Struggles with Piracy
From University of Toronto Chinese Christian Fellowship
Introduction
Greetings all! I am Albert Kong, a 2nd year Civil Engineering Student studying at the University of Toronto. I currently reside at New College New Hall and I actually do not attend UTCCF big meetings because my home church’s (East Toronto Chinese Baptist Church) fellowship meets up at the same time on Friday Nights. However, I am still blessed to know this part of His Body through its Mens Group.
I want to just take about 15 minutes of your time now to simply share a piece of my journey with God. To start with some quick background, I was born in a non-Christian home but my mother took me to church at the age of 9. However, I did not fully accept the Lord Jesus Christ until the age of 16. I am 19 now, so it was almost 3 years ago since the Most Wonderful Person came into my life. Jesus has been transforming my life through my growing faith ever since for the better.
Topic
I want to now focus in on one particular transformation - piracy.
I’m not here to argue what exactly is piracy and what isn’t, or is all piracy really stealing or not, but I simply want to share what God has revealed to me in my life and where He has led me.
Where it began
To start off, I want to briefly share where my influence with piracy began. Like most of you, I received the blessing of the Internet in my early teen years. Through my 28.8kps modem, the “world” was opened to me for the better or the worse. I am sure that it wasn’t long until I found out the new hot thing online: Napster. For the few of you that may not know what Napster is, it was an online file-trading forum where users may freely share information with one another. The most popular thing that came out of it was sharing the hottest songs by the hottest artists out there, including those that you would only hear if you bought their CDs. Quickly, everyone around me was doing and I naturally jumped on the “bandwagon”. It wasn’t long until I had more than 200+ songs in my playlist. The only thing stopping me was my slow connection and not enough hard disk space.
Thankfully of course, my life took a slight change of course. As I mentioned, I accepted Christ at the age 16 and immediately, numerous things began to change. However, piracy was certainly not one of them. Instead of just downloading mainstream songs, being Christian now, I simply switched my focus to Christian music. All of a sudden, my list was filled with songs from Chris Tomlin, Hillsongs, WOW Worship, and so on. I had briefly heard a protest from a few friends that this may be stealing but I ignored it thinking that it was absurd and only “crazy, hardcore, super-conservative Christians” would think of such a thing. Besides, this music was helping me WORSHIP GOD so how could it be bad?
Initial Change
All was well and I continued to attend church and fellowship and grow slowly as a Christian. I continued to download more songs and now, with the HI-SPEED cable and a bigger computer, I was going at an alarming rate. I kept affirming myself that how could such a small thing be any issue to God? I wasn’t hurting anyone right?
Obviously, God saw it differently. The initial change began when a friend gave me a devotional book as a gift for Christmas. It was called “God in the Small Stuff”. As the title suggests, it revealed to me just how intimate and detailed God wanted to be in my life. I was SHOCKED at how many areas in my life that I did not give up to God when all the while, I was singing praises saying things like "All of You, is more than enough..."
It wasn’t long until I made the connection that God could be telling me to stop my downloading habits. I wrestled with this issue at first but it all reminded me of a sermon from my pastor in how we must give God our 100%. My memories quickly came yet to another song that we usually sing at church called Amazing Love. The final verse says this: “In all I do, I honor You.” I knew that was a lie.
My Initial Resistance and Change
I still could not accept it though. I had no idea just how attached my life had been on pirated material. I must have had more than 5 playlists by then and it didn’t just stop there. I had begun to desire greater things like illegally downloading movies, games, TV shows, and etc.
Questions began filling into my head as I tried to protest to the Almighty Lord.
I asked both the reasonable and unreasonable questions to Him.
- If I don’t have these songs, how can I worship you anytime I want?
- My life will be miserable! Isn’t music a gift? I will be so deprived.
- Aren’t they selling it at a price where it’s like THEY are stealing for us??
- The artists are well paid anyways. They don’t need my small change do they?
- How about if the song is already on the radio? How about this? How about that? What about this? You can’t mean THIS can you??
I realized at the end that my questions were from such a selfish heart. I wasn’t willing to be a Christian AND uncomfortable. God replied to me through numerous ways this: “WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO LIVE THE CHRISTIAN LIFE TO THE BARE MINIMUM??"
He was right. In my displeasure of knowing I must give this up to God I simply complained and asked just how much I had to give up instead of just joyfully submitting to His Will.
God loved me and He wanted in. He wanted all the way in.
It wasn’t even a hidden message to me. “Thou shall not steal” It just doesn’t get clearer than that. So with a few clicks, I deleted every pirated thing I knew on my computer.
What has happened??
Well, that was more than a year ago and I can guarantee you first thing that my life is NOT miserable. On the contrary, God has given me so much through this commitment to Him. God has not only affirmed this decision in my walk with Him, but He has been able to show me how my life does NOT depend on all those trivial things.
The joy of witnessing His Faithfulness that ALL my needs have still been fully provided for brings me to a place of deeper confidence of who He is.
The numerous witnessing opportunities that are sparked because of this have been breathtaking. Especially at residence where the connection between computer to computer is close to light-speed, most would fully engage in piracy. However, when they hear that I do not participate in these actions, I am enabled to share about what Jesus Christ has done for me and is willing to do for them.</p>
God has blessed my faith so much as putting faith in Him in smaller matters have definitely prepared me to trust Him in bigger things. I put faith in the size of a mustard seed to Him and I trust He is continually helping it grow into a magnificent tree that He intended. I can go on and on but I hope you get the point that God has totally humbled me and transformed this part of my life to give Him all the glory.
Wrapping Up
In the end, it’s still all about God’s Love. Love for those who made the music and depend on it as a livelihood. Love for Our God who is Holy. Love that pushes us to not be afraid to be different from the world. We’re foreign walkers of this land aren’t we? We are to be like aliens in our actions to this place is it not?
I have often still fought with the idea that I am being over-legalistic in my walk with Christ as some form of piracy is now legal in Canada. However, in those times, nothing affirms me more than His Word in Romans.
In Romans 13:1-7, His Word shares about submitting to His authority.
However, it wraps up saying this starting in verse 8:
“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love on another, for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Love does no harm to its neighbor. I’m not saying it was easy for me. In the contrary, it was actually one of the hardest things I had to give up. However, as big as the problem may have been, our God is bigger.Our God is all about LOVE and JUSTICE.
I only pray that we may all continue to be more like Him in both the small and big decisions in our lives.
Thank you for your time. In Christ, Albert