Andrew Smith Interview (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and we have a special guest today. No, not Pastor Steve, not Tuesday guy, but Andrew Smith. You say, Andrew who? Andrew Smith, welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Hi, Pastor Mike, how are you?

You know what? I am doing great. I want to make sure you're up close to your microphone so they can hear you. Before I talk to Andrew, just a couple of quick announcements for Bethlehem Bible Church. Number one, we're going to two services on March 18th.

So if you're listening today and you visited the church and you couldn't find a parking spot, Andrew is going to give up his spot. We will go to two services. We have a service at 8 .30, then Sunday school at 10 o 'clock, and then the second service at 11 .15.

So starting March 18th. If you're one of those seeker sensitive people that have to have an easy parking space, I guess BBC is for you. Would you come to a church with two services, Andrew?

I will be coming to a church with two services. That's right.

So that's the first announcement. My second announcement is we have a Bible Institute on Thursday nights, open to the public. And so if you're listening here in the Worcester area or even closer to Boston or wherever you'd like to drive from, you can come to the New England Bible Institute.

We have two classes. The class that's going on right now is the life of Christ. Patrick Slyman is teaching that on the life of Jesus Christ, birth, baptism, temptation, all the way up to his death and resurrection and ascension.

And then I'm going to be teaching a class March 22nd through May 10th, the Christian home. And it says here, Pastor Mike Ebendroth will be teaching this class designed to teach parents a biblical worldview of their home.

So a class for fathers, mothers, children, what to do at home, the biblical home, the Christian home. So you can sign up online, bbcchurch .org. Well, today, Andrew Smith is in house in the radio studio.

How do you like my studio, Andrew?

It's nice. I like the Tuesday guys chair. Now you do some podcasting.

Is this similar to your studio too? This is much nicer than my studio.

My studio is a computer and some headphones with a microphone built in.

I got you. Well, when Phil Johnson was here from Grace to You, he said that he liked these microphones. So I think that's pretty high powered octane. Phil Johnson likes them? I trust Dr. Phil. So, but why is my microphone gold and yours is, what color is that?

It's just kind of a flat black.

I can't see it behind the breathe guard, spit guard thing here.

Breathe guard. Andrew is a faithful member of Bethlehem Bible Church and he serves in the youth ministry, teaches Sunday school, media ministry. You are a veritable Jack of all trades, Andrew. I'll do whatever you want me to do, really.

When I met Andrew, it was nine years ago, 10 years ago, and he was a WPI student, Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Polytechnic, really. Thankfully, I'm not a WPI student still. And he was a student. And Andrew, were you saved when you first came into the church? I think at the time, I would certainly say I was. I think God was definitely working on me at that point.

Probably not, though. But you told me when you first got here, you were born a Christian.

I'm glad you remember that better than I do. It's something I'd like to forget. I'm just kidding. We're going to talk today about video games and are they sinful? What do we do as parents when our kids are addicted to video games, liberty, legalism?

And we're going to talk about all that stuff in a few moments, but I want you to get to know Andrew first and get to know his credentials, right? Sure, sure. Show me your papers. Tell me about your conversion.

If I was, you know what, Andrew, if this was K-Love, I would say, Andrew, could you please tell me about your authentic faith and when you came to the realization of when you accepted Jesus in your heart?

Well, actually, I don't know about that whole accepting Jesus into my heart. It's a little bit more of Jesus grabbing me and saying, you need to wake up and pay attention to what's going on.

Okay, yeah, tell our listeners about that because then we can get to know you before we just jump right into the satanic origins of Call of Duty.

Sure. You know, I grew up in what the world would define as a Christian home. It was Catholic and then we moved, so we started going to an Episcopalian church. You know, I sort of went through the high church thing.

I got confirmed in the Episcopal church and there was, when I got into high school, I met a girl and one of the people that she knew growing up was a Christian who liked to play the role of big brother, basically.

