Steve Jobs died on Oct 5th at 56.  As I write this blog, his book is hitting the book stores today.  I read a post today on the interview given by his biographer Walter Isaacson on “60 minutes.”  The post talked about some of Jobs’ religious views.  I want to draw attention to two quotes and them make a couple of comments.  The first quote: “Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t.  I think it’s 50-50 maybe.  But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more.  And I find myself believing a bit more.  I kind 0f – maybe it’s cause I want to believe in an afterlife.  That when I die, it doesn’t just all disappear.  The wisdom you’ve accumulated.  Somehow it lives on….Yeah, but 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.”  The second quote: “I saw my life as-an arc.  And that it would end and compared to that nothing mattered.  You’re born alone, you’re gonna die alone.  And does anything else really matter?  I mean what is it exactly, is it that you have to lose Steve?  There’s nothing.”

God bless the memory of Steve Jobs.  I along with many other Christians have committed him to the mercy of God.  We are all deeply in debt to Jobs for what he has given us.  Yet in these few comments on religion we see that in the end, Jobs is left with some deep questions about the meaning of life.  For all his fame, fortune and genius, Steve Jobs could not find the answer to the basic questions of life.  In the first comment, he equates a relationship to God to that of “an on-off switch.”  Men, never forget, God made you for a loving relationship without himself.  He is passionately desirous that you know his love for you.  Jesus tells us that he came to seek and save those who were lost.  He also said that he came to give us life, life that was abundant.  We live in a personal universe.  The truine God of love, invites us into the “great dance” of everlasting life.  There need not be any doubts about this.  Remember we are not talking about nothing.  God has revealed who he is in Jesus.  Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.”  Don’t get you eye off of Jesus.  He makes life real and personal.

As for his second comment, he compares his life to that of “an arc.”  You begin with nothing and you end with nothing.  You die alone.  This is a classic statement of a truly modern man.  One whose life is self-enclosed, self-contained and with the absence of any sense of transcendence.  As “self-made” man who seemed to have it all.  But like some many in our culture, living with a deep emptiness.  Again we were meant to be filled with the life of God.  Jesus died, rose again, and ascended into heaven so that the very presence of God might come and fill our hearts.  He said he would not leave us orphaned, but that he would come.  He compared the life of the Spirit to that of a river. “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” 

Men, may the life and death of Steve Jobs be a “wake up” call to any man who is caught in the deadly trap of wanting to be a follower of Jesus but also being pulled into the obit of what the world admires and desires.  Listen to these words from I John 2:15-17 ( The Message). “Don’t love the world’s ways.  Don’t love the world’s goods.  Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father.  Practically everything that goes on in the world – wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important – has nothing to do with the Father.  It just isolates you from him.  The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out – but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.”