playing video games all day long and watching movies and doing everything that really doesn’t glorify God—you’re showing what your priority is. My favorite Bible verse that I always challenge people with is, “Whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do so for the glory of God.” And so I think that “whatever” includes gaming, and includes everything, and so we have to have a focus on, “are we glorifying God in our actions?”

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Carl: What are we doing with our time every day? Now, I’m not in the camp of “ban it and burn it and stay away from all media; all media is evil.” I’m not at all. But I’m in the camp of, “well, who are you giving your time to? Who are you giving your priorities to?” We need to give more time to God, and we have to reevaluate—just like you’d make a budget with your finances; and are you going to give 10 percent to offering? How are you going to spend your money? And you make that budget. We need to make a budget with our time every week: what are we going to give to God? and what are we going to the world?

Tom: Right. As I was watching your video, I got excited, because—listen, you’re like your dad: you can get anybody excited, which is just a wonderful, wonderful quality. But you got excited, because you were talking about—yeah, when you had a problem, when you were trying to…as you were critiquing these videos, and you wanted to bring a biblical perspective to it, and you would ask your dad or whatever, but the part of the video I’m talking about is when you went to the Word of God yourself; you worked it out. I think it was—had to do with the crucifixion, and who showed up at the crucifixion, and so on. But I could just see this in your voice and everything about how excited you were to figure this problem that people, that the producers of these videos, were throwing at [the] Bible—“It’s contradictory. Here’s an example.”

Now, my point here is that—yes, if you’re going to be a gamer and put this kind of time in gaming, you need to put that—maybe not the equivalent, but a good amount of time in the Word of God so that you’re going to discern for yourself.

Carl: Oh, a pastor challenged me with this and really made me reevaluate what I was doing, because I was that gamer; I was that person playing 18 hours a week. When I first started the book, I’m going to admit to everyone, I had the wrong motivations. You see, I started the book because my dad had read a book on movies, and there’s a lot of games out there that I wanted to play, but I knew they didn’t glorify God, and so I said, “You know what, I will play these games for Jesus! I’ll do research, and then I’ll play all these games all day long.” And you know what? That was a wrong motivation.

Tom: Sure.

Carl: It actually started impacting my life and had negative influences on my life, and I had to reevaluate and say, “What am I going to do with my time?” But you know, that example you bring up with that game where it had a direct attack on the resurrection accounts in the Bible…and I have been spoiled my whole life; I had a father that—if someone attacked me or what I believed or the Word of God, I had a father who would open up the Word of God, sit down with me, and help give me answers. But God opened my eyes recently when I had a son, and I said, “You know what? My son’s going to be asking me questions; what am I going to do? Say, ‘Hey, go ask your grandpa’? ‘I don’t know, go ask your pastor’?” No, I needed to give God more time, and so I was challenged once by a pastor who said, “Imagine how much better of a person you’d be if you read the Bible more than you watch TV.” And I just froze, because I started doing that budget and looking at how much time I was watching TV in a week, and how much time I spent in the Word of God; and I was so proud of myself that week, because I opened up the Bible for an hour and just read it, and then I was like, “But I spent over 20 hours watching TV and playing video games. What am I doing with my time? Who am I showing priority for?”

So, yeah, I did get excited when I started again in the Word of God and finding answers and doing it—you know, God will speak to you. I mean, we talk about the Bereans. You know, what set them apart? They weren’t believers; they read the Word of God, became believers. If you look at the Word of God, you know, the Word of God has power and it can give you answers if you just open it up and give God some time.

Tom: Now, folks, one of the reasons that I think it’s important to lay this groundwork is what we’re going to talk about next, and that is specifics with regard to the videos that Carl has researched, that he’s aware of. So for many there’s really a dark side that…in terms of the content. So let’s talk about some of these videos; there are so many in your book, and you talk about a number in your DVD, but I want to pick out some that I looked at. One is DemiKids. Tell us about that.

Carl: Before we get into DemiKids, I want to set it up a little bit…

Tom: Sure.