She didn't have a big brother, so he got to know me sort of in between. He acted as a mediator, as it would be, and began to, you know, figure out who I was, figure out if I was the right guy for this girl, et cetera, et cetera.

That whole thing didn't work out, but Praise the Lord. Yeah. Through this process, my friend Andy started preaching the gospel to me, and that was when I first began to actually wonder what was going on in this whole church thing and what's the Bible all about, and I started attending his church, which was a Baptist church up in New Hampshire, and I would say that at that point, you know, God was definitely opening my eyes and showing me that this place where you can be and where you would go and just kind of learn what the world thinks about God and stuff that is called a church isn't really what the Bible teaches, and so, you know, around that time, I was getting into college.

I got into WPI, and, you know, I can't even really explain why this happened, but the Lord put it on my heart that I knew that I needed to live with Christians, and I sought out Christians, and Now, Andrew, just to interrupt you for a second,.

Beth Moore, the other day, said God speaks to her in pictures, and she sees a picture, and then that's God's way of communicating with her visually, so did God put a picture of some Christians who you should live with?

Is that how you figured that out? Well, they were WPI Christians, so if it was a picture, it wouldn't have been too appealing, but no, no, certainly not. I would even say now that it felt like it was just, you know, me doing my own thing, but it was definitely God working on me, and so through that, I was the guy in the suite with the car, and I lived with Nate Milley, who said, hey, I go to this church in West Boylston, and I started coming to BBC and driving everybody in the suite to BBC.

That's actually how I met my wife, and through the teaching of God's word at BBC, that's how I became a Christian, through God's working through you, basically.

Well, that shows you how powerful God is, doesn't it? In spite of you, sir. That's exactly right. Well, I remember, Andrew, when I first met you, and the exciting thing for me as your pastor is, I've got to see God's grace work in your life, and I would say you're not the same man that I met 10 years ago.

I hope not. So, and just think, you won't be the same man in 10 more years either. That's exciting. Aren't you glad for progressive sanctification? Definitely. I think our wives are especially glad that God is progressively sanctifying us.

Perhaps mine more than yours. Tell me some of your favorite doctrines before we get into this, this doctrine of Warcraft. Tell me what you love to study about and what kind of moves you.

The Sovereignty of God and Christian Growth

Well, we've been studying in youth group in Cornerstone, meets on Thursday nights, small plug, but we've been studying First John,.

And we've been talking I thought you just do like the Cheetos deal and the peanut butter games and all that.

Well, we may have had a holiday party where we spiked some eggnog with some chili pepper, but you'd have to speak to the Boslins. That wasn't a teaching moment though.

That wasn't an illustration. No, it was not. Okay, because otherwise I'd have to play Johnny Cash as God's going to cut you down right about now. But it was hilarious.

Okay. So, no, we've been working through First John, and one of the things that's really been blowing my mind recently is talking about the sovereignty of God, the true sovereignty of God, and especially we were working through A .W. Pink's The Attributes of God as well, and especially when we look at God as king and the fact that things are right because they're the things that God does, not God does the right things.

And just how much, when we look at our understanding of sovereignty on this planet, how you're sovereign over your little area, maybe when you're a kid you're sovereign over the sandbox, these kinds of things, it really pales in comparison to the ultimate and supreme sovereignty of God and how everything happens because God orchestrates it, because he allows it, because he decreed it.

And just the fact that everything happens because of everything that God is and does. And if he doesn't want something to happen, it won't happen. And that's really been the thing that's been blowing my mind.

It's just how overwhelming the sovereignty of God is. Andrew, wouldn't you think that,.

Or don't you think, as you start to study the sovereignty of God, it's one of those doctrines that the depths can't really be plumbed. You really can't. I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking to myself, how can God control every single person?

The weather, the things under the ocean, salvation of sinners. God knows all that and controls it all. That's pretty mind-blowing.

Absolutely, I 100 agree with you. And the thing about it that blows my mind even more is that it's not hard for him to do that. We think about the six days of creation. On the seventh day God rests.

