Christian Hackers: A Paradox of Fruit

The Bible says that we will know one another by our fruits. I wonder if hacking someone's website is good fruit or bad fruit? As an American, I am a strong proponent of free speech. I will defend your right to state your own opinions and views, even if they are not my own. I am very much anti-Big Brother and I enjoy being challenged in my thinking by reading or hearing views that may be controversial in nature. They make me think. I may not ever agree with those views, but in researching, studying, and meditating upon them, I now have a deeper conviction on whatever the subject might be. Sometimes, I might be persuaded to even reconsider my own views. Opposing viewpoints are a good thing, especially when done in Christian charity.

That is why I find it unconscionable that someone hacked the Ministry Watchman website today. Surely a non-Christian would have no reason to do such a thing, so I can only assume it was someone claiming the name of Christ. What a poor testimony to any outsiders looking in on our situation.

While I personally have nothing to do with the Ministry Watchman site, Watchman has informed me of what happened and given me permission to expose this deed of darkness after I went to the site this afternoon and found a totally blank page. When it continued to remain blank, I checked the source and found that the whole site appeared to be gone.

Here is part of Ministry Watchman's email to me when I asked what happened:

On 1/20/07, Ministry Watchman wrote:
About an hour ago the Ministry Watchman site went down. Here's the only thing that now shows up:

Not Found
The requested URL / was not found on this server.

[The] hosting company verified that the site has been hacked. My password to the server no longer works. They're trying to figure out how it happened. All of the WordPress application files have been deleted. Thankfully the database tables are still intact.

The hacker also got into the server control panel, unlocked the domain name and transferred it to a "George Gilbert". They can't tell me now how long ago he actually first got in.

He used an email address of snowbite7@hotmail.com.

They're going to try and figure out how this happened, but right now they're just not certain.

About an hour later:

I just got off the phone after spending the better part of an hour trying to regain control of our account. Whoever George Gilbert is he went to a lot of trouble changing every conceivable thing with the Ministry Watchman account settings.

I'm happy to report that we were able to restore all the application files.

Watchman

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Since I am not a conspiracy theorist, I will not assume to blame someone for doing this unless I have proof, although I certainly have my suspicions. However, commenters are free to theorize here all they want.

If someone does not like what is on the Ministry Watchman site, may I suggest that in the future they personally write to Ministry Watchman about it? Or, I suppose they could just ignore it, as most people do who don't like someone else's free speech. Of course, there is always the option of actually just stating your own opinion somewhere online. Hacking is not the fruit of a true believer, so I must now seriously question the claims of Christ this hacker makes. Repent, hacker. Confess to your evil deeds of darkness and repent.

“For a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For men do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks."