Much is made of Steve Jobs graduation speech at Stanford. I don’t know why. I thought it was rather cold, even melancholic once I actually got around to reading it. Most of it could be reduced to a Budweiser commercial: “You only go around once in life; grab all the gusto you can get.” But there was this:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
That is all true of course. This comes to me this week having placed within the space of ten months yet a second family member on home medical care, now awaiting the doctor’s “six months, probably less” assessment to reach its conclusion. Someone old getting out of the way; not really as dramatic as Mr. Jobs said. Another has remarked on it from a different angle.
Yet beware, I think, of those who tell us death is only this, or life is only that. Far from “life’s best” invention, death is and remains St. Paul’s “final enemy.” God must say “rise” to defeat it. I’ve always harbored a little uncertainty that he will, yet it is a hope I know, and as St. Paul would remind us, we grasp it only by the certainty of faith.
October 27th, 2011 | 1:15 pm
“It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.”
What a charming sentiment. Chesterton and others have remarked on how remarkable it is that we all (well, with the exception of Steve Jobs, I guess) feel outraged by the idea of death. We feel as if we are NOT SUPPOSED to die. We don’t, as a general rule, feel as if we are just something to be cleared away to make way for the new. Atheists like to think of this as some sort of psychological blip, but I think it’s more likely that it is true. We are not supposed to die. Something is wrong, something is broken right in the heart of everything, and we know it. Every other drive and need we have corresponds to something real, why shouldn’t this?
October 27th, 2011 | 1:19 pm
John Donne’s Death be not proud has always said the most to me having attended funerals in the last few years for close family member.
October 27th, 2011 | 9:58 pm
Death is many things. It is, for instance, an incentive not to put everything off to tomorrow — like repentence and good deeds.
October 28th, 2011 | 9:24 am
“Most of it could be reduced to a Budweiser commercial: ‘You only go around once in life; grab all the gusto you can get.’”
I suppose it could be reduced to a shill for the self-proclaimed King of Beers now, but this line was from the Schlitz beer campaign in the 1960s.
It is, however, comforting to know that a pastor would not know this. And, of course, it speaks volumes of me, pedant that I am, that I do:)
October 29th, 2011 | 3:54 am
Well, Jobs was a Buddhist. Buddhists believe in reincarnation and that nirvana can be reached the more one meditates – the more one focuses inward. An interesting interview on “issues, etc.” deals with Jobs’ Buddhism and how it related to his pursuits with Apple.
Steve Jobs was a brilliant visionary in business and technology. He wasn’t a theologian.
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