Can Christians Play GTA 6?

What do you think you're doing here?

You're training yourself in revenge, you're training yourself in bloodthirsty kind of habits and

practices, and you're taking your anger out on inanimate objects.

I mean, maybe even worse than that, if you're not mad when you're doing it, if you find it funny,

there's something really wrong with you that you would think that that would be funny just to harm people.

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People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio.

The message

of.

Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ

therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath.

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They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

We're your hosts Harrison Kerrig and Pastor Tim Mullett, and today we'll answer the age -old question, can Christians play

GTA 6?

Now Tim, I'm sure that you saw, I mean it was all over Twitter, Rockstar,

I mean everyone knew Rockstar is a game developer, a really

popular game developer for the GTA franchise that they've been putting out

for, I don't know, I mean it's got to be at least, what, 20 years at this point?

I don't know when the first one came out, that was kind of before my time, I never was really

allowed to play something like Grand Theft Auto as a kid, but they

recently released their first trailer for the game, essentially officially announcing

that the game was in development and that it would come out sometime in 2025, which is still a

ways off, especially when you consider the fact that I think the last time they put a GTA game

out, it'll essentially have been 10 years by the time GTA 6 comes out, so

this was a huge deal across the internet, everyone was looking forward, you know, everyone meaning

not Christians necessarily, but just people in general were looking forward to the announcement of this

game and now it is finally here, everyone's talking about it, but then the question, Tim, for us

as Christians is to look at, you know, when we're looking at entertainment stuff in general, we need to be asking ourselves,

is this something that is good for me as a Christian to do?

Is it wrong to consume this entertainment product, right?

And so that's why we're asking the question today.

So, Tim, when we're looking at GTA 6 and when you look back sort of on the franchise as a whole,

what is your response as a Christian to that franchise?

We obviously weren't allowed to play these games either, yeah, and I mean,

you know, it's just one of those things where it's just like, hey, it really doesn't take a whole lot of Christian

sensibility to understand that if you have a game that's centered around stealing stuff, then that probably isn't

the kind of thing that most Christians should even be participating in, in

general, right?

So, meaning, I don't think that a whole, I don't think that you need complex theological arguments

from the Bible to come up with the idea that Christians in general shouldn't be encouraged

to role -play sin.

That's just, that's something that I know that this is a difficult concept for some people to

grasp or whatever, but then this is kind of foundational to a

Christian worldview is that there's more components to a moral action than just the

act itself, okay?

Yeah.

So, meaning, when you think about the way the Ten Commandments actually work, you have covetousness being

the Tenth Commandment, and in the command not to covet, you shouldn't even desire what belongs to your

neighbor.

So, you shouldn't desire your neighbor's wife, his house, his property, his oxes, whatever

else.

Meaning that there's this whole category in the Bible of you can

train your desires to love evil, right?

Or you can train your desires to love good.

And so, then the whole idea of having a category of a game that's centered around you committing a vice,

for the Christian, what you should understand, what's actually happening there is you're just training your desires

to enjoy doing this thing that you're told not only not to do, but not to like to do.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So, I mean, you have that component to it, and that's just kind of an obvious right -on -the

-page kind of thing that's related to the topic in general.

But then, I mean, one of the reasons that Christians reacted to it when it first came out was

the premise of the game is you basically just, like, you can go out and you can role -play whatever kind of evil you want.

And a lot of it centers around killing cops, shooting cops, that kind of stuff, stealing

stuff, being an underground street thug, essentially.

And so, you're glorifying certain pathological cultures that really Christians should want

to fundamentally distance themselves from anyways, and your role is just to kind of be a

straight -tough, going out, perpetrating evil, basically just role

Yeah, doing drugs, getting drunk.

So, you have the drugs, you have the sex, you have the killing cops, running people over.

So, I mean, basically, it's just a game that's centered around giving you the freedom to

fantasize about sin.

And then you have the audacity to pretend like that's a morally

neutral thing, right?

So, somehow it's morally neutral for you as a Christian just because it's not real.

Like, it's not real, then therefore, it doesn't count.

But it's like, I mean, I've played role -playing games before, and there's something in me that doesn't really

want to be the bad character in the role -playing games.

I know it's not real, but just because it's not real doesn't mean I want to train my desires

in such a way that you just kill random people for no reason.

You just stand there and pull out your sniper rifle or whatever, blow their head off, and then laugh about it.

It's like, there's something a little bit sadistic about that.

I mean, you're not training your character in a good way, you're training your character in an evil way.

And so, people, they do need to be able to make basic distinctions along those lines.

I mean, if you think about a typical war game that you're going to play, what

happens is people can't make these basic distinctions.

