Tim Keller, Steve Jobs: Juxtaposed

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“I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don’t. It’s the great mystery.” — Steve Jobs as quoted by Walter Isaacson

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“To insist that all religions are right, that all the roads are going to the same place, is actually silly… We’d have to be intellectually intolerant.

Hitler, for example, believed he was on a divine mission… Nazism really had very religious roots, and yet the world by consensus has decided that it’s not valid. As soon as you send judgment on that particular religion, then you’re already denying your original principle.

Theological tolerance of religions is absolutely impossible for anybody. When you say to me, “You mustn’t try to convert people to your religion, as if your religion is superior,” what you’re really saying is, “I want you to abandon your inferior view of religious truth and take my superior view”… [saying] that your view of religious truth— that all religion is relative— is superior to my religious truth— that some religious truths are absolute. And so you’re doing the very thing you say I shouldn’t do… What you’re immediately saying is “Your road doesn’t go the same place. You’re actually saying, “My view of religion is superior to your view of religion.”

So to say all religions are relative is a religion… To say you can’t judge between religions is to judge between religions. To say you can’t determine right and wrong beliefs is a determination of right and wrong beliefs… To insist that no religious truth is superior (and by doing that insist that your religious truth is superior) is completely inconsistent.“

–Tim Keller, “Authentic Christianity” — http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/timothy-keller-podcast/id352660924#

Assigning Blame for Unfulfilled Desires

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I’ve recently been reading “Future Men”, by Douglas Wilson. Check out the description on the Amazon page if you’d like to learn more about it, but basically it’s helpful theological advice on raising boys towards mature manhood. My son is almost two years old and although most of the wisdom Wilson gives can’t be used for years by me, the book has served more to strengthen my own idea of manhood. I would recommend the book to any man, whether you have a son or not for the same reason it has been helpful to me.

What he has to say about laziness is excellent. One quote that has stuck out to me is, “Laziness is not rest; it does not prepare for work. It only prepares for more laziness. The laziness grows, along with frustrated desire.”. This quote raised a few questions for me, like why does my laziness seem to grow with frustrated desire? does frustrated desire climb with other sins too, or is there something unique to laziness?, but most importantly, how will my own laziness be overcome? Here are a few thoughts around these questions:

Always assign blame to what deserves blame for unfulfilled desires. If you’re lazy and don’t accomplish what you’re compelled to finish then don’t blame the economy or your employer; instead work diligently and get creative to the glory of God. If you’re covetous and are always wanting luxury then don’t blame Democrats for raising your taxes or your own family for taking “your” precious resources; instead be content with what God has graciously given you and remember the impoverished of the world going to bed thirsty tonight. If we don’t assign blame to the deserved culprit then we’ll never fix the correct problem.

Someone might argue that always assigning blame on yourself will lead to despair, but this isn’t what I’m arguing to do. If something else is at fault then blame it, but if it’s not then don’t foolishly keep assigning blame where it doesn’t belong.

Still though, even if you are correctly assigning blame there will always be a gravity to despair and hopelessness; I think this is by design. Matthew 5:4 says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”. In his book, Studies on the Sermon on the Mount, Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones says that we mourn sin, but we’re comforted by Christ. Your despair over your failures should quickly be comforted by Christ who has saved you. This should not make you comfortable in your failure (Romans 6:1), but rather helps you to overcome sin by the love Christ has afforded you.

Lets be honest with ourselves, we’re often times sinful, specifically we’re lazy, and that leads to a lot of unfulfilled desires. We can’t blame it on anything else except our own laziness, and when we do that only leads to more unfulfilled desires. When we fault our own laziness there’s hope that since we know what’s wrong we’ll be able to excise the malignancy from ourselves. This attitude that we’ll fix ourselves brings mourning over our sin especially when we keep failing, but then something great happens, we’re comforted; we feel the love of Christ making our laziness right even as we fail, and this brings a praise in our hearts to where committing the sin of laziness seems small in comparison to His love for us. After this progression of correctly assigning blame, feeling despair for our sin, and being comforted, we’re inclined, as an act of praise to work hard, and this brings peace.

As a side note: I’m sure someone will think, “this is very black and white, situations are more complex than this and your simplifying why we’re lazy doesn’t help!”. To this I’ll say two things: 1. I’m not against thoroughly analyzing all of the variables of your situation to help you best understand how to proceed. I think there are a lot of practical things that we can do to combat laziness that fit under the umbrella of “working diligently and getting creative to the glory of God”, and 2. The post is meant mainly as a truism, an idea which asserts incomplete truth conditions for a proposition. If you can’t accept truisms then you have to reject a lot of the Bible.

Another side note: Be warned that I’m not as studied in theology as I should be, so there might be errors in my logic which I encourage thoughtful correction toward me on. I just pray that if there’s truth it’ll stick, but where there isn’t it’ll be quickly forgotten for the reader. God is sovereign over our thoughts.

Quit Complaining About Fragmentation

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Let’s go back to 2007.  Steve Jobs announces the iPhone.  It was awesome.  Expensive?  Sure, but awesome.  Why was it awesome?  It was the browser coupled with the touch screen; this was a revolutionary feature and it was excellent.  If you’ve ever used a browser on an old Blackberry you know that RIM would have done us a service by just leaving the feature off of the phone!

There wasn’t anything like the iPhone, and there wasn’t anyone making smart phones at the time who could compete.  Apple put the nail in all of the competitors’ coffins by making the SDK public and releasing the iPhone 3G at a great price.  Circumstances were looking great for Apple.  In a few years they would be the only viable option because they were the only ones who could innovate.  Everyone would be at Apple’s mercy.

Enter Android from Google

We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake: they want to kill the iPhone.  [...] This don’t be evil mantra? It’s bulls***.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs’ calm and collected demeanor that he had held with other competitors was gone.  He knew what would become of Android and he didn’t like it.  No longer would Apple be the prettiest girl at the dance.

What really is Android?

Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications — all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation.

…We hope thousands of different phones will be powered by Android. This will make possible all sorts of applications that have never been made available on a mobile device.

Eric Schmidt

Great!  A platform that has innovation as its main theme brought forth by a company with a proven record.  The technology world cheered.  It opