Tim Keller's Social Justice is Like Ghostbusters on Nintendo

The Social Justice Movement as a Disappointing Video Game

The social justice movement in the evangelical church is a lot like Ghostbusters for Nintendo. When you first hear about it, it sounds like a good idea, but then when you rent it from Blockbuster for the weekend, it's just one big disappointment.

You ever renting video games from the store? I used to rent, we used to rent them occasionally from the grocery store. They had like a video game rental thing, but they always had the worst games. And back in the day, like you didn't know what game was going to be good or not at all.

It was just like a gamble and oftentimes the things that were licensed for like the coolest shows and the coolest movies, they were often the worst games. You might not know this about me, but I actually am a big fan of retro video games.

I still own a Nintendo and I probably like 30 games and I'll break it out and play it every now and then. It's a lot of fun. I don't have as much time as I'd like for video games these days. But anyway, but yeah, actually one of the first memories that I have of YouTube is a channel called AVGN, Angry Video Game Nerd.

He is hilarious. He's definitely not rated PG or G or PG -13 even, so I don't necessarily recommend him, but he's really funny. He reviews old school video games. And the thing about video games back in the day was a lot of them were good and they've got fond memories of them, but a lot of them were extremely frustrating.

They were probably overpriced, over budget and just underwhelming when you got to the video game. The thing about social justice in the evangelical church is a lot of the rhetoric sounds pretty good. Who doesn't want to be for justice, right?

Who doesn't want to be for social justice? Society is good and justice is good, so just put them together. It's going to be great. And it's kind of like how I felt when I heard about the Ghostbusters Nintendo game because I like Nintendo and Ghostbusters.

Ghostbusters was a huge part of my childhood. I remember playing with Ghostbusters figures, watching the Ghostbusters cartoon. We had a proton pack, a toy proton pack and the ghost trap and stuff. Me and my brother would pretend to be catching ghosts all day long.

It was so much fun. And then the movie, I mean, the original Ghostbusters movie with all the original cast and all that, it was fantastic. A great movie. And so when you hear they're going to make a Nintendo game about Ghostbusters, you're like, you're pumped.

And it's just like the whole idea with justice and the Bible is like, yes, justice and God and Christ, it's going to be fantastic. And then like, as soon as you like look under the hood for just one second, it's the same thing with a Nintendo game for Ghostbusters.

The Ghostbusters Game Fails Immediately

Because as soon as you put it in your Nintendo and turn it on, this is what you're greeted with. You hear that? Let's play that one again. Listen, listen to this. Look how horrible this sounds. We were so pumped.

We're like, oh, yes. And watch this. So you know you're in for a treat. You start reading about the social justice and you're just like, oh, this is going to be bad. But then you're like, OK, maybe the problem's me.

Because when I was a kid and I saw that, I was like very disappointed with how it opened. But I was like, you know, maybe it's going to still be good, though. Maybe, you know, they put all the money in the development resources.

This is me thinking as a kid. They put all their development budget into the game. They didn't really care about the introduction. Besides, this is Nintendo. You know, you can't expect it to have a great introduction.

So so then, you know, I decided to give it a chance. It's kind of like reading Tim Keller's book, Generous Justice. You read the introduction. You're just like, this is going to be garbage. But yeah, but let me read on, because like I heard he was really smart.

This is probably going to get better, right? I want you to take a look at the screen. Take a look at this screen, because this is this is when you rented Ghostbusters from the store, Blockbuster, the grocery store.

And you're expecting to be blasting ghosts and catching them in the trap. And it's going to be awesome. Like what could be better? Nintendo and Ghostbusters. And then you're greeted with this smack in the face.

You get assaulted. Your ears get assaulted by the Ghostbusters. And then this is the screen. You got yellow banana cartoon ghosts in an overhead view of a city. And you are a Ghostbusters symbol. That's that's you.

This is you. You're moving this thing. And then you got the Ghostbusters HQ. None of this moves, by the way. It's just static. You can't get off this screen. This is the entire this is the entire game.

This is the game world right here that you're looking at. You got the Ghostbusters HQ. You got the Zool building, because in the Ghostbusters movie, I guess that was called the Zool building, even though the main enemy is Gozer, the Gozerian.

But, hey, you know, whatever. Kids who care? They don't they don't understand. I thought the main enemy was Zool, too, back in the day. So I don't know. And then, of course, you got the shop here where, you know, the Ghostbusters, they bought their proton packs in their car and their traps.

They bought it from the Ghostbuster shop, because we all know that when you need a proton pack, you just drive to the proton pack store and buy one. This is the game. And you're like, no, this can't just be the game.

Actually, this is the game. This is the game. The game consists of, I believe, four screens. And this is one of them. You want to see the second one? It gets better. Here we go. This is it. This is Ghostbusters on the Nintendo Entertainment System.