But I mean, if you're playing some sort of war game where you're the good guy in the story who is trying to

fight evil, that's a very different thing than training yourself to be the bad guy in the

story, right?

Role -playing all the vices.

And then, you know, the idea of violence is almost, I mean,

you can have a whole discussion about the place of violence in a video game in general.

So if you're playing Halo or something and you're role -playing shooting the aliens

who have come to kill you, you're taking on

this role of trying to defend the world from a threat, right?

But what you're not doing in that moment is training yourself to take on a role of, man,

I'm going to just harm people, steal from them, murder them, and then

visit prostitutes and whatever else.

That's a totally different kind of moral thing.

That's happening there, right?

So….

BFG.

Yeah.

Well, I think one thing, and I remember having to think through this for myself when I

was trying to wrestle with all of these ideas that we're addressing here in this episode, but

one thing you have to ask yourself is, hey, why is it that you're willing to do?

When you look at a game like GTA, for example, where sometimes the

most fun people have in that game is when they just run around and blow up every single person they can find, right?

And just trying to find the most creative ways to kill as many people as possible.

So, at some point, you have to ask yourself, hey, what is so fun about this to me?

And take it a step further than that, hey, why am I doing this in the

video game?

Well, because I know that there's not any real consequences for it, right?

There's no consequences for me doing any of this stuff.

But then I think you do have to ask yourself, well, hey, what if there wasn't any consequences for it

in real life?

Would you treat it the same way?

I mean, would you be doing the same thing?

And I don't think you can just immediately brush that off and say no.

Because there's no, I mean, what proof do you have?

What proof do you have?

I mean, you don't have any.

You have proof that you would do the opposite, actually.

And I get, I get, maybe some people think that there's an argument for,

well, hey, I can make the distinction that these aren't real people, right?

This is just a video game, and I can make the distinction between video game and real life.

But then, I mean, I guess my question at that.

Point would just be, well, yeah, but for how long?

I mean, we asked a poll about GTA on that, and then I asked another one about, what

if the pagans were to make a video game about a Southern white plantation owner who

basically owns the slaves?

So, just imagine the Grand Theft Auto premise being applied to the Southern white

plantation owner.

Pete Dude, I can differentiate between real life and a video game.

Jared But I mean, imagine, yeah,.

Imagine the premise at that point would be that you just go up and randomly stab your slaves if you want to, or beat them.

You just beat them whenever you want to, and then you have the whole

sexual themes applied to all that, and it's just all the stereotypical stuff in the

abolitionist literature.

It's just like, this is a moment for you to take out all of your

sinful inclinations on these pretend slave people or something like that.

It's like, I think everyone at that point, most normal people who would have some sort of moral self

-awareness to say, yeah, that probably isn't very good.

I don't think you're necessarily training your heart in a way that would be honoring the

Lord in that moment.

I mean, that sounds kind of racist -y.

Pete.

You might be a little bloodthirsty, man.

Jared.

Do you just hate Black people?

Is that like, what part of this is enjoyable to you?

Just going up and randomly shooting a slave, beating a slave, whipping a slave.

What is enjoyable about that to you?

What about you is drawn to that?

Do you have some animosity in your heart towards Black people?

Is that what you're doing?

We have this kind of moral intuition in other areas, but then if that's the premise

related to cops, is that good?

Or just random citizens that are standing there, right?

If that's the whole purpose of it.

Pete.

Yeah, innocent people.

Jared.

Yeah, just like, you're kind of training yourself to be sadistic and bloodthirsty.

The Bible tells you you need to love good and hate evil, and what you're doing is you're

you're taking these evil desires in your heart, and then you're giving them expression in a fantasy

world.

Essentially, that's the problem of lust, right?

I mean, that's the thing, right?

You don't even have to talk about the prostitution elements and everything else.

I mean, those should be a lot more clear, even though they aren't to a certain kind of person.

I mean, yeah, you're going to role -play visit a prostitute, and then you're going to say, hey, it's fine because she's not real or something.

It's like, well, I don't think you're doing anything good for your heart there, and I

think you're just training your heart in lust.

And so, in the same way, there is a whole category in the Bible of being bloodthirsty

and being filled with violence and evil and iniquity and everything else.

And so, what do you think you're doing here?

You're training yourself in revenge.

You're training yourself in bloodthirsty kind of habits and practices, and you're taking your

anger out on inanimate objects.

I mean, maybe even worse than that, if you're not mad when you're doing it, if you find it funny,

there's something really wrong with you that you would think that that would be funny just to harm people, right?

I just go up to people and shoot them and harm them.

I just I

don't think

I mean, can you imagine Jesus sitting down and saying, oh, yeah, let's play the slave owner game.

That'd be fun.

