Jobs vs Bonhoeffer

I’ve been enjoying reading the new Steve Jobs biography and found it fascinating as I’m also chewing over Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together.

Steve Jobs gave up on Christianity at the age of 13 and said to his biographer:

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.

I actually like what he is driving at, but the problem is to see the world as Jesus saw it requires faith. I think what he mean by faith, I would probably label religion.

Both Bonhoeffer and Steve Jobs challenged the way people see the world. They didn’t fit into the existing patterns.

Jobs said:

Its better to be a pirate than to be in the navy

Bonhoeffer spent some energy talking about people who think they know….

They act as if they have to create the Christian community, as if their visionary ideal binds the people together. Whatever does not go their way, they call a failure.

When their idealised image is shattered, they see the community breaking into pieces. So they first become accusers of other Christians in the community, then accusers of God and finally the desperate accusers of themselves

The difference between Jobs and Bonhoeffer is where their trust lay. Jobs said:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

Bonhoeffer said:

Because God has laid the only foundation of our community, because God has united us in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into common life together with other Christians, not as those who make demands, but as those who thankfully recieve. We thank God for what God has done for us.

Both Bonhoeffer and Steve Jobs challenged the status quo, Steve did it his way and Dietrich tried to do it Jesus’s way.

I know I am on the journey to trust Jesus.. even when it seems things may not be going in the direction I think they should be going.