This post is part of the Poured Forth Blog Post Series: 1 2 3 4 5 [6] 7 8 9
Poured Forth is also available as a book: Poured Forth
It is clear by now that I believe the best way to serve the Lord with the God-honoring things we create is to release them into the public domain. But why? Isn’t this irresponsible stewardship, and isn’t the worker worthy of his or her wages?
To clarify, I do not believe in abolishing copyright. I do not believe an organic chemistry book or a technical drawing or a graphic design for an advertisement should all be public domain—far from it. What we create in this world for this world belongs to this world, and it is ours to sell as we see fit.
But everything we create for God and about God belongs to God: anything that explicitly glorifies God, encourages or guides His Church, or shares the Good News of Jesus with the world. While it’s hard to define precisely, you know in your gut which things you have created fall into this category. My poetry about the Lord is for the Lord in a way that my music theory worksheets are not.
Narrowing down to only our creations for the Lord and about the Lord, then, what is the best way to handle these holy things?
The default option is to safeguard them with copyright. If you do nothing, in the United States all creative works are immediately copyrighted automatically at the moment of creation. You do not have to file for the copyright or register it or even label it for it to be legal; it just is, automatically, at creation.
Others use Creative Commons licenses. These licenses are free and easy to use: you simply label your work with the license you wish to apply. The most common Creative Commons licenses are:
1. CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution), which requires users to name the original creator in any derivative works;
2. CC-BY-SA (Attribution Share-Alike), which requires any derivative works to name the original creator and also allow sharing under the same license; and
3. CC-BY-NC (Attribution Non-Commercial), which requires derivative works to name the original creator and allows non-commercial use only.
Creative Commons also has a license for public domain release (CC0 1.0). This license is useful because it attempts to make the work as legally free from restriction as possible in all countries of the world.
So which of these 3 paths (copyright, one of the Creative Commons licenses, or public domain), is the best option? By far, most Christian creators, authors, and speakers maintain their copyrights, selling their works at a profit with the goal of making a living and giving away any excess to other ministries. Probably the quintessential example of this model is Crossway.
Crossway’s popular (and quite well-marketed) English Standard Version has sold millions of copies worldwide, and they state on their website that any surplus is used for ministry and not personal profit. Millions of people have been blessed by this model, both those who purchase and use their products and those who benefit from the ministry funded by those purchases. Crossway’s goals of supporting ministry are laudable, yet we must consider carefully whether this is the best path to pursue.
Many others have released their works under Creative Commons Share-Alike, Attribution, or Non-Commercial licenses. These creators want to share what the Lord has given freely, but they also feel a responsibility to protect the integrity of the work. These creators are also laudable in their efforts to share and advance God’s Kingdom.
And yet, these approaches are limiting. The first approach (sell under copyright + give away surplus) limits people in their ability to mirror God’s character to the world. The second approach (Creative Commons) tries to limit God’s options to use your work.
Let me explain.
Imagine you are serving food at a homeless shelter. As you stand there, smiling and praying for the guests while filling their plates with hot, delicious food, you know the presence and the power of God. You sense Jesus with you in that moment, fully approving your work, beaming with joy as you serve Him freely. He strengthens your hands and fills your heart with joy, and that joy flows over to the people you are serving. You know the Lord in a way you never could otherwise.
The people receiving the food are transformed also. Have you considered that? They aren’t stupid. They know you don’t have to be there. They realize you are only serving the food out of love. You aren’t getting paid for it directly; you are trusting that the Lord will reward you in His time.
Some may respond with cynicism, but many of the people receiving the food are transformed forever. As they emerge from their pain, they begin to dream again: what can I do someday? What if I were the one serving? And their resolve strengthens. “Someday I will get out of this. Someday I will be the one helping others.”
The most joy-filled people serving are the very ones who used to be receiving.
The food line at the homeless shelter is holy. It is a divine interaction, and in it both the receivers and the servers become more like Jesus. It is beautiful and pure and free, without guile.
None of that happens when you go through a line at a restaurant and pay for your food. It’s just a transaction: you trade money for food of equal market value. There’s no divine spark, no transformation, no Holy Spirit presence, no glory. It may be done with love and excellence, but nobody’s life is forever transformed by the transaction itself.