Petey Laughs.

The slave owner game.

Well, I think people would have a pretty visceral reaction to anyone who publicly claimed that they

if there was like a hypothetical slave -owning version of GTA

6 or something, I think most people would have a pretty visceral reaction to someone who

said they enjoyed playing that game because it allowed them to beat their slaves and they

thought that was funny, right?

Jared.

Yeah, but the only way you could imagine that anyone would maybe justify it is if it were like, you know, the Nazi

hunter game or something, right?

The premise is to go and take out the Nazis or whatever, but then at least in that kind of

worldview and I'm not saying that the same kind of thing couldn't happen there, but in the Nazi sandbox kind

of game or whatever else, at least there would be some kind of sense in which you're stopping evil.

You're not the evil person yourself, right?

Like in that way.

Petey Laughs.

No murderer has eternal life abiding in them outside of the dogs, the murderers, you know, and all that.

Why do you want to role -play that?

What good is that doing you at all?

And I can't really think of anything that's good about it.

And to the extent to which you're finding some sort of enjoyment out of it, it

is just like a massive indictment on you as a person, right?

So I mean, part of it's that, and then I mean, part of it's just like you take like the Bible says whatever is

true, whatever is honorable, whatever is good, if there's anything excellent, if there's anything praiseworthy, you think about these things.

And what you're doing is you're taking like the worst elements of society,

and you're putting them on display.

And I mean, you know, I wouldn't even encourage people to watch the trailer to this.

Petey.

Oh, yeah.

It's bad.

It's bad.

I wouldn't encourage anyone to watch that.

I mean, it's just like any more than I would encourage them to watch a rap video.

I mean, and it's just like degeneracy on display.

It's just like if you want to teach a society how to self -destruct, then this

is how you teach a society how to self -destruct.

So I mean, it's like, yeah, I think there's an element where it's just like glorifying violence, it's glorifying anarchy,

it's glorifying vices, you know.

And now the reaction people have to it is like, hey, you know, it's not glorifying these things.

This is a self -aware satire of these things to where like it's actually

poking, like it's a caricature of like these subcultures or whatever else that are

destructive in these ways.

Like ghetto culture is like a caricature of these things, and it's meant to poke fun, and it's meant

to be like making fun of the people who would play this game.

And it's like self -aware satire and all that.

And it's like, no, I don't think so.

I mean, I don't see what the caricature is.

Just watch a rap video.

Like rap videos are worse than this, you know.

So I don't know what is like, I don't even know that it's possible to caricature

like ghetto culture.

You know what I mean?

Like just like look at a rap video and you'll see that this is not like far off from that.

Like this is reality here that we're portraying.

And I just, yeah, I just think do you want, what are you trying to accomplish?

Like and what about you is drawn to role -playing this kind of thing?

And so I don't understand why there's like a person who has the spirit of God in

them wouldn't just be utterly repelled by like the thought of just randomly going

around and shooting people and running people over and, you know, killing cops and whatever else and

visit prostitutes.

I mean, it's just like, come on, just do something better with your time.

TB.

Now I do, now I do want to ask you about this as well, because there's another franchise that Rockstar

is now really famous for creating, and that's the Red Dead

Redemption series.

I don't know if you're any familiar with that series, but it's essentially

in terms of the way the game works, it's essentially the same as

the GTA games have been, or at least the more recent ones.

But the difference is, you know, the settings obviously different.

So you're playing as like a cowboy right at the turn,

right before the turn of the century, I think, or maybe right after it's, you know, like right

around the end of the 1800s.

And in both games, like I said, you're playing a

cowboy who's essentially an outlaw.

He's evil.

He's doing evil things or robbing trains, robbing banks, robbing people, killing

people, all this stuff.

But then both games are essentially presented in like a, I mean,

it's Red Dead Redemption, right?

So they're presenting these characters as they're sort of conflicted characters who over the course

of the game sort of realize what's going on is wrong, right?

And the things they're doing is wrong and it's self -destructive.

But for the majority of the game, they are still participating in all of those things, right?

And so you're still robbing the trains, you're still robbing the banks, murdering people,

lying to people, all of this stuff.

But then typically, assuming, I mean, you can kind of make some choices.

There's like a morality system where you can either be like an evil guy who just goes all in, or you can be like the

good guy who does isolated good deeds along the way.

And if you've done enough of them, then you get a different good ending, right?

And in the good endings, or at least in the second game, at least in the good ending, you're sort of

this guy who realizes, hey, all this stuff ever got me was a

bunch of destruction.

My life is ruined.

I'm going to die now.

All my friends have betrayed me, or they've left me, or I've killed them or gotten them killed.

And he sort of realizes, hey, I was in the wrong.