Carl: …and talk about the ESRB.

Tom: Very good.

Carl: A lot of people don’t understand what that is. Well, the ESRB is like a ratings guide. Movies: if a movie is rated R, you know it’s going to have sex, language, violence, right? And if it’s PG-13, a little bit scaled down; and they have all the different ratings. Well, video games actually have a ratings guide. So rated M, that’s like a rated R movie. Did you know a lot of games actually have the same sex and nudity as movies today, and also violence and language? Rated T games, that’s like a PG-13. And so you can go down the scale and look at the ratings.

Well, there’s a rating all E, so that is like a rated G movie, okay? This is for children geared towards children. So DemiKids, that’s a rated E game. That’s a G movie. So think: you know, this is like a Disney movie. This is geared towards children. And so I could see a parent buying this game for their child; walking around, you look at the cover—it kind of looks like a Pokemon game, and you collect these little monster characters that fight with you, and you control an elementary kid student in it. And so I could see parents buying it and have them sit down, and the kid’s playing this game. But then if you actually look into the game, it’s crazy what’s in there! You see, the first character you meet in the game is Lucifer. Yeah, and they actually call him Lucifer; and the devil’s world is about to be destroyed, and so he sends one of his demons down to earth to recruit the help of these elementary-age students, and these students get a book which actually teaches them how to chant demonic spells in it. And so they will actually have you repeat the words of these demonic chants. And so imagine your kid buying this game! It’s a handheld game. You can’t watch what they’re playing.

You look at the cover, it’s rated E, just like rated G, and they’re learning how to chant demonic spells? It’s some scary stuff out there! So we have to do our research as parents, be aware of what our children are playing!

Tom: Right. Carl, let me, as a former screenwriter, okay…[laughing] I’m reading dialogue. By the way, the dialogue in many of these things you’ve quoted, they need help not only with content, but how to do it. Nevertheless, here: this is from—as Carl just described—this is from DemiKids. It’s E-rated for everyone, so you have the characters talking about—it says—Amy says, “Are you thinking about summoning demons? You need special powers for that. If you have those powers, that would mean…”

And then Akira says, “Powers? What are you talking about, Amy? What kind of powers do you need to summon demons?”

And Amy says, “There’s danger in summoning demons. A summoned demon might attack you.”

“A demon attack? If that happens, we just have to fight. Jen, we’re ready. Let’s try the spell.” You know, this reminds me of back in my day: sometimes kids would pull out the Parker Brothers game of Ouija Board…

Carl: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Tom: …and, you know, what is taking place through that…I mean, this is documented: children have been demonized because you open the door to a demon, and guess what? More often than not, they’re going to come through.

Carl: This is what sets our ministry apart: there are a lot of ministries fighting the sex, language, and violence in games, and you know what? Good for them, because it is an issue! But there is an ESRB for that, and they rate it, and so quite honestly, a lot of times it’s the parents’ fault when you buy games like that, because you can just flip back to the back cover of a video game and see what content is in there when it comes to sex, violence, language, and drug use. However, what the ratings guide does not rate at all and stays away from is spiritual content, and so you may buy a game rated E thinking it’s clean and friendly because it has no sex, language, and violence, but then you get what you just read: teaching them how to summon demons throughout the game. I mean, the Bible says in Proverbs:22:6Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
See All..., “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” I think the world knows that Scripture just as much as we do, and so they understand that if you go after our children when they’re young, they’re not going to leave. And so they are pushing a lot of scary content on our younger generation.

Tom: You know, Carl, I remember when it was through watching some of the football games, the commercials for these video games are coming up, and one in terms of imagery looked like it was really going to be a popular one, and that’s Assassin’s Creed. Tell us about that.

Carl: Yeah, Assassin’s Creed gets more people mad at me than any other game that I talk about. Why? Because it’s one of the top 15 selling franchises of all time. It’s a very popular game. I just spoke at a home school convention; I had two teenagers just really get ready to fight, because I had spoken out about the game, and they were very upset over it, and I said—I just told them, “Look, I’m just telling you what’s in the game. I’m challenging you to get in the Word of God.” You know, sometimes people want to treat me like some kind of priest, like, “Oh, I bless this game. You can play it. This game, no. I say it’s wrong, so don’t play it.” No! Get into the Word of God. The Word of God will challenge you if you should be playing a game or not.

