ClassicRadar: GamesRadar vs Shirley Phelps-Roper

GR: Let’s move on from that. Do you think there’s a good religious presence in games?

SPR: In what?

GR: In videogames.

SPR: Uh no.

GR: Have you played the Left Behind game?

Above: Don't get Left Behind

SPR: All that stuff… lemme guess, that Left Behind games is when Christ returns. And that’s probably in some dumbed-down, goofy fashion.

GR: The Kirk Cameron movies, and the popular book series?

SPR: “Popular book series.” If you say “popular” - if you start talking about something people really like - you can just write it down and take it to the bank that it doesn’t have the first thing to do with the truth of God.

GR: Even the Wisdom Tree games, like the ones based on Noah’s Ark probably have nothing that you condone?

SPR: Honey, what I’m telling you is that if you’ve got something that is based in popular religious culture, then you don’t have anything in the neighborhood of serving God or the Truth of God. It’ll be in some fashion perverted, dumbed-down, fluffed-up, altered, amended. These people think that they need to make God palatable instead of just sticking to the written word.

GR: When you say things like that, you put yourself in a somewhat isolated position.

SPR: Look, I just call it like I see it. We’ve been on these streets for seventeen years. We’ve been in 500 doomed American cities looking in the faces of people, talking to them, more than 34,000 pickets. We know what’s going on with this nation and what’s going on with these people!

GR: But you could’ve stayed home and played with them.

SPR: Stayed home- what?

GR: I’m trying to offer an alternative. Xbox Live…

SPR: We’re not here to do that. What we’re doing here is telling you what the word of God is. We’re not interested in trying to fix it. Even if you could get us to agree to this “God Loves Everyone” lying culture, that doesn’t make it so. That doesn’t mean that God does love everyone, even if everyone would agree. Look, the Lord Jesus Christ said: “If these people, my people, cease to tell you the truth, the stones will immediately cry out.”

GR: Who said that?

SPR: The Lord Jesus Christ.

GR: Jesus. Let me write that down

SPR: They were throwing a fit at him. They were saying, “Make them shut up!”

GR: Well, don’t you feel [that]when you’re saying that at funerals, you’re just of kicking people when they’re down?

SPR: No, because we don’t go to funerals. We stand on public rights-of-way, and we tell you some words to connect up these dots.

GR: Would you let someone [into your church from] off the street?

SPR: Will we let them join our church? You mean someone off the street?

GR: Yeah.

SPR: Well of course not! This isn’t a social organization.

GR: It isn’t? Well, just telling them they’re going to hell is kicking them when they’re down. We call that teabagging...

SPR: You're all down! All the time! You’re without hope and without God. And you don’t want… you don’t have any interest in living with The True God. You don’t have any interest in obedience. The Lord Jesus Christ said: “If you love me, obey my commandments.”

GR: That’s Jesus again?

SPR: Yeah

GR: Hold on, jotting that down.

SPR: Are you telling me just straight up that you don’t have any Bible knowledge?

GR: I have a little. We’re out in San Francisco.

SPR: I know that’s a waste-howling, barren wilderness with respect to The Word of God. But you don’t have to be in that fashion. Look, you don’t have to be Bible dumb. This is a nation that has Bibles available to them more than any other nation in the history of mankind. And yet they tout themselves to be a Christian nation, bragging about their “I go to church every Sunday.” I’ll say, you read the Bible, you go to church every Sunday- well, that’s not my question. Do you read the Bible?

GR: Me?

SPR: Open it up and read the words.

GR: I do still have The Picture Bible my Grandma got me. It’s like a comic book.

SPR: Well shame on her. Did she ever tell me what the Lord Your God requires of you?

GR: Well, what can a gamer do, to do what The Lord God requires of them?

SPR: You can crack opena Bible and read the words and obey.

GR: But we can’t play the Left Behind game?

SPR: Well that’s not going to… you can play that as an aside, something to do when you’re just trying to decompress. Spend a few minutes, ‘cause you gotta do something with your time. That’s called "using, but not abusing, the things of this world." But about the time that becomes the main event for gamers, then it becomes your idol. And God hates your idols. He says in 1st John, “Little children, keep yourself from idols.”

GR: Was that Tolkien?

SPR: What?

GR: Are you familiar with Rapture?

SPR: I know what the word means.

GR: It’s an undersea community in a game called BioShock where people go to escape religious oppression.

SPR: [Laughs] They go to get rid of religious oppression?

GR: Among other things.

SPR: Well, that’s where I oughta go. [Laughs]

GR: Exactly! That’s what I was thinking.

SPR: [Laughs] That’s where we oughta go to get rid of religious oppression. This nation, this “tolerant nation,” with a “First Amendment.” Now that’s where I need to go.

GR: So you’d be willing to relocate under the sea?

SPR: No… I was just kidding. I wouldn’t dare go trying to hide out.

GR: Well, your congregation is mostly your family

SPR: Well probably 80 percentof these people are either related to me by blood or marriage.

GR: In Rapture, they also suffered a genetic disaster of sorts, so how do you plan on going about “progressing” your family?

SPR: I don’t have any plans on progressing my family.

GR: But you have eleven kids.

SPR: That’s not my job.

GR: What is your job exactly?

SPR: My job is to serve the living and the true God.

GR: Well, what do you put on your tax forms?

SPR: Oh, you mean what is my vocation?

GR: Sure. What is your vocation?

SPR: I’m a lawyer.

GR: Awesome. Have you played the Phoenix Wright games?

SPR: What?

GR: These are great little attorney-based games. They’re on the DS.

SPR: [Laughs] You’re cracking me up.