And there's another character you're kind of pushing to

say, hey, turn from this life.

There's a better life out there.

Go pursue that.

So, made by the same developer, you're doing evil things the

majority of the game.

I would say probably somewhere between 75 and 85 of the game,

at least the main game, is you doing evil things.

But then at the end of it, your character is sort of realizing, hey, this isn't

right.

So, it's a redemption in that way.

And I'll also add, there's

not nearly as much sexual stuff in the game at all.

Honestly, I don't know if there is any, actually, now that I'm thinking about it.

But with all that being said, in your mind, is that different, or is

that the same because you're still participating in all of those evil things?

It's just not being glorified to the same degree.

Yeah, but I think you have problems with role -playing games that are different

kinds of problems than there are problems with stories in general.

Meaning, the idea of a role -playing game is that you're self -identifying with the character in

a certain sense, and you're performing the actions.

However, it's like if you were to read a novel along those lines about the guy who is committing all these

evils, there is a distance from the person in that you're

just hearing the story.

Even if it's written first person or whatever like that, you're not

the one who is executing the acts yourself in that way.

That's a feature of role -playing games, just a little bit different than as a genre with

other games in general.

Because we're parents and we have young kids, this is one of the problems that we have with

stupid shows like Daniel Tiger or something like that is that you have a cartoon

where the whole entire time you have a bunch of fussy, whiny kids who spend the whole

episode fussing, and then in the last two minutes of the show, there's some kind of lesson from that.

And it's like, well, do you really want your kids to watch that?

Do you really want them to spend 28 minutes listening to kids

misbehave in the worst possible way?

And do you really expect them to grasp the message at the end of it, like the two -minute

message of, oh, well, now that's something with kids.

I mean, obviously, kids are not adults and everything else, but what is the net result of that kind of

encounter?

Well, the net result of that kind of encounter is you're just training your kids to watch people

fuss and complain and whine or whatever for the vast majority of the show and hope they get that little thing at the end, that little

nugget at the end or something.

So, I mean, that's true there, but then I think there's some sense in which

as Christians, you need to think, look, do you really want to take a bath in filth for some

kind of redemptive moment at the end?

How much filth do you really want to wade in?

And I don't know enough about the game to even comment on what kind of filth you're wading into and everything else

with all that, but then do you really just need to take a bath in depravity?

Is that the best thing to do for you?

And I think a lot of God's standards on these areas are a lot higher than

what we probably think, and the Bible says making the best use of the time because the days are evil.

And so, how much of your life do you really want to devote to role -playing evil because

maybe there's a positive message at the end of it?

It's like, well, I think you could probably get that message in a lot of different ways, and did that really do for you what you think it, like, was

that the best way to get that little message at the end?

Did it redeem it all?

Did it redeem in that way?

So, I don't know enough probably about that one to comment other than just to say that I think in

general, the more that Christians, when they are interacting with role -playing games,

you do have to realize that particularly the kind of games that give you significant freedom to do

a bunch of evil stuff, the Bible is calling you to a different kind

of standard, and I don't know how much you really want to train your heart to be

carrying out these sinful acts and say, hey, I'm going to distance myself from it because it's not

real or something like that.

So, I mean, I think that there's a lot of things that you can do in the context of

video games in general to where that don't involve any sin on your

part, right?

Or even acting out sin or role -playing sin or whatever else.

I mean, just think about all of your classic games, like Mario or whatever else.

I mean, you have some sort of noble purpose, you're fighting some sort of evil.

So, the whole plot isn't centering around you sinning with impudence and

committing evil.

There's some sort of fantasy story that's set up in some sort of way, but then you're supposed to be the good

guy in the equation.

You're not just the evil guy that's just harming people, kicking people.

And I think you train yourself that way and don't be

surprised if you're running contrary to the sanctification that.

God's trying to work in you for sure.

TB.

Okay.

Well, fair enough.

I think that's a good place for us to wrap up the conversation.

And I do think it's obviously good to think about the

entertainment that we're interacting with in general, right?

Just because our society's constantly pushing entertainment down our throats.

And we're probably consuming way more than we're ever supposed to or meant to

consume as individuals just because it's so prevalent, it's worshipped,

it's esteemed so highly in our culture.

And so, we definitely have to be really intentional with what we're actually consuming.

Considering the fact that we understand this life is more than just meant to satisfy

our desires, our material desires, right?

We're meant to glorify God in everything we do with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

We're meant to worship the Lord, right?

And so, that means looking at the things that you're watching, the things that you're

reading, the games that you're playing, whatever it is, and asking yourself, am I honoring the Lord

by interacting with this, right?

So, that's definitely something we as Christians need to think through.

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