Obviously it isn’t sinful to run a restaurant, and I’m not suggesting that all restaurants should give away their food for free. But we as creators have to decide what relationship we will have with those who benefit from our creative gifts. Am I serving the needy or running a restaurant?
When we sell explicitly God-honoring works under copyright, the person who purchases the work has paid a fair price for what they bought, and the person selling receives a fair price as well. Yet neither person gains spiritually from the transaction itself. There’s no way around it: selling under copyright limits people’s ability to mirror God’s love into the world in the interaction itself.
What about being responsible with what God has given me? And what about sustainability and the worker being worthy of his wages? Shouldn’t I use a license to protect what God has given and ensure I can make a living off my creative work or ministry gifts?
The worker is indeed worthy of wages, but who is the boss that pays your wages? Is it your “customer,” or is it the Lord? The path of creating is a path of faith. It is biblical for those who minister to receive free gifts of partnership from fellow Christians who want to keep the ministry going. This can be as simple as setting up a Patreon page or as complicated as establishing an entire tax-deductible organization. Yet the worker’s wages come from the Lord of the harvest, not the wheat being harvested.
To enable true ministry, we must sever the direct connection between receiving something and paying for it; ministry and merchandise are mutually exclusive.
I must ask you a difficult question: if God is truly calling you to creative work, won’t he also raise up partners to allow you to give it freely? And if you give your work freely and God doesn’t provide for your needs (either from donations or an unexpected source), could it be that God is calling you to earn money in other ways while you pursue ministry?
Or perhaps what you are doing is not God’s work at all? This sounds harsh, but it’s actually liberating. That difficult creative work that seems to go nowhere may not be where you should put your life’s energy. Pray for guidance, and He will show you a better path.
Beyond all this, when we maintain rights, even while sharing our work, we try to limit what God might do. Take the “attribution” requirement for starters. There are places in the world where the message God has given me can go that my name cannot. Our names are on the Internet already with a lot of cultural and nationalistic baggage attached. What if God wants to strip my name off my work so it can enter a closed country where my name would hinder the spread of God’s message?
What if my art or my poems or my music or my biblical teaching could be translated by a dear believer in another continent, then slipped into a dark prison cell to encourage a modern Paul or Silas without my name attached? Shouldn’t we give God and our fellow believers the permission to do this? How small our vision is!
Where might God take your creative spark if you didn’t have to demand the credit all the time?
The “no commercial use” requirement is also fraught. People who want to incorporate and expand your work will not always know what you consider “commercial,” so they will be timid about using your work. For that matter, if a for-profit publisher decided to develop and distribute your work at a profit, wouldn’t that mean your message and your art were blessing lots of people? Isn’t that our highest goal as Christian creators, and won’t God bless us for our generosity? Who is the true source and wellspring of your life?
Even the “share-alike” provision tries to limit God’s options, and it limits how much we mirror God to the world. Consider this truth carefully:
When we give freely, with no restrictions or requirements at all, we give the recipients the gift of choice.
They can choose to be worldly and greedy and selfish, or they can choose to be generous. This is giving the way God gives, for “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45b, Berean Standard Bible). Demanding people share steals the blessing they themselves might have had by choosing to be generous.
Public domain is the only means available whereby we can disclaim all our rights and lay them down as an absolute offering, pleasing to the Lord—not as a partial offering, but as a whole offering; not as an offering in a theoretical, moral, “spiritual” sense, but as an offering in an absolute, practical, irrevocable, legally-binding physical reality. In other words:
Public domain is the one true altar of whole burnt offering for Christians who create.
Public domain is the only way we can identify fully in our creative life with our Lord and Savior, who on the Cross was completely exposed and unprotected and raw before the world. Some mocked Him. Some took advantage of Him. Some abused Him. But others were forever transformed as they saw His absolute, irrevocable gift. Through their tears, they worshipped Jesus. “Surely he was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:54, Berean Standard Bible)
No student is above his or her teacher. To point the world to Jesus, our creative work must accept the same level of risk that Jesus did. Your art and teaching cannot be crucified halfway. The Lord does not demand that you take up this cross; He only offers it to you. If you are willing to let your Christian creative work fully die for the sake of Christ, God will resurrect it in ways you could never imagine.
This post is part of the Poured Forth Blog Post Series: 1 2 3 4 5 [6] 7 8 9
Poured Forth is also available as a book: Poured Forth
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