I love music. It brightens my working day, it inspires my leisure time, it gives me an outlet for my passion and creativity. No surprise, then, that I have a fair amount of music. Not on the scale of some people, admittedly, but that’s probably because as a university student I was probably a little more honest than most and thus didn’t end up with a secondary hard disk filled with torrents and downloads.
When we were at camp just over a week ago my wife gave one of the talks, which was loosely based around the story of King Ahab and the vineyard – Ahab wanted it, the owner refused to sell it, Ahab sulked, his wife had the owner murdered and Ahab claimed the vineyard. The point of the talk was that sin by association is still sin; God still condemned Ahab for his actions, even though it was Jezebel actually doing the deed. He didn’t object to the sin, and benefited from it, so was held culpable by God. Ellie used the illustration that “sharing” music is effectively the same thing – sure, someone else has ripped the music off the CD, but we’ve still accepted the MP3 files and are therefore benefiting from it. So in God’s eyes, as well as the law’s, we are guilty.
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