Topic(s): Family, Youth

Early last week I was on the phone with a young cousin of mine. This excited little boy wanted to tell me about his new game for Playstation II (video game system). He was excited about his new game, “Grand Theft Auto IV, Vice City.”

I was a kid once. I know what it is like to play Cowboys and Indians and to get the bad guys. I even liked playing the bad guys sometimes with my younger brother and our little neighborhood friends. But I had never seen the likes of today’s video games. Sure, I had video games and played them I did! But they were nothing like those of today. Today, the video game world is at an all time new moral low.

When I was at the home of this little cousin, I got a chance to sit down and play Grand Theft Auto III. I was surprised to find a game where the entire plot was to steal parked cars, throw people out of cars at stoplights, punch people, shoot people, knife people, club people, and run over people with the stolen car of your choice. Blood graphically drains out unto the pavement when your character kills someone. And should you desire to take out your anger on one of these beaten video corpses you just killed by kicking them while on the ground, the scene gets more gory. If you really want to add a sick twist to things you can put a gun to someone’s head and make them beg for their lives or you can crash your car around bystanders to set people on fire. No wonder the dark and morbid minds of this world find solace in games like this one.

The game starts with a degenerate plot (if you decide to follow the story line from the beginning). You are an escaped convict. You work for drug lords, pimps, prostitutes, and crime lords. Your enemies are the police and local street gangs who try to get back at you for wronging them. For an extra challenge, you can put the game on a harder level where the entire city is in complete anarchy and you must escape. Of course, you’ve got to kill to do it! That’s Grand Theft Auto for you! A game where your goal is to destroy and hurt everything and everyone around you! But the Grand Theft Auto series is not alone. There are many other games like it. In some games you rape, torture, steal people’s souls, throw people’s souls in Hell, dismember body parts, etc.

What is the real problem with these games? What makes these any different from any other juvenile fantasies? The problem is not seeing violence. The problem is not seeing death or blood or warfare. These are all parts of life. The problem is the glorification of evil and the infatuation with causing suffering in return for exalting self. Instead of evil being incidental, evil becomes the whole intent and purpose of life. These games have long since changed from “cool” to atrociously, sadistically wicked!

These types of games are just another extension of the world’s tentacles to envelop and consume our youth. As a result, our children are being taught low morals and are seeking, pursuing and living sinful lives. —Bulletin Briefs, March 2003

“I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes…” —Psa. 101:3