R-E-S-P-E-C-T
There’s an unusual malware circulating the internet that actually cleans computers of other viral infections and warns users to update their passwords.
Thomas Fox of Forbes writes:
The Wifatch software, now resident on at least 10,000 routers running the Linux operating system, runs across a peer-to-peer network. When it discovers that a potentially vulnerable Telnet port – a port typically used to control functions on the device and is often protected with default, crackable passwords – Wifatch shuts it down. It then asks the user to change passwords and update the firmware on the router. Furthermore, Wifatch has a module that tries to remove “well-known families of malware targeting embedded devices”.
So what are we to think of this “white-hat" vigilante?
To answer that question, the above referenced article posed an analagous query: What would you think about someone who broke into your home and left you a note that said your alarm system wasn’t effective? Are they a friend or a foe? Perhaps the information they provided would be helpful to you, but that wouldn’t change the fact that they had violated your private space.
Even when we are motivated to help, we must do so in a manner that is respectful of the boundaries of others. Help isn’t welcomed when it violets another person's personal space.
The moral here is that in all of your relationships, although it’s important to be helpful, it’s more important to be respectful. A healthy relationship is a respectful relationship.
“Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other” (Romans 12:10).
Wife of the Year?
Every now and then that “be faithful to him so long as you both shall live” thing takes on an unexpected dimension, like it did recently when 28-year-old Amber Watford saw her man handcuffed in the back seat of a police cruiser after being arrested for failure to show up to court-ordered DUI classes. While the state trooper was distracted, and without a moments hesitation, she jumped in and sped away, leaving the police officer with his head spinning on a swivel!
Despite the use of a police dog and a helicopter, the search came up empty. Finally, someone called in a tip that led police to the couple who were arrested for vehicle theft and criminal mischief.
How many women do you know who are willing to steal a state trooper’s cruiser for their man? In reality, it's clear that this wife is actually a really BIG part of her husband's problems!
Wouldn’t her commitment to her marriage be more productively lived out by encouraging hubby to do the little things, like...hmmmm, I don't know...attending court ordered DUI classes and not resisting arrest?
While this is obviously an extreme case, many of us tend to engage in unhealthy, codependent behavior in countless more subtle ways every day by enabling our loved one's unhealthy habits or behaviors.
Mature love doesn’t enable dysfunction but encourages responsibility and growth.
"Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted" (Galatians 6:1).
Eating Mom for Lunch
“The insect world may have found its ‘Mom of the Year’ in the female Stegodyphus lineatus,” reports Walt Bonner for Fox News. “It’s a desert spider that feeds herself to her young shortly after they’re hatched”—a practice which is known as matriphagy:
Found in the semi-arid regions of Israel and other parts of the Mediterranean basin as well as throughout the Near East and Asia Minor, the female Stegodyphus spins her webs in shrubbery. … Inside the web, she creates a silk disc that contains 70 to 80 eggs, while her intestine tissues begin to dissolve. When the “spiderlings” hatch, she pierces the silk disc, allowing the babies to emerge. …
“At this time a liquid has already accumulated in her gut, allowing her to start regurgitating to her young,” said Mor Salomon of the Israel Cohen Institute for Biological Control. “While she regurgitates, the process in her intestine intensifies and the liquid formed probably travels back through her intestinal tube to her mouth where she secretes it for her young.”
The babies crawl all over her head, trying to get at the liquid that is leaking from her face. She makes no attempt to escape as her young eventually pierce her soft abdomen with their mouths before feasting on the liquefied guts inside. This process takes a few hours, at the end of which their mom (otherwise known as “dinner”) is officially dead.
In the end, the mother has given all but 4 percent of her body mass to her young, who leave her heart alone. Thanks, kids!
“Stegodyphus is not the only spider genus showing matriphagy,” Salomon added. “All species in the family Eresidae (to which Stegodyphus belong) show matriphagy and there are other spider families in which it is also involved.”
To see a picture of this morbid mommy, click the link to source above. The report by Salomon and her colleagues can be found in the April Journal of Arachnology.
In the bug realm, this practice of matriphagy may be all well and good, but in the human realm, not so much. Here, when children eat their mothers alive, we have a different name for it—it’s call co-dependency—and it can be just as messy. This is what happens when a mother loses herself in her children. allowing them to consume her very being (not to mention all her earthly resources). Sometimes, mom needs to say, “I must leave something for me!”
"So I will very gladly spend for you everything I have and expend myself as well. If I love you more, will you love me less?" 2 Corinthians 12:15).