Egypt will become a desolate wasteland. Then they will know that I am the Lord. “‘Because you said, ‘The Nile is mine; I made it….'” Ezekiel 29:9 (NIV)

Just last week I read a story about a legal dispute in which recording artists Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke were sued by the family of Marvin Gaye. The family of the late soul legend claimed that Williams and Thicke stole elements of their father’s copyrighted song Got to Give it Up for their song Blurred Lines. In the end, a jury awarded the Gaye family $7.4 million dollars.

Copyrights are a big deal. When a book is written, a song produced, or a movie is distributed there are laws designed to protect the writers, artists, and producers. In our internet age in which things can be produced and distributed across the globe with a click, disputes over who created something and who has the rights to this or that get messy. The legalities get even messier when you include individuals and their lawyers from different nations.

I thought of this as I read this morning’s chapter in which God accuses Egypt of spiritual copyright infringement. The Egyptian pharaohs had a long history of claiming themselves to be deities. To claim that you were a god was a common way for ancient rulers to elevate themselves as authorities over their constituents. In his proud claim of divinity, it seems that Pharaoh took credit for creating the Nile. Creator God took note of the copyright infringement and the next couple of chapters stand as His summary judgement.

It’s easy to think of Pharaoh’s pride as a relic of ancient monarchs. I have observed, however, that we live in a scientific, techno-industrial age in which God is summarily dismissed as non-existent. We are asked, instead, to place our faith in scientific theories presented as indisputable truth. In the absence of an almighty God before whom we are to be humble, we are free to feel a sense of creative pride in the babies we make and genetically engineer in our laboratory. We are free to take personal responsibility and/or credit for healing disease, being a well-spring of hope, or bringing salvation in various forms to people, relationships, our environment, city, region, state, nation, planet, or universe.

I often wonder if we haven’t simply engineered a more subtle and spiritually insidious form of Pharaoh’s ancient copyright infringement.