Well, he didn't rest because he had to. He did because he wanted to. It didn't affect his power or his ability to exercise that power in any way.

When he rested for that day age, how long was that?

I'm gonna go with a day for 500, Batman.

The ordinal number seven is a full day. All right, so let's, Andrew, talk a little bit about video games. You know a lot about computers and what'd you get your degree in, by the way, at WPI? Computer science.

Oh, see, I knew you knew about computers. And are you a Mac guy or a PC guy?

I would probably say for the sake of brevity that I'm a PC guy. Okay, and why would that be? Because it's what I grew up with. And I think that really, that whole argument boils down to what you grew up with, what you became acclimated to technology with.

Now, does this have anything to do with you can play more video games on a PC? It probably started that way. I think so. All right, so here's what we wanna do on No Compromise Radio today in the time we have left.

Video Games, Christian Liberty, and Moral Boundaries

Video games are a part of life. And I think we want to think Christianly about video games. And should we just toss them out because they suck time away? They're violent. Let's just talk about that, Andrew, because you are involved in that arena, both as a hobby.

Actually, you're a podcaster too. Tell us about your podcast. If people wanna somehow not listen to No Compromise, they can go to the other podcasts that we authorize.

Well, I'm, that you authorize. I haven't. That's dangerous. Well, I mean, there's only 22 minutes of No Compromise a day. Surely there's a little bit. That's 24 .5. 24 .5, okay, sorry, sorry.

Hardcore Christian XP podcast.

Yep, Hardcore Christian XP or Hardcore Christian Gamer. You can find us online at christian-gaming .com. Basically, what the site and the community is is where an organization of Christians, I don't, I probably disagree with the vast majority of them doctrinally, but the core concept of the site is that, you know, the online space, and we may talk about this later, is a very vulgar and just terrible place to play games if you don't have a community that you can play with.

I mean, just anonymity makes people into rude, vulgar people for some reason. I mean, people that you would see even in church, they go online and they're anonymous, and you would never believe that they're the same people, so.

And I know you'd agree with me.

Anonymity reveals the true character of a person. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah, because there's nothing that's holding you back.

No veneer of courtesy to withhold the barrage.

Well, it cancels all your inhibitions. So, and that's kind of the issue there. So, what Hardcore Christian Gamer provides is there's a community there that's a safe community where you can go and you're not gonna get blasted with vulgar language, with these kinds of things.

We do a lot of video game reviews, both in terms of quality, which is what a lot of other sites do, but also in terms of content. Is this a game that has language? Is this a game that has violence? And obviously, different people have different thresholds for how much of this they can handle, and we try to be as sensitive to that as we can, but we do definitely talk about that aspect of the game.

When you talk about a game like The Darkness, or a game like Darksiders, or any of these games that have a spiritual aspect to them, that's something that we're gonna mention that we don't really think is gonna get mentioned on another site.

Well, that's good to know. One of the things I wanna ask you early on, Andrew, is the video game rating system. I mean, is that as pretty much useless as PG rated R stuff? I mean, if I walk in and I say, Call of Duty, or Thief 4, or something, and it's got some little letters down there that aren't EA, do they really matter?

I think they do, in the sense that, if you have a giant target that you want to aim at, knowing where the target is is helpful, but certainly, we want to have a lot more visibility into what the issues with those games are.

So, with a rated M game, for example, they've added something in the last couple of years where not only do you have a rating, but you also have a little bit of an explanation of what that rating is. But even beyond that, I think you're still gonna run into some issues where they're not necessarily accurate.

A game like Halo is rated M, but at the same time, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is rated M, and they're very different games. Halo doesn't even have that much in the way of language if you're gonna play multiplayer at all, but there's a lot of comments and things like that that come from players, not physical players, but the players in the game that could be offensive.

