Steve Jobs
By Walter Isaacson
5 Stars (out of 5)

First, the biographer:

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Sigh. What a great read. Not to make this about another blogger’s review, but I cannot for the life of me understand why Tim Challies says, after reminding us of Jobs powerful reality distortion field and asking the question if Isaacson successfully resisted it, that:

“I am not convinced that he did [resist]. It seems that over the course of the book, Isaacson’s writing changes. By the end he is not just describing products, but offering gushing editorials about them. Meanwhile, the negative side of Jobs is downplayed in favor of his innovation. I suppose we cannot know for sure, but it seemed to me like Isaacson may have been yet another person who fell under the mysterious sway of Steve Jobs.”

While the review on the whole is not terrible, that paragraph is hogwash. Isaacson’s editorial comments increase, especially as the book reaches the final few years, because that is when Isaacson himself became a part of the narrative. Yet even still I find that like a steady guide Isaacson accounts Jobs berating temperament as much near the end as near the beginning. He also talks about Jobs passion for esthetics and innovation and, yes, even fierce battles as much near the end as near the beginning.

In June 2011 while Jobs was in intense pain and energy deprived he called an old friend, someone back in the eighties who was charged with keeping Jobs tantrums at bay. He asked her, “Tell me, what was I like when I was young?” She replied, “You were very impetuous and very difficult” and added, “But your vision was compelling” (p.537). Isaacson’s biography bears this out, and it bears it out right to the end.

Now the biography:

Reading through Steve Jobs biography certain personalities often came to mind. Jobs reminded me of Alexander the Great. Leader of a small group of people bent on taking on the mighty global Persians of IBM and Microsoft. Often the first over the wall, his passion and personal discipline created a reality distortion field in which his peers were engulfed so that suddenly the impossible would become possible.

Also of Herod the Great, determined not just to build an empire, but also to build monuments that would survive him by generations. He did this with his retail stores, but more monumental are the blueprints Jobs left behind of Apple’s future headquarters, a spaceship-esque looking campus that may architecturally rival any building in the world (See an artistic rendering here).

And of Darth Vader for whom failure was not an option. One top engineer said that a mouse that goes in circular directions (rather than just up-down side-to-side) could not be built; that the technology had not yet been invented. Jobs fired him the next day and promoted his lieutenant whose first words out of his mouth were, “I can build that mouse”.  Or the time when MobileMe flopped and Jobs lined up the entire team of MobileMe creators and engineers on a stage and berated them for “screwing up” so badly. He then publically fired the head of the department on the spot in front of them all and promoted the next guy and charged him with the responsibility to create “the Cloud”.

But also like Vader, Jobs had huge abandonment father-son issues. Even though he eventually discovered who his real father was, he refused see him. And he died having never met him. Jobs would often look to other men who entered his life as “being like a father to me”, and when they would inevitably make a businesswise decision that did not have Jobs best interest in mind, he would cry “so-and-so was like a father to me, and then he betrayed me”. The irony is that Jobs would abandon his first child for the first ten years of her life, and they never did manager to cultivate a strong relationship. Later on when he married and had three beautiful children he tended to favor his son, Reed.

Steve Jobs also had a serious messianic complex, and everyone knew it. When he showed up at a staff party in the early eighties dressed as Jesus, there were no shortages of eye rolling going on. And as he was showing Isaacson the blueprints for Apple’s future headquarters he pointed out how the future complex could surround St. Peter’s Square in Rome. Jobs mission from start to finish was to “change the world”. Unfortunately that mission Jobs deemed more important than individuals. And so Jobs was willing to do whatever it took to accomplish it. And he did.

Steve Jobs was one of the most passionate and disciplined person I have probably ever read about. Whatever you say about the man, those two facts alone are intensely admirable. In fact I think that’s what his reality distortion field was made of, passion and discipline. If something was impossible but Jobs believed it possible against all odds and data, somehow the impossible would become possible. To put this into perspective for my readers, I believe that if Jobs became a Christian and devoted his passion and discipline to the faith his legacy would rival Luther or Wesley. I’m convinced of that.

