Culture:
Steve Jobs
Apple guru Steve Jobs’ death held more significance
than that of the average CEO, says Krish Kandiah,
and the Church could learn a lot from him.
I was converted seven years ago. I
remember standing in the impressive
glass-fronted building alongside other
worshippers, overwhelmed by the
awe-filled atmosphere. As the music
played, and I was surrounded by people
from all nations and of all ages, I had a
glimpse of the future and I knew there
was no turning back. I bought a new
MacBook Pro, closely followed by the
fifth generation iPod, and before long, I
was not only a Mac convert and a Mac
evangelist, but a fully fledged member
of the Mac tribe. So when I returned to
the Apple Store in Regent Street in
October this year, shortly after the news
that the leader of our tribe, Steve Jobs,
had died, it was not without some
emotion. With the decaying homage of
symbolic bitten apples that mourners
had laid outside the shop on one hand,
and on the other the business-as-usual
hubbub as consumers flocked to buy
the iPhone 4S, I was left reflecting on
Jobs’ legacy.
Whether your perception of Jobs
was as a ruthless business tycoon, a
visionary genius or the man who
apparently ‘created the 21st century’,
there is no question that he will be
remembered as one of the most
influential innovators of our time. And
yet he nearly didn’t exist at all. The
product of a ‘mistake’ made by a
young, unmarried college graduate
student, if his birth mother was in the
same situation today, she may have
chosen abortion over adoption. I am
passionate about adoption because I
have experienced the incredible
privilege of what it means to be
included into God’s family, not by right,
but by mercy; and I have also
experienced the privilege of passing that
gift forward by adopting a daughter
into my family.
Rejection
Rejection by his birth mother was not
going to be Jobs’ only experience of
betrayal. He first started his geeky
hobby of building microcomputers in
his parents’ garage with his friend Woz
(Steve Wozniak), and over a period of
ten years they built up a company
worth 2 billion dollars with 4,000
employees. But after releasing the gamechanging
Macintosh computer just
after his 30th birthday, Apple fired
Jobs. We can imagine the dilemma Jobs
faced. Would he be destroyed by the
distress, driven by revenge, or would he
be able to pick up the pieces of his life
and move on? Jobs refused to let that
moment of betrayal define the rest of
his life. In fact, he talked about the
heaviness of being successful and the
lightness of being a beginner again. He
saw the situation as a relief and went
on to start two new companies, one of
which was Pixar, arguably the most
successful animation company in the
world. Then when Apple hit a financial
problem in 1997, they swallowed their
pride and turned to Jobs, who was to
be credited with one of the biggest
turnarounds in business history.
Reminiscent of Job in the Old
Testament, after losing everything, he ended up with more than he started with. He took
Apple’s revenue from $7.1 billion dollars in 1996
to $65.2 billion this year.
Ruthless
Richard Branson, James Dyson and countless
others have been inspired by Jobs’ creativity and
ability to innovate. Deyan Sudjic, the director of
the London Design Museum, argues ‘Apple
products have changed the way we do things: how
we write to each other and how we take
photographs. Apple has affected how we navigate
and see a city, how we share memories and how
we conduct our relationships.’ Jobs’ MacBook
took on and beat the industrial Goliath of Dell in
the laptop market. His iPod took on and beat
Sony, creators of the Walkman, in the personal
portable music player market. His iPhone took on
and beat the ubiquitous BlackBerry in the smart
phone market. To achieve this, there had to be,
behind the bespectacled, turtlenecked, stubbled
visioneer, a ruthless business acumen, and a
pig-headedness to pursue his goal whatever the
obstacles, whatever the cost.
Despite his ruthless streak, Jobs claimed he was
not motivated by financial gain. His vision was to
change the world – and change the world he did.
Convictions
Jobs held onto his convictions throughout his
cancer, being one of only a few celebrities unafraid
to talk publicly about the subject of death. In the
commencement address that he made at Stanford
University’s class of 2005 when he was first
diagnosed with the pancreatic cancer which would
end his life, he said: ‘Remembering that I’ll be dead
soon is the most important tool I’ve ever
encountered to help me make the big choices in
life. Because almost everything – all external
expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment
or failure – these things just fall away in the face of
death, leaving only what is truly important.’
Seeing the positive side of betrayal, striving for
the best that is beyond our imagination, changing
the world, and challenging others to consider the
inescapability of death, their eternal destinies and
temporal responsibilities… There are so many
aspects of Jobs’ life that would have found
resonance in the gospel, but as far as we know he
died, as he had lived, a convinced Buddhist.
I wish someone could have told Jobs about
the saviour who was betrayed by his creation,
the Christ who calls us to imagine a better world
and work hard to make it happen, and the
resurrected Jesus who didn’t just escape death,
but conquered it.
Five Things the Church Can Learn From Steve Jobs
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