I remember landing in Amsterdam on October 5, 2011 after being in the air for almost 10 hours. I turned on my iPhone and AP news alerts started pinging my phone as happens when a “world event” takes place. I read through the Fox News, CNN, Sky News alerts and articles, and read through my Twitter and Facebook feeds. As we pulled up to the gate I had already received the text below from Deborah (yes I have all my text messages from years ago), a message received in my hand sitting on a runway in the Netherlands thousands of miles away from Auburn, Alabama.
As we pulled up to the gate I took the photo above of the Delta flight parked next to our gate, pulled it into my Camera+ app, put a boarder around it and posted it to Instagram. At this point I had already checked my email, responded to a few emails, and looked up our connecting flight information. All from a small piece of metal, glass, and plastic that didn’t exist a few years earlier.
This may sounds like a lot of poetic musings for a phone, but for some reason my mind wasn’t ready for this particular piece of news that morning, and it confused me. I was on my way to Africa, and the only reason I was going to have any personal connection with my wife halfway around the world was because Steve Jobs had decided he was going to invent and create what I was holding in my hand.
Here was a man who shared no convictions with my faith, a brilliant man who had no understanding beyond the pluralistic view of Christianity known for centuries mixed with his version of Buddhism. He just couldn’t go beyond his own understanding and even made this statement to Isaacson:
“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 me. “I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t.”
Yet I still felt some connection, even if a minor one, with Jobs, sitting on a runway in Europe, as if the plane full of people melted away leaving me and my connection with Jobs sitting in my hand. He shared none of my beliefs, yet he changed the world, my world, and still does on a daily basis. After I got home from Africa I read, back to back, the biography on Steve Jobs and the biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Metaxas. What an amazing contrast of times and cultures, beliefs, and both had the ability to change the world. Ultimately in death, as we all will do some day, either looking to what lies ahead, one perhaps clinging to life here on earth, so did these two great men.
I boarded the plane to Africa, still thinking about Jobs’ fate and wrote this as we took off.
The biggest surprise to me so far [on this trip], was upon landing, finding out that Steve Jobs died. I was truly saddened to hear this. I know we are all temporary to this world, but this man, who for all accounts wasn’t a believer, changed the world. He forever changed the way the world communicates, how we are connected with each other, and the reason I can talk to Deborah from this plane in Europe while she is in Auburn.
He affected so many people through his innovations. How are we to greave his death? I’m saddened over his death as if he was someone I knew personally, and at the same time I really don’t know why either. Death seems so imminent for all of us, especially when you hear about Jobs dying at 59. I know why we die, the fall created this and Christ had to die for us, but it’s still so hard to understand. I didn’t even know Jobs, but I will miss him. The new iPhone announcement yesterday had people wanting to see Jobs at the event, people who never knew, other than God, that he would die the very next day. I pray for his soul.
I’m not even really sure why I write this today other than to acknowledge the gravity this one person had on our world. A person I vastly disagree with on almost all aspects of life, yet he was someone who had a positive impact on so many people.
Jobs once said “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” which really became his whole life philosophy, and was carried on today by Tim Cook and Apple with the video on their front page and the letter below. What other for-profit company would take down their entire front page just to show a 2 minute tribute video. Simplicity and sophistication.
40 responses to “On Apple’s Tribute to Steve Jobs One Year Later”
Amazing how one man could change so many lives with a simple few devices
http://devinwittig.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/lakeside-race-report/
Great post! 🙂
I’m totally in sync with a lot of your views
Congrats on being Freshly Pressed!
Check mine out too?
Cheers! 😀
thanks
Why would you automatically assume you’ve no connection with an unbeliever? I know that this wasn’t expressly said in your article, but I took it as being inferred when you quoted Jobs and then wrote, “yet I still felt some connection…”
I’m asking this because, as an ‘unbeliever,’ I’ve never understood why believers look at us – the atheists/agnostics – like we’re devoid of humanity, or like we lack a moral compass. I know that’s a very general statement, and it doesn’t apply to all believers, but, judging by this article alone (which I know, is rather shallow) it seems you may hold (loosely, as it may be) that opinion, or something similar.
I personally see most religious organisations as ‘devil work,’ if you like, but if someone is religious, I’ll look past how they identify themselves religiously so to unearth their base views, without distorting my opinion based on any pre(mis)conceptions, which I naturally annex to religious belief systems.
Not meaning to criticise or ridicule, I’m just genuinely curious.
Perhaps that was worded a bit incorrectly if you are looking at it with a fine tooth comb. I have many “connections” with people who don’t share my faith, in fact a believer void of people outside the Christian faith will have a hard time fulfilling Matthew 28 (the Great Commission). The “connection” I was referring to was a connection more on a spiritual basis or as one would have with someone completely and totally out of their own circle, like one might have a connection with the President of the U.S. It was also written at a time when I was writing more or less unfiltered, but that’s not an excuse.
