How would you respond to a co-worker or neighbor who said the same thing? Think about it. Mark Altrogge offers a good response.“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. It’s the great mystery.” — Steve Jobs in “Steve Jobs”
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Is Steve Jobs Right About Christianity?
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3 comments:
Andrew,
I accidentally deleted your comment. Sorry!!
Z
Well then it looks like I'll have to "accidentally" stop subscribing to your blog, pal...
Kidding.
I'll send it again. If it gets deleted again, I'll assume that you didn't accidentally delete it at all and that you were just saving me from embarrassing myself.
What I said was that I'm not sure I think we're getting Jobs' quote right in the first place. I posted on Altrogge's blog, but I'll say the same thing here that I put there:
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Not that I disagree with any of your theology, but I question your exegesis, as it were, of Jobs' quote. What does he mean by "faith"? Is it faith as an opposition to works, like the biblical definition, or is it "faith" in the more common, cultural definition of, "Unreasonable belief in a particular religious system/person over others"?
Both are possible from the context, but the latter seems more likely. What Jobs appears to be saying is, "Christians shouldn't focus so much on believing in the 'right' god (i.e. Jesus, in their view), since all roads lead to the same god, whoever s/he is. Instead, they should focus on doing good stuff and loving each other, like Jesus did."
That's to say nothing of the numerous misunderstandings that would be implicit there. It's also to say nothing of the irony that Jobs was apparently difficult to deal with interpersonally. Like a Romans 2 thing: you who teach others to live like Jesus- do you treat people poorly because you want to meet bottom lines and express your own genius?
Andrew Faris
Someone Tell Me the Story
It could be argued that "faith," at least in terms of Jobs's experience, has more connotations of an inward-held doctrine and a personal piety that doesn't really overflow into an expressed lifestyle. That could be why, in Jobs's mind, there's a seeming disconnect between "faith" and being Christ-like. There shouldn't be such a disconnect. Jobs is right if he's pointing out that Christians are not being Christ-like.
The second part of his statement, though, is a bit harder to connect with the way Jesus "saw the world."
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