If you tried to get on the Lifestream-related websites today, you already known we were hacked. I have spent most of the day just getting things back to normal. That included the Lifestream site as well as The God Journey site. It has truly been a mess. So if you had a difficult time navigating our sites or saw the disgusting splash page put up on The God Journey blog, you have my sincere apologies.
I’m even more convinced today that hacking, virus-creating and spamming ought to be capital offenses. They cause no end of time, expense and hassle, all because people want to make mischief, mostly for their own amusement or ranking in the dark side of the Internet.
The Internet is an environment that is totally man-created, not subject to any of the sicknesses and disease that wage war against our bodies. And in this pristine environment some have found joy in creating diseases, hacking people’s efforts, and trying to hijack other people’s work for profit or amusement. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If sin hadn’t brought sickness into the world, then surely we would have done it to ourselves. Doing harm to others, exploiting people’s vulnerabilities, and creating hardship for self-gain is where the seamier side of human nature sinks.
So the next time you’re tempted to blame God for all the evil, sickness and pain in the world, maybe you might want to consider that it isn’t God’s doing at all. This is what human nature allows and what it thrives on. We don’t always do it in such overt ways as the Internet junk squad, but every time we think of ourselves above the people around us, treat our needs as more important than the person next to us, or wittingly or unwittingly create hardship for others we add to the brokenness of our world.
Conversely, whenever we put others above ourselves, act in kindness toward another person or seek to heal the brokenhearted we participate in God’s unfolding kingdom in the world. See Luke 4:18-19, where Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah. There’s two very opposite spirits at work in the world. He is not the destroyer; he is the redeemer.
