There have been times in my life, some more recently than I'd like to acknowledge, that I've downloaded music and movies from the internet. I downloaded them from sites that don't pay the artists anything and largely operate at the edge of the law and at the time I didn't feel all that guilty about it.
Today my view is both more specific and more nuanced. I believe, without doubt, that stealing and "sharing" secular works is wrong; period. When Christians share, borrow and steal that which does not belong to them they violate God's law and fail to serve as a faithful witness in the world.
Deeper Devotion has this point-by-point counter argument to many common excuses for participating in "file sharing."
Here's where I'm still unclear. Is sharing Christian music, including that by full time Christian musicians, always wrong?
Katharine Mieszkowski raises this question in her article "Thou Shalt Not Steal" on Salon.com In doing so she got this response from one Christian opposed to file sharing:
McPherson applies the verse to movie-trading bandits as follows: "Is it sinful to copy 'The Passion of the Christ'? Certainly it is. But instead of shaking my head and saying, 'What a lot of sinners those file traders are,' it would be better to, like Paul, rejoice that Christ is being preached through the film. It is not morally inconsistent to simultaneously state that copying the film is wrong and yet rejoice that God is using even sinfulness to get the word out about His Son."
I have to agree.
It's a fine line, but I go further than that and feel the moral unease of drifting into this territory. In sharing burned Christian albums that I've bought with people, with evangelism and discipleship in mind, I feel both the glory of proclaiming Christ's name and the fear and shame of "stealing" by giving away that which is not mine to share.
With that in mind please share your opinion on the morality of file sharing and specifically the file sharing of Christian artists and check out my post on Free and Legal Christian Hip Hop available online.
(This is the first post in a recurring series examining how Christians do and/or should view different acts in modern culture.)
Post 1: File Sharing
Post 2: Finders Keepers
Post 3: Intellectual Property
Post 4: Sermons
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