Pondering Steve Jobs

At the beginning of a recent message I heard at church the Pastor read a quote from Steve Jobs: "The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it." The message was from a series called "Christian or Disciple?" and was an excellent series. The word "Christian", the Pastor points out, is only used three times in the Bible and the definition is not to be found there. However, the word disciple is and is described as a follower or an apprentice, someone who chooses to follow a Master.  His point was being a disciple is not just about believing, but about how you treat and love other people and the world. The Pastor agreed with Jobs quote. I have not read the biography this quote came from, but it is on my list of books I want to read. He was the founder of the company I work for so I have an invested interest in learning about his life,  a respect for what he accomplished, and the vision and standard he established in technology. His life continues to impact people around the world. I did do some further research on the specific quote and thought it was interesting when I read some quotes that lead up to his opinion on Christianity:

"…Jobs’s parents wanted him to have a religious upbringing, so they took him to the Lutheran church most Sundays. That came to an end when he was thirteen. In July 1968 Life magazine published a shocking cover showing a pair of starving children in Biafra. Jobs took it to Sunday school and confronted the church’s pastor. “If I raise my finger, will God know which one I’m going to raise even before I do it?”

The pastor answered, “Yes, God knows everything.”

Jobs then pulled out the Life cover and asked, “Well, does God know about this and what’s going to happen to those children?”

“Steve, I know you don’t understand, but yes, God knows about that.”

Jobs announced that he didn’t want to have anything to do with worshiping such a God, and he never went back to church. He did, however, spend years studying and trying to practice the tenets of Zen Buddhism. Reflecting years later on his spiritual feelings, he said that religion was at its best when it emphasized spiritual experiences rather than received dogma. “The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it,” he told the author of his biography, Walter Isaacson. 

I can't help but be curious as to what some of Steve Jobs "received dogma"s were to him. Was it just the over-all view of God allowing unimaginable suffering that turned him off or did he have some experiences with Christians and the dogma that goes along with Christianity? Maybe it was a mixture of both?

In the message from the Pastor he pointed out some ways the dogma of church-people, or what is commonly called as "Christians" can short-circuit the message of reconciling love that Jesus gave as a command to His disciples to the world. His command to love others as He loved them. To make disciples with the only avenue of that path being love. Contrary to popular belief, Jesus did not call His disciples to impose His values on all nations, threatening them, harsh words, not sharing gospel with love but coercion, or standing in superior judgement over the world. Instead, Jesus emphasized to love the world as He loved His disciples, in a humble, serving way. So it's not surprising that many in our world today, like Jobs,  are not drawn by the love that represented the Christ that is to be in Christians.

Was Jobs turned off by a God that allows incomprehensible suffering? This is understandable. It is not an easy thing to reconcile what God permits when He has the power to stop it or change it. There is probably not a person alive, Christian or non-Christian that has not grappled with the reality of pain and suffering. It is something I have wrestled with much. I don't claim to have a grasp on understanding all the why's. On a bad day I can get caught up in a tidal wave of why's and it's all too easy to get sucked under. On a good day I'm thankful for the freedom that lies behind the puzzle of suffering, for it does seem logical to equate the free-will of man with at least some of the responsibility of pain and heartache. God could of made us all so that we were wired to submit to Him, but would there be much freedom and relationship in that? God had to give us freedom, knowing what we might do with it. He could of made us puppets, but instead He made us persons. Our questions reflect our divine, inbred desire to grow. They can lead us into relationship with Him, which is entirely different than religion, which can turn into the dogma that might have been very unattractive to Steve Jobs. 

In his book "The Problem of Pain", C.S. Lewis says: " We can, perhaps conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of this abuse of free will by His creatures at every moment: so that a wooden beam became as soft as grass when it used as a weapon, and the air refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound waves that carry lies or insults. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void; nay, if the principle were carried out to its logical conclusion, evil thoughts would be impossible, for the cerebral matter which we use in thinking would refuse its task when we attempted to frame them....Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you will find that you have excluded life itself."

So I can relate to Jobs questioning of God. I don't think it is a bad thing. In The Bible Jacob is esteemed for wrestling with God and not punished. It was then that God changed his name from Jacob to Israel. Later, close to death, Steve Jobs told Isaacson he'd been thinking about God and a possible afterlife. But then he paused for a second, Isaacson recounted. "Yeah, but sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch. Click and you're gone," he said, pausing again. "And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple devices." Unfortunately, I don't think it's as simple as on-off switches when it comes to the afterlife.  It's worth pondering. It was just that kind of questioning that lead me into the most important relationship I've ever had and ever will have. A relationship of love that I have spent a lifetime questioning, receiving, wrestling and growing in. It is His love for me that matters and my love for Him.


http://hopechurchchandler.com/sermons#series_47

Yoga, Harry Potter, and D & D

Yes, Yoga, Harry Potter and Dungeons and Dragons, gasp! Things that were taboo to me for a very long time have been recently introduced into my life and I am finding that they are not near as unclean as I was made to believe. Call it a spiritual-mid-life-crisis, but I've been examining, questioning,  and investigating and I've gotta say I've been pleasantly delighted.

Yoga, I recently joined the Y since I live within walking distance and my work now reimburses me for some fitness costs. The first class I tried was Zumba, I tried to nonchalantly hang in the back row, but my lack of coordination with dance moves had me feeling a little self-conscious. It was fun and I enjoyed it until later when I realized I had hurt myself with all that dancing and swinging the hand weights around! I figured yoga might be a better choice for me, but I had been warned against yoga for it's eastern influences and philosophy. I had a fondness for my yoga teacher from the get-go. She is an older hippie-looking gal with gray hair and an affinity for the Beatles and Pink Floyd music which she plays during the class. I loved her quirkiness and her calm, soothing, relaxing voice. It felt good to stretch and to focus on relaxing and breathing deep breathes. I'm an anxious person by nature so learning to breathe deep goes against my grain. I love her class and find I really enjoy yoga. She does says some things about emptying your mind and the likes of that, but there is no chanting or weirdness. Unless you think doing the child's pose to a Beatles song is weird.

Next up, Harry Potter movies. Big no-no as I was told it's bad magic that involves witchcraft. We've only seen the first two so far, but I have to say they are delightful and the magic isn't dark and not majorly different from my favorite Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and Narnia series. They are family friendly movies which are getting harder to come by these days when you want great acting and all the things a big budget can afford. We plan to continue to watch them to see what adventures in Hogwarts School await them. We've enjoyed having a good series we can watch together. We laughed quite a bit in the first two and thoroughly enjoyed them.

Now on to Dungeons and Dragons. When my son came home and told me he played D & D at a friends house he was wise to add-on an addendum that it was not anything evil or satanic, but that it was a role-playing game that involves a lot of creativity, adventure and improvisation. I quickly took to researching it and found that there was quite a bit of negative publicity about it that was controversial. It made me leery, but I trust the family that owns the game and know they would not play it in a way that would make it dangerous on any level. I also know my son is discerning, but as a parent it is my job to be wise and look into things. He's played the game only a handful of times, and has communicated clearly to me exactly what is involved in playing the game and they play by their own rules which involves creativity and fun entertainment. It does represent the battle between good and evil, but in the end no more than a personal adventure in a Lord of the Rings-like universe.

I don't want to be a legalistic Christian. I think it can be a tendency in any Christian's life, it's something we need to be on guard for and it's honestly something I've been examining in my own life. Legalism can put the focus on the external to the neglect of the internal. Jesus had more conflicts with legalists than any other group. It also seemed to look like Jesus did things to purposely provoke the legalists of His day. Was it a coincidence that Jesus often healed people on the Sabbath? He was pretty obvious about violating many of the Pharisee's man-made rules whereas he could've been a little more subtle about it. There is freedom in Christ, yet we are called to be discerning and avoid evil. Yoga, Harry Potter and Dungeons and Dragons were things I was told were evil. To some people they are evil. To me they are a way to stretch and relax, a good movie series and a game my sons says will make family nights a lot more fun.

Wisdom from "Screwtape Letters"

My son was reading "Screwtape Letters" last school year for one of his home school classes so we  read it out loud, one chapter a week. I have read this book several times and we even own the dramatized Radio-Theater version with Andy Serkis voicing Screwtape as well as he voices Gollum in "The Lord of The Rings", in a guttural, evil voice as only he can do. If you are familiar with this book then you know the premise: Screwtape is the Uncle to Wormwood and is a senior demon to his novice nephew. The book is a compilation of these letters from Screwtape to his nephew who's been tasked with securing the eternal damnation and everyday demise of his human "patient". Thankfully the chapters are small because there is a lot to think about in the ways the enemy tries to get us "patients" off track! Each chapter gave me more than enough food-for-thought for one week.

There are so many nuggets of wisdom that C.S. Lewis has brilliantly dramatized for us via this diabolical comedy of sorts. For example, Screwtape writes: "There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy....our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them." This stood out to me in blazing clarity because I can so see this thought pattern in my own life. It's one of my biggest struggles, to not give in to anxious thoughts because I know it does just that: barricades my mind from trusting in God. It feeds on all the "what-if" questions that I can get caught in a mind-spewing cycle of anxiety and fear. It's the opposite of trust and rest which is why it works so well with little effort made to call attention to it.

In another letter Screwtape tells his nephew-in-training that His boss and our enemy are revolted in us humans because we are half-spirit and half-animal. As half spirits we belong to the eternal world, but as animals we inhabit time. "This means that while their spirit can be directed to an eternal object, their bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual change, for to be in time means to change." The enemy is aware of our strengths and weaknesses and our tendencies to repeat a pattern  of some sort of peaks and valleys. Work, affection for friends, physical appetites all go up and down "As long as he lives on earth, periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty." He goes on to tell him that this is merely a natural phenomenon which will not do them any good unless they "make a good use of it."

He tells him that they must do the opposite of what the Enemy (God) would want to make of it, knowing His intention to get permanent possession of a soul, the Enemy relies on the valleys even more than the peaks. He explains their logic this way: "To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of it's will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at His expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men and His service being perfect freedom is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself-creatures whose life, on its miniature scale will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and will be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself; the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct."

He goes on to say "Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless." This is so profound for me because it was this way of logic that brought me to truly want to know God as I started to explore this "Higher Power" I came to believe was God as I set about  to turn my life over to Him in my early twenties. I was, at the time, working through the Twelve Steps in a support group and was working on Step number Three which in secular words is "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God".  I could not move forward until I knew "Who" my God was and I had been taught from growing up in the Presbyterian Church where my Grandfather was an elder that God was the God of the Bible. I began researching this God and for whatever reason, this became the deciding factor for me, the logic that won me over was the realization that God gave me a free will, where He could have just simply, not.

Screwtape further explains to Wormwood that God may override the relationship with the patient with "emotional sweetness" at first, but that "He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws....He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs....Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. " He takes away His hand and "if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles."  He goes on to tell his nephew that their cause is "never more in danger than when a human no longer desiring, but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks around upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

That's encouraging to me. This is what faith is, looking out over a universe where God is not always visibly seen. We all can have moments where we feel incredibly alone and God feels strangely distant, where we ask "Why?" a million times, yet we still seek Him out, still desire to obey Him, we hang onto maybe a mustard-seed-size-faith. He invites our wrestling, understands our cursing when things just seem too hard, and gives grace that only He is qualified to give. It's His grace and love that helps me hold onto hope. The enemy wants to take that from me, but "Screwtape Letters" reminds me that hope is worth holding onto. No matter how sneaky the enemy is there is wisdom in knowing what we are up against and that God's goal is me united to Him, but still distinct and that even when I'm stumbling, He can be pleased in my perseverance in faith, no matter how small. Such insight and truth C. S. Lewis was able to articulate! No wonder I return to his writings again and again.