From that insightful segue (not original with me), I want to take another bite into this iconic cross-over apple. As my loyal readers know, this column occasionally delves into the theological or ethical implications of current events, so I ask you to indulge me once more, as I borrow from other bloggers and briefly explore the Jobs legacy through a theological lens.
First this caveat: Nothing I shall say in this meager column can add to or subtract from what he did with his all too short life on earth. But I do want us thinking about hope. Jobs, especially with his “Second Coming” (returning to Apple in the mid-90s after a 12-year hiatus), represents a very humanistic, perfectly secular legacy of hope.
In October 2001, just after America hit its lowest ebb in terms of hope—with the World Trade Center coming down and “dot.com” bubble bursting—Apple introduced the iPod. In January 2010, during the Great Recession when unemployment was reaching beyond 10 percent, Apple introduced the iPad. That whole decade—with practically everything political, military, or economic going sour—created such intense anxiety among us. Yet Apple would keep distracting us with so much—music, movies, books, friends—at our fingertips, thanks to the amazing comforts and convenience of technology
Such techie stuff was always being introduced at well-staged gala events in which Steve Jobs, taking our breath away, would strut on stage with a modern miracle in his pocket. Thus he provided hope of a better world. Our hope rested in one thing always getting better and better in our fallen, snake-bit world—that is, our personal technology.
Apple would be the first to admit that technological progress is the fruit of multiple scientists, inventors, engineers, and firms—not just Steve Jobs. But Apple is the one fruitful company that does simply and artfully simple: They take that impossibly complex engineering and make it accessible (with a click of a mouse, or single button on the iPad), beautiful (candy colored Macs and sleek iPhones), very safe (you can’t break it), and stylishlycool for young and old, neophytes and experts alike. (Apple’s iPad is so simple, no manual or geeks are required.)
teve Jobs was the evangelist of excellence in technology. He championed simple integration with so much promise and so few peers. The voice he listened to most was his own “inner voice, heart and intuition”—not dogma, received tradition, least of all divine revelation.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
If you want a meaningful life, Jobs says, be true to yourself, toss out the old (habits and iPods) and make way for the new (e.g., the iPhone 4S, coming out today). Here today, gone tomorrow. This is the gospel of hope permeated by Jobs and other warm-hearted humanists before him. But in the face of major tragedy and troublesome evil, such as mass murderers and insufferable
end-of-life issues, this worldview is strangely silent and powerless. It offers little hope, but only creates hunger for more of what we can see and hold in our hands. I pity not those who lack the latest and greatest Apple product, but I do pity those who no longer believe in anything they cannot see.
I wonder and worry about our secular age that looks for the next new saving device in a post-Apple era. Would that our jobless economic recovery and endless political impasses had some new magical, revolutionary Apple-like device to bite on. But in my work-a-day world, our 24-/7 connected world, President Obama’s global world, that fruit is already bitten and all too bitter. Look what God and Jobs hath wrought: It all started with that first apple.