And there's definitely different levels of even rated M, and I think oftentimes you'll find that if you tend towards an E or E10 or E10 you might be okay, but certainly when you get into the T and the rated M games, you're definitely gonna want to be a lot more careful about what you're playing.

Or what you're allowing your kids to play or whatever. The listeners on No Compromise Radio probably picked up what I picked up, Andrew. You've said things like blast, aim at a target. That's just common parlance for you, isn't it?

You have these military metaphors, these things like that, aiming, blasting. We're gonna shoot for rated M. All right, let's talk a little kind of applied theology. The Christian theology of a worldview of video games.

Just talk generally, specifically, should Christians, let's say, all right, let me just lead the thing. Should Christians play video games? Sure. Is there anything inherently wrong with holding a joystick and working your way through a maze?

They're thumbsticks now, Mike. Oh, thumbsticks, sorry. But absolutely not, I would say no. Okay, are there some video games that by nature and essence would be wrong and sinful for a Christian to play?

I would say there's content in video games that I think it would be wrong for a Christian to engage in, yes, absolutely.

Well, what's the, you know, I'm so out of this now. What's the carjacking one or the You're talking about Grand Theft Auto? Yeah. That would be a bad one.

Saints Row would be another one. I mean, oftentimes, if you go to a video game specialty store, like a GameStop or an EB Games or one of those places, you can usually have those conversations with the people that work there.

And a lot of them aren't Christian. Most of them aren't Christian, in fact. So you're still gonna have to do some manual filtering on those kinds of things. But at least you can get a little bit of a sense of what that is.

Any game that's gonna have strong language, nudity, any of those kinds of things are gonna be rated M. And then you can look at the list on the back. But again, beyond that, if you're gonna buy a game for yourself

He almost just called me dude. He almost just called me dude. I didn't, but I would be happy to call you dude.

He started to, and then he changed. So Andrew, would you say, when it comes to Christian liberty, that the issue is really a heart issue and whether it's alcohol, guns, food, sex, seriously, bike riding, watching DVDs, that we are not legalist and we're not going to call something sinful if God doesn't call it sinful.

And so the issue to me, and I know you agree, the issue is not by nature. Video games are always sinful because somebody's sitting there and seemingly acting lazy. Right.

I would agree with that. You know, I mean, I think the general Christian concept should be that we have responsibilities that we need to take care of. And as long as we're responsible with our free time and the content itself is not objectionable, I don't think there's a whole lot of a difference between reading a Tom Clancy book and playing a Tom Clancy video game.

Yeah, you're exactly right. So the issue is how much do we play? When do we play? Why do we play? And I guess we could go at a lot of different angles. If you're a parent out there and you just say, you know what, I don't want to babysit.

So here's the video game for the kids and they just play for four days in a row without going to the bathroom or eating. I think we've got problems. Well, that's absolutely 100 true. And it happens.

I know. I can, I have a thing here. Let me see if I can, I see now I have my papers. We've got a lot of papers here. Not a lot of time, right? Listen to this. In August, 2010, Wired Magazine reported that a man in Hawaii sued NCSoft, the gaming company, for negligence and not specifying that in their game, Lineage 2, it was so addicting that he played 20 ,000 hours in five years.

20 ,000, he sued NCSoft for this. In February, 2002, a woman sued Nintendo because her son, listen to this, died after suffering seizures caused by playing Nintendo 64 for eight hours a day, six days a week.

Is that crazy? Well, it is totally crazy. And for us, like any other kind of leisure time, entertainment time, whether you're gonna go out and take a walk, whether you're gonna read a newspaper, a magazine, watch a movie, read a light book, the issue is motive.

And Andrew, tell me a little bit about self-control, fruit of the spirit. I think self-control is a mandate when video games are involved because they've built in, they've built in this nicotine tar addiction so you wanna play further, the next level, greater bosses, et cetera.

Right, and we see a lot of that in the mobile gaming market as well. You have your games, like a recent one that I actually downloaded is a game called Jetpack Joyride, which is a very simple game you play on the iPhone.

