Recently, Apple released iOS 8 for their iPhones, iPods and iPads. Now, there are plenty of tech blogs out there, so there’s no reason for me to give you any of the details, but one new feature, in particular, caught my eye. They have this new idea about sharing media across different accounts, and they call it “Family Sharing.”
So, how does this work? Well, the “head of household” user can tie their account to other “child” accounts (with different apple IDs) and the “family” can all share music, videos, pictures, apps, etc. Basically, whatever media they choose. When you set it up, you even enter the relationships with each person in respect to the “head” account. One other interesting tidbit - when you agree to this system, whenever any member of the “family” purchases new media, it is charged to the credit card of the “head” account holder.
So, in essence, they’re finding ways of binding together lots of smaller, individual accounts that may be separating family media (which is good), and pushing the financial responsibility for everything up to the account that’s most likely to actually have money.
So, what does this have to do with God? It struck me that as new as this idea is for online collaboration, it’s really just a system that God instituted back at the very beginning of humanity. Yet again, what we see in the world is just a faint representation of one of God’s principals. As the head, he gives love and gifts to each of us which serve to both bind us to him and to each other, and then we charge all of it to his account. How generous!!!!!
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I realized that I had a choice between 2 different views of this: 1) I could condemn the world for “stealing” a Godly system and twisting it into money and profit (which just plays on my bitterness, unrighteaous judgement, and need for power, approval, and validation) or 2) I could praise God for being right in the first place and for giving that level or revelation to some guy down at Apple (and probably giving him credit for it and maybe even a pay raise). In essence, I can choose to see this from the light of the world, or from the good gift that God has bestowed and the way he has shown us.
My point here is not whether we need to have our media accounts linked or even when the anti-christ is coming, but that God is truly the author of all good things and I believe He would like for us to stop and take notice more often. I don’t know if this new system will succeed or fail, but either way, it is a testament to God and his original design of giving us everything we could imagine (and more) and then charging it to his endless account. He’s just such a great dad!
2 Cor 2:14 (NIV)
"But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ's triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere."
-Shawn