But Assassin’s Creed, the whole storyline is based off of a weapon called the “Piece of Eden,” and you see, what this Piece of Eden does is it blinds people to make them blindly follow you, and everything you say; they’ll just follow you. Well, what is the Piece of Eden? Well, the game quotes at the very end of Assassin’s Creed 1 that they call it the Word of God; and see, they say that Moses, he never parted the water, and Jesus never turned the water into wine, and so they actually say that everything that you think happened in Scripture was a lie, and that these Christian Templars are just using these weapons to deceive you and get you to blindly follow them. You know, one kid came up to me afterwards and he just was blunt with me; he says, “Carl, you’re exactly right. You know, after playing this game, they might as well call it ‘Kill the Christians,’ because that’s all you do throughout the whole game.”

Tom: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and if our listeners think, “Well, this just happens by chance,” boy, they’re really missing the mark. As I looked at what you wrote about Assassin’s Creed, Animus was the device, right, that would change—that would kind of control somebody’s mind? Well, you look up the definition of that word, it’s a “malevolent or opposing spirit.” Even Carl Jung used animus in terms of homosexuality. He said that within every man there’s an anima, or a female side, or in every female there’s a male side, and so on, so this stuff is perverted from the get-go, and these folks know what they’re doing.

Carl: You know, I’m coming from a different angle, because I do still like to play games.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Carl: I’m always challenging myself how much time am I going to give the world, and what am I playing? So I evaluate those two, and so I’m very picky on what I play, and I do my research before I play them. But here’s the thing about Assassin’s Creed: in the game, they mock Jesus, and they show pictures with Him holding this Piece of Eden. They use this big deceiver. Well, I want you to imagine for a second: what if a video game made a game about your mother? In this game, they call her a liar, a cheater, a deceiver. Would you be angry? Yeah! Why? Because you love your mother! You have a relationship with her! Well, in this game, they mock Jesus; they show Him with a Piece of Eden as a big deceiver. And you know what? It gets me upset! Why? Because Jesus, He’s real! I know He’s real, and I have a personal relationship with Him, and I love Him. And see, it surprises me when people don’t get a little upset about how the games are presenting our Lord and Savior. This should bother you a little bit, because it’s not just one game, it’s game after game after game after game, as we point out.

Tom: And Carl, as you said, the key here is discernment. We’re about out of time in this segment, but next week, the Lord willing, we’re going to pick up on these.

So, folks, if—you’ve obviously listened to this program, but we encourage you for next week to—if you’ve got some young people who need to hear this, we’d encourage you to let them listen in, or you know that these are archived, so that being the case, this is really important stuff. For folks who have children that are gamers, for those who are grandparents and see even their kids and grandchildren that are involved in this, they need to be informed, and that’s what we’re trying to do here: give them information from someone who really knows what this is about, and, by God’s grace, is giving us insights that we wouldn’t have ordinarily.

Additionally, we’re going to be talking about one of the most popular video games out there played by many, many Christians, and it’s called Minecraft. So you might ask around to see if some of your children—or if they know people who are playing this game, we’re going to look at it in some detail. So Carl, again, thank you for joining us. We look forward to next week.

Carl: Can’t wait to talk about it.

Gary: You’ve been listening to Search the Scriptures 24/7 with T.A. McMahon, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. For more information about Carl Kerby, Jr.’s ministry Apolomedia, go to apolomedia.org. We offer a wide variety of resources to help you in your study of God’s Word. For a complete list of materials and a free subscription to our monthly newsletter, contact us at PO Box 7019 Bend, Oregon 97708. Call us at 800-937-6638, or visit our website at the bereancall.org. I’m Gary Carmichael. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you can join us again next week. Until then, we encourage you to Search the Scriptures 24/7.