An early conviction of Jobs that remained to the end was an undying commitment to a closed, rather than an open, system. Jobs believed that everything that goes into a computer should be intimately connected. The hardware, software, advertising, sales, distribution, the whole package should be one. Some people buck against this. They want an open system because open systems offer more choices. You can choose the brand of computer you want (Compaq, IBM, Toshiba et cetera) and choose the software you want or use existing software to hack your own projects. The problem is that because these parts (the software and hardware) are not made just for each other and because the more hands that get in there the more fumbled they become, they, to use Jobs expression, “are shit”. They never worked fluidly. Jobs’ closed system, though a result of his incisively controlling nature but also out of his conviction that most people are too busy “doing whatever they do best, and they want us to do what we do best”, has produced better and more reliable products that allow users to develop their own creativity. When in the eighties and nineties this philosophy left Apply eating Microsoft’s dust, come the digital age this old philosophy set Apply up in a way the competition could not have predicted and were not prepared for: the ability to sync flawlessly and fluidly along with an incredible user interface. Of course in order for it to work you need to own all Apple products. But the result, for this blogger anyways, has been nothing short of liberating.

Jobs was an extreme character. He took some flack for certain moral stances (like refusing to allow developers to create porn apps for Apple products despite a great deal of pressure) and he was always faithful to his wife. He could be brutally honest most of the time, but often he would lie for no reason at all. He had a binary view of the world. Everybody fit into one of two categories. Either you were a “hero” or a “shithead”. There was no in between. Someone could travel from hero to shithead or shithead to hero, sometimes within a single day.

“The same was true of products, ideas, even food: Something was either ‘the best thing ever,’ or it was shitty, brain-dead, inedible.” (p.561)

Still, Jobs drive, his passion and deep convictions are compelling. He set out to change the world. Look around. Watch T.V. Surf the web. I think Jobs influence will be felt for a long, long time. Not just in products that he helped create before he died, but in the brain-children of the products on Apple’s horizon.

An Aside Word

As an aside, Reed will be an interesting character to watch. According to Isaacson, Reed had all of Jobs strengths – his ability to negotiate, his drive and passion, love to combine art with technology – with none of Jobs weaknesses. Reed has his mothers temperament. Calm, steady, compassionate.

I can relate with Jobs father-son issues. I understand the deep rooted desire to seek out potential father-like figures, to cling to them and look to them as such, and to feel the intense let-down when they don’t live up to the role I assign to them. I’ve been doing this my whole life, and I still do it.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. What a great read.

Humilitas
By John Dickson
5 stars (out of 5)

I haven’t said this about many books I’ve reviewed, but I’ll say it for this one: if I could rate a book “6 stars” it would be here. (Of course I could since it’s my own rating system, but I’ll keep things standardized.) I normally don’t read books on ethics. Not that I don’t care about ethics, rather I just don’t usually find them interesting. I picked up this book because the cover caught my attention. Had it just read “Humility” I might have passed it over. But Humilitas intrigued me. Then I began to read the introduction and found myself enjoying it very much. Suddenly I caught myself marking it up, thus I had to buy it.

John Dickson is an Aussie, the senior research fellow of the Department of Ancient History at the Macquarie University in Sydney Australia. He’s also a professional musician, a TV presenter and an Anglican minister. It’s his expertise in Classical Civilizations that he brought to the table which hugely bolsters this book for me (what with my own interest in Classical Civilizations). His writing style is quite enjoyable as well.

Dickson takes a unique approach to the subject of humility. He defines humility as

“the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources or use your influence for the good of others before yourself. More simply, you could say the humble person is marked by a willingness to hold power in service of others.” (p.24)

Examining the etymology of the word Dickson says there is a negative humility which is in the sense of being brought low (i.e. to put someone down) and then there is the positive sense of bringing yourself low for the sake of others.

In exploring the history of the word he says that in the ancient world humility was not an ethic people valued. It was almost only ever conceived in the negative, as in, being humbled. But a study was conducted at the University of Macquarie, a university which Dickson stresses “has no division of theology or even religious studies” (p.99) thus stressing that the conclusion was not a religious one, that humility in the positive sense of lowering oneself or holding one’s power for the sake of others can be traced to the onset of the Judeo-Christian worldview. In particular, to a Jewish peasant from Nazareth.

Dickson is quick to make a point clear: when talking about the “historical Jesus” he says that he might as well be talking about the “historical Gandhi” (whom he does refer to occasionally in this book) or the “historical Caesar”. When he quotes from the Bible, say Paul or a Gospel, he treats them as he does when he quotes form Aristotle and other classic literature. That is, in a purely historical sense. While Jesus was a humble man in the positive sense, a man who redefined greatness by saying things like “he who wishes to be first must be last” and other such statements and actions, it was not so much what he said and how he lived that changed the way the Western world understood humilitas, but how he died.