You say you don’t understand why believers look at atheists or agnostic differently (I disagree with the terminology “devoid of humanity or lacking a moral compass) because basically, we are, and they are. In our core being, we are two totally different people. That doesn’t mean we treat each other differently, or act towards each other differently, much of that comes from a lack maturity in a Christian’s faith, or lack of knowledge in their own understanding of Scripture and so on.
That said, in this case, in this post, I was really referring to a more spiritual connection, or a connection with an individual I would normally have no connection with because our lives are so different (which they certainly were/are). Thanks for the comment. -S
I figured it was a spiritual connection you were meaning. And that is actually what I was talking about. And also what I don’t particularly understand. But I guess the way I view ‘spirituality’ (though, I dislike the term immensely) is from a non-religious perspective, so I s’pose – different perspective, different application. If that at all makes sense? Anyway.
Another thing; I don’t understand why you would say that, ‘at the core, you’re very different people.’ (Please forgive my pedantry, but I don’t have many (any, really) religious friends despite coming from a religious family, so I’m always anxious to probe as thoroughly as possible when given the chance).
I mean, I get it from a superficial sense, he was a gazillionaire. I’m assuming you’re not. He also wasn’t a believer and you are. But at the very base of things, I’m sure that there’d have been a lot of overlap in the way you see the world?
Personally, I’m a big fan of Jesus. He seemed like a great dude. Do I think he was the son of an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent (or, malevolent, depending on your perspective) creator? A definite no. Am I sure he even existed? Undecided. Having said this, and again, I don’t think our core would be very different just because of these surface conflicts. I believe in loving your neighbour/enemy as yourself. I believe that, from a scientific p.o.v, we’re all fundamentally connected. I also believe that selflessness is the only noble virtue.
Thanks for being a good sport. I don’t at all mean to knock your opinions or faith, I’m just a generally inquisitive creature.
Actually those are excellent questions, and without trying to be or sound too “spiritual,” or give a dissertation as an answer, I will refer to your question about the “core being” as being different. What you are talking about is actually the fundamental backbone Christianity, and of being a “Christian,” as one is a Christian “in the Spirit,” not superficially, or being a “Christian” in actions or words.
That comes from this: “If anyone is in Christ (the Holy Spirit resides within the person), he is a new creation. The old has passed away, the new has come” (1 Corinthians 5.17).
That is not something a person says or something a person does, it is an indwelling of God’s Spirit within the person, and it changes who they are. That is not actually something people just quote, it is real, and changes who you are as a person, in your core being, in your spirit. The problem is we still try to hold on to our own ways, our own understandings, and we corrupt just about everything we touch (sin). When we do that, we look, and become, hypocritical, elitist, and a whole host of other sins we rail against but do ourselves.
So, no, you and I are not all that different. We have many overlapping ways of life, but where the differences in belief rest, for me, are at the very fabric of who I am (if that makes sense). I’m glad you are inquisitive, most are just combative. You say you are undecided on a creator’s existence, keep pressing on, talk to God about it, tell him you don’t think he exists, see what happens. 🙂
I had a feeling that’s what you were going to say. Thanks for the clarification.
I suppose that’s essentially where my primary issue with religion lies: it drives a wedge between believers and non-believers. You could say that at my core, this irks me deeply. I would have interpreted the bible when it said, ‘God’s spirit lies in everyone’ (however it says it) on face value, without making this statement contingent on dissecting one’s belief system. Cause at least from a scientific perspective, it’s true – we’re all mere strings/sub-atoms floating around space, uniting, colliding and moving on; what’s in me will pass through me and then through all else. I think that in and of itself is beautiful and it provides the same sort of unity that I think most religions try to get at – just without all the corruption.
And as for the undecidedness, haha, good try, but I was talking about Jesus in the form of his human prophecy – as in, historically, I’m unsure whether he, the person, existed. If he did, I’d never suppose that he was birthed from a virgin; simply that he was a smart guy who could see beyond the social structures that existed in his day. I’m 99.999% certain that God, as is at as least defined from any monolithic religious perspective, is a load of hooey (I’d never say 100% cause, well, I’m not dead). Though I do quite like using the term God in the form of a collective consciousness; speculatively, at least.
Thanks for the chat. Has been most enjoyable.
Interesting article. The first emotion that came to me was similar to yours. I didn’t know Jobs, yet something saddened me on the day. And how ironic that I had three alerts go off to bring me the news. On my – iPad, iPhone 4 and Macbook. Such is life.