It's a car game. Yeah, because, you know, one of the things we all remember from Ghostbusters is all of the fancy driving. It's so terrible. And this is how it feels to read a social justice book. It's just monotonous, tedious, boring.

There's nothing to it. This is horrible, this game. When I was a kid and I played this game, I couldn't believe it. I just felt like, I felt dirty after this. This was the first time I got scammed as a kid.

Ol' AD, when he was a young boy, he got Ghostbusters, put it in his Nintendo, and he knew that he had been bamboozled. This is the feeling a lot of you get. I get a lot of emails about, well, I just feel disillusioned by Big Eva.

And I'm like, I understand. I felt the same way when I rented a Blockbuster, the Ghostbusters Nintendo game. It's the same thing. All right, I want you to see this. Hold on. I got to get rid of this ad.

Hold on. Oh, barefoot. Get out of here. This is a completely inappropriate ad. YouTube sucks. All right. So let me show you, because this is not the whole game. I told you there's a couple of screens.

Here's another screen. Ready? And this is the ghost-catching screen. Catch the ghosts. These are your proton packs. They're not even a line. There's just four dots. And you catch the ghost, and you put it in the thing.

And the whole, so there it goes up, and it goes down into the trap. You caught the ghost, and you make some money. So that's the game. So you keep doing that. And as soon as you catch enough ghosts, or maybe it's a timer, nobody really knows how to play this game.

But eventually, you get to go into the Zool building. And the Zool building, this is the Zool building. Let's see what we got here. So you just walk up like 100 flights, just like this. Do you even see what's happening here?

By the way, this is very similar to Social Justice as well. If you know anything about Ghostbusters, then you know that there are, in fact, four Ghostbusters. You got Egon, you got Ray, and you got Peter Venkman, right?

There are, did I say three? I meant four. There are four Ghostbusters. And then you got Ray, Egon, and Peter Venkman. But you might notice that's only three Ghostbusters. Because on the screen, there are only three Ghostbusters.

One Ghostbuster has been left out. Do you know who the Ghostbuster that has been left out? That would be Winston, the only black Ghostbuster. And so even though Ghostbusters has a black Ghostbuster, they don't have a black Ghostbuster in the video game.

They leave Winston out. This, too, is like Social Justice. Because if you notice, the Social Justice movement in Evangelicalism, it's quite white. In fact, the people that browbeat you all day long about, you don't have a white pastor, a black pastor, you don't have a black congregation.

They often have the whitest congregation. They have the whitest board of directors. They have the whitest of the white of pastors. And so it's always like they're complaining about all this diversity, all this stuff, but yet they're the biggest offenders.

Even if it was an offense, it's not an offense. But even if it was, they're the offenders, not us. This is very similar to Social Justice, as you can see. But anyway, you go up 100 flights. This lasts forever.

And then you fight Zool. This is the fourth screen in the game. This is Zool that you're fighting, even though it's actually Gozer the Gozerian. Here's how the fight goes. By the way, nobody can ever get to this part.

You can only get to this part these days because you can cheat your way through the game. But in the old days, nobody could get to this part. It's just impossible. It's too difficult. But this is the game.

Can you imagine how disappointed you would be if you spent your whole weekend trying to beat Ghostbusters for Nintendo, and then this is the final boss? It looks like this. Listen to the sounds. I know it's just Nintendo, but these sounds are awful even for Nintendo.

And look at these ghosts. They're just sitting there sticking their tongue out at you. This is like getting to the end of the Generous Justice book by Tim Keller. And you've read patiently, expecting to get to some morsels of truth.

And then at the end of the book, you just get quotations of Marxist Christians from the past. And this is basically what Tim Keller's doing to you, just sticking his tongue out at you. These are Tim Keller ghosts.

This is the social justice movement right here. Now, this is the funniest part. So you beat the game, right? So here you go. You finally finish the book. Look at this end screen. Look at this end screen.

This is what you get when you beat the game. This is basically, this is social justice in the evangelical church in a nutshell. It's just low budget, low thought process, just obvious scam on the face of it.

Ready? Conglateration, conglateration, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. You have completed a great game. You have completed a great game and proved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes, exclamation point.

You get to the end, and it's just more disappointment. You have completed a great game and proved the justice of our culture. You, by reading Generous Justice, you have proved the justice of our culture.

Now go and rest our heroes. This is very similar because, you know, video game is all about pretending you're a hero. And if you played that game, you are definitely not a hero. You're just a nerd. But it's nice to think of yourself like a hero.

That's, that's, that's the idea. Like when you read the Generous Justice book, what they want to, they want you to think you are the hero of this story. You're going to prove the justice of our culture by advocating for every Marxist policy ever.

This is, this is, this is one big disappointment. This whole game is a huge disappointment, just like the social justice movement in the church. I hope you found this video helpful. God bless.