Dickson points out that it was the death of Jesus, a Roman cross being the most humiliating death imaginable, that profoundly impacted the way his disciples understood humility. They saw Jesus as a great man, God even. How could such a great person die such a humiliating death unless humility itself were to undergo a shift in definition?

He points to examples such as an early hymn sung by the earliest disciples and later written down by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Christians in Philippi (in Philippians 2). It is the ultimate express of humility, from being “equal with God” to a holding of power, a lowering of oneself unto death, “even death of a cross” which resulted in the highest place of exaltation.

All of this is worked out in chapters five and six. But the rest of the book is just as profound. He argues that humility is logical (I touched on this here) and that it is aesthetically pleasing. Humility presupposes human dignity and self-confidence. Leadership excels best when leaders are humble. Personal growth is generated best when people cultivate humility in their lives. Humble people are persuasive and influential people. Humility lifts people up. It is also better than “tolerance”. Tolerance is often spoken of in a way that tries to suggest that all ideas and beliefs are equally valid, thus tolerance demands that we soften our convictions, often appealing to something philosophers call “epistemic humility” (which he regards as a misapplication of humility). This is the idea that since all ideas are valid, we should not hold any dogmatic convictions because that suggests that we believe other people are wrong. Epistemic humility is the idea that we should only tentatively hold knowledge. Dickson says that humility as he has defined it is a better way.

“If humility is the nobel choice to hold power for the good of others before yourself, its relevance in the moral and religious sphere is revolutionary. Humility applied to conviction does not mean believing things any less; it means treating those who hold contrary beliefs with respect and friendship.” (p.167)

This book is filled with dozens of anecdotes from Bono to Albert Schweitzer, Ghandi to General Stanley McChrystal to Joe Louis to Jesus of Nazareth, with black and white pictures of the individuals next to the anecdote where photos are available. This book can be read by atheists, muslims, buddhists, hindus and just about anyone without being offended. It’s a book on humility, it’s history, it’s meaning and what it is to live it today.

Thanks almost completely to Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins (and those who helped bring our attention to it, like Justin Taylor and John Piper), the landscape of the theological blogosphere of 2011 has been dominated by the subject of Hell.

Rob Bell came under extensive fire, heavy by foe and light by friend. We were constantly reminded that “Rob Bell is not a scholar, but…” and the “but” would lead into something like, “he is influential and he’s made some pretty hefty mistakes that require a scholarly response.”

Now it seems that Bell has rounded the year off by publishing with HarperOne (make no mistake about it dollar signs are draped in the background) with a second book, “The Love Wins Companion: A Study Guide For Those Who Want To Go Deeper“. Well I certainly want to go deeper, but I’ve been drained so much by the discussions of hell this year that I have no desire to run out and pick up this companion. As it is I have “The Evangelical Universalist” and “God Wins” on my shelf both begging for my attention, yet my mind grows weary just thinking about picking them up right now.

But in case you are not like me, in case you are still hot on the subject, I wanted to bring this book to your attention.

I haven’t read it. I eventually may.

I am curious, how many of you plan to read this book any time soon?

(P.S. Doesn’t the book cover have a closer resemblance to Mark Galli’s God Wins than to the original Love Wins or is it just me?)

I believe it was D.A. Carson who said something to the effect that it is impossible for Wright to write a dull sentence. Translate that into a Wright’s own translation of the New Testament and we get a delightful, fresh and unique read.

Strengths:

The Kingdom New Testament has several strengths going for it.

The first and foremost strength is its strangeness. The uniqueness that Wright brings to the text and pulls out of the Greek as he translates will feel totally fresh to the person who – like probably most of us – have become all too familiar with the way our Bibles read.

I think the biblical waters get stale for most of us. We need the waters stirred and made fresh from time to time. This was one of the strengths of Eugene Petersons paraphrase, The Message, and I think it is a strength here as well.

The second strength is very close to the first. The wording of the text is most often quite eloquent and even often downright poetic. Combined with its uniqueness together makes The Kingdom New Testament very enjoyable to read.

Its emphasis on the Kingdom – as its title suggests – is also a great thing. Most translations translate the Greek word Christos as “Christ”. Contemporary readers have gotten used to that rendering and often assume that “Christ” is Jesus’ sir name or that it’s a reference to Jesus as savior. Broadly it is a reference to Jesus as savor. But more specifically it is a reference to Jesus as the king of the Jews. The theological significance to this fact is quite rich, and I’ve explored that elsewhere and won’t rehash that here.