And it's just, as soon as you finish, oh, I wanna do one more, oh, I wanna do one more. Or they have these games where you try to quit and it says, you're not leaving now, are you? Or all these kinds of things.

Absolutely, when Paul talks about disciplining his body, mentally, we need to take everything else and remove every encumbrance, whether that's something that's drawing us in, like a video game or any kind of hobby where we'd rather be doing that than, say, working or eating and putting all of those things aside for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of serving the Lord.

How would you like this, Andrew? What we say at our family is,.

Do what you have to do so then you can do what you wanna do. In other words, you have chores, you have school, you have your Bible reading, you have all kinds of things that you need to do on a daily basis.

And then once you get all that done, then do what you want to do. And if you've got enough to do, there's not a lot of free time left over. But is that good advice? Do what you need to do so you can do what you wanna do.

I think that's great advice. I knew you'd think that. All right, tell me about this. We don't have a whole lot of time left. Andrew, as a husband who is working on dying to self and pleasing his wife and encouraging her, what do we do or what would you say to lazy husbands who go home and pretty much ignore their wives because they're sitting in front of the computer screen with video games?

Well, I mean, I think the first thing that I would say is that marriage is about self-sacrificial love. I don't think there's any time ever that you can take anything and put that ahead of supporting and helping and loving your wife unless it's something, if your wife's not a Christian and you wanna go to church or something like that.

Those kinds of things obviously would be accepted from that. But any kind of hobbies or any of those kinds of things that you like to do, I don't think any of that should ever come in between your ability to sacrifice for your wife and support her and provide for her or anything that's like that.

I'm very blessed that I have a wife that likes to play video games. So we play together. We don't necessarily play the same games together that I would play alone or she would play alone or whatever, but we play games together.

It's one of the things that we have fun doing. She's a rare find, isn't she?

She's a very rare find. Well, I even notice when I play video games with my son, Luke, and we have these old ones, I don't know how old they are. I think they're, I don't know, Mattel or something. I won't judge you.

And we play these old games. It is kind of fun to do something together and play and hang out. And I don't know, why do men in general think about video games with more esteem than ladies do? I would say, my wife would say video games, get them out of the house.

And I would say, you know what?

In their place, they're fine. Yeah, that's probably a pretty good question. And I think as the video game culture becomes more mainstream, there's probably less so. I think they're having, they're branching out and doing different kinds of things with video games.

But ultimately, you know, men are lazy. They like to sit on the couch. They like to engage in amusement. So no thinking involved. And that's what a lot of video games is. When you look at the games that are immensely popular now, your Call of Duties, your Battlefields, World of Warcraft, these kinds of games, I think they really appeal to the pleasure centers of the man, which is killing the bad guy and being the victor.

And, you know, those are not necessarily, I mean, some ladies like that kind of thing, I guess. But I think God wired men to want to protect and to want to sort of dominate the landscape as it were. And these games very much play into that.

So if I was gonna start playing video games again, what game would you recommend? Well, we would have to have a dialogue.

About the kinds of things that you enjoy. Would it be an authentic dialogue? I would try to make it as authentic as possible, I suppose.

Andrew, any other comments that you want to give people when it comes to video games? Is there a, besides your blog, is there a Christian magazine that dissects these or anything? I don't think there is right now, but if I had more time in my schedule, maybe I would start to write one.

That sounds like a really great idea. I think I'd like to have some profits from that. Listen, on No Compromise Radio, we want to look at all of life and including video games. And if you're lazy and sinful and sit around and play video games all day, repent.

But if you have a video game in your house and you want to play once in a while to the glory of God. That's great. I almost said bottoms up. Probably not the best analogy, I suppose. Andrew Smith is a faithful member and servant here at Bethlehem Bible Church.

If you come to Bethlehem Bible Church, you want to make sure you go to the sound room.

And greet him. Thanks, Andrew. Thank you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.