Since his death the articles and accolades about Steve Jobs pour forth. One article was entitled: “Steve Jobs 7 Rules For Success.”* which included “do what you love (peddle your passion) and “make a dent in the universe.” I wonder if one of his rules should have been: “You can’t go home again.”
Born to a single mother battling poverty, Jobs was put up for adoption. As an adult he tried to come to grips with his feelings of abandonment, so he searched for his biological mother. Having found her he hunted for his father. The more he found out about his dad, the less he liked him.
Jobs decided to meet his dad before his father knew they were related. This was not a Hallmark moment. His father was a restauranteur who later bragged of his famous clientele, “…even Steve Jobs,” not knowing that celebrated customer was kin.
Jobs finally came to grips with his adoption by reframing it from “abandonment” to a sense of being “chosen.”
I’ve often wondered about another “chosen one” who also used his God-given gifts to make life better for the world of his day. In fact life would not have been possible without the biblical Joseph. He was abandoned to slave-traders, not by his doting dad, but by his jealous brothers who were stung by the obvious favoritism their father showed Joseph.
But later God elevated Joseph from pit to pinnacle in Egypt, the country to whom he was sold. Eventually Joseph became second in command to the king there at a time of world crisis--a famine. Joseph, using his God-given genius, had squirreled enough food away so that the whole world of that day was fed.
Another mystery: “Why did Joseph stay in Egypt after he ascended to power?” He obviously could have gone home to the father who loved him. But he did not. Was it because he knew “you can’t go home again?” Or was it because God had a life-saving purpose for him right there in Egypt?
Later, to his treacherous brothers he explained: “…it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you…You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives (Genesis 45:5; 50:20).
Near the end Jobs struggled with eternal questions like the existence of God and what happens after death. His biographer, Walter Isaacson, writes of Job’s view of death: “Sometimes I think it’s just like an on/off switch. Click and you’re gone... and that’s why I don’t like putting on/off switches on Apple devices.” **
In reading about his life it seems he labored under a type of world-saving “messianic complex.” He famously tried to persuade John Sculley, then President of Pepsi, to come work for him, asking: “Do you want to spend your life selling sugar water or do you want to change the world?" He infamously showed up at a corporate party dressed as Jesus Christ. Whereas Joseph clearly knew the only way the world would be bettered was because God chose to work THROUGH him.
Don’t we all need more of the humility of Joseph than the hubris of Jobs?
*Steve Jobs And The Seven Rules For Success,” By Carmine Gallo, Entrepreneur , Oct 14, 2011. ** The Best Bits From the Steve Jobs Bio,” Sadie Bass, The Daily Beast, 10/24/11