For fans of N.T. Wright this translation will become a must. Wright’s theology – particularly his theology of Justification – has landed him in hot water. A part of the controversy is how Wright has insisted that the phrase “righteousness of God” means “God’s covenant faithfulness”, and in The Kingdom New Testament that is precisely how he translates it: “The Messiah did not know sin, but God made him to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might embody God’s faithfulness to the covenant” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Weaknesses:

The weaknesses of this translation are actually the same as the strengths. This is not a literal translation by a long shot, but in its “thought for thought” approach it stretches almost to the point of paraphrase at times. The reference of 2 Corinthians 5:21 above represents a good example. The Greek literally reads “dikosaune theo”. Neither the word “covenant” nor “faithfulness” are in the text and the question of whether Paul intends to denote “covenant faithfulness” by “righteousness of God” is widely contested. This will call into question for most people whether Wright is translating Paul’s thought, or his own. Of course Wright believes that he knows what Paul’s thoughts are here since he wrote a book on it (“What Saint Paul Really Said?”), and I happen to agree with him.

Because this translation is so unique its not very helpful when following along in Church or small groups. You could imagine – for example – how a group of simple Christians might be confused if sister Smith’s reading of 2 Corinthians 5:21 is so different from everyone else.

Conclusion:

The Kingdom New Testament is a treat for me. I do bring it to church. I will use it in small groups. I will quote from it on my blog from time to time. I will source it when I preach, and it has already become a part of my devotional routine. I think that Wright’s translation captures the gospel – the Kingdom message – beautifully. I think translating Christ as Messiah is correct and I love the way it reads from the Gospels to Revelation.

I highly recommend you add this translation to your shelf and incorporate it into your devotional routine.

What About Those Who Have Never Heard: Three Views on the Destiny of the Unevangelized
Contributors: John Sanders, Ronald Nash and Gabriel Fackre
2 Stars (out of 5)

In my journey to reconcile within myself how inclusive the Gospel is I came across this book (published 1995) which examines three views: inclusivism (John Sanders), restrictivism (Ronald Nash), and divine perseverance (Gabriel Fackre).

I like John Sanders, a lot. Most of what I read by him is so persuasively argued that even those who oppose him in writing sometimes feel compelled to applaud him in the process. Furthermore I have always believed intuitively that as far as those who have never heard (like say, a small village of barbarians living in no-man’s land who have had no contact with outsides in 3000 years), that God’s grace and mercy must extend to them in some way. So going into this book I pretty much assumed that Sanders would buttress a view that I was already inclined to believe. Certainly in some ways he has done that. But in other ways I found myself scratching my head and thinking, “that interpretation is a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?” Yet having said that, I must say that as someone who was raised a restrictivist (i.e. exclusivist), I found Sanders interpretation of Matthew 22:14 (“many are called, but few are chosen”) to be genius and uncompromising.

Gabriel Fackre’s essay, divine perseverance, was fascinating. Until recently I was blissfully unaware of a doctrine of “Postmortem Reconciliation” (which is another way of saying “divine perseverance”), and now in this book we get to read an essay by a scholar who holds to this view and attempts to make a case for it, philosophically, historically and biblically. Yet I came away more convinced than ever that if postmortem reconciliation is true, it certainly is not taught in the bible.

Ronald Nash’s chapter delivered strong mixed feelings. First of all, he broke with the purpose of this book. Rather than setting about presenting a positive case of restrivism, he spends his space attacking the other views. This is disappointing on every level. The format of these “perspective” books are such that after one author presents his view the other authors are allotted a space to criticize it. But not Nash. When it comes to his turn to criticize the other positions he directs the reader back to his article where he devotes all of his energy on the attack. He believes that by taking this approach, destroying the views of his opponents in the mind of the reader, that the reader will be left with no other option than to accept an exclusive reading of scripture. He also takes his position so for granted, citing passages about Jesus being the only way, that he forgets that a conservative inclusivist would agree that Jesus is the only way. Yet on the other hand, I say this reluctantly which is why I have mixed feels, scripturally I believe Nash does have the strongest case.

Still, if someone asked me to reference a good multi-view book on the destiny of those who have never heard, I would not recommend this one.