It’s the same thing as Video City

By Tim

One of the teens made an interesting comment to me this morning; a line of thought that I had not considered. “Downloading pirated movies again I see.”. My comment didn’t have a chance to even lose it’s moment before she replied “It’s the same thing as Video City.”.
I had nothing to say in response to that. I had nothing to say because I had two lines of thought and I didn’t know which one, if either, would be of any benefit at that moment. “Wow” I thought to myself, “if this teen really did think that Video City was renting pirated movies than that shows that this teen’s conscience has no problem with watching stolen movies from ‘any’ source as long as they can watch the movies. This just confirms how little this teen must know about what Jesus and the apostles taught about the seriousness of what we do against God’s will … in consideration of Heb 10:26-27 … What someone wants to watch is another story.

Now there are ’some’ debatable issue in life ( Rom 14:1 ) which we should not go back and forth about. If anyone doesn’t think that taking something “for free”, without the permission of the owners, which others are selling in stores isn’t stealing; then well there isn’t much for me to debate. It might be helpful for me to understand ‘why’ they don’t think that is stealing though. Usually those that are doing this like to bring up issues of how much the owners are charging for the product or how they can’t afford it. How would either of those points make stealing ok to a God that could give us anything anything He wants to give us. I think if God doesn’t give us enough to have more than food and clothing, than He must in his divine wisdom know that we don’t need those things.
And as for the point about Video City having pirated videos, well there is no way I could know that for sure, just as it would be so hard to be sure if ‘any’ DVD or SVCD were pirated. All I can say is that this news article and also this report I read and the licensing information that I looked at, make it difficult to believe that the Video SVCDs are of the pirated variety. Yes, it’s still possible. But just quite unlikely.
I think that, as a God that searches the heart, that God is looking for those that are ’so’ affected by what they know was done for them through the sacrifice of his Son, that they will do everything they can to fight their inner self gratifying natures. Does this mean we will be perfect, no. But each of us can answer the question ourselves as to whether we are doing ‘everything’ to fight that inner self seeking nature for the sake of Christ. Am I fighting that nature at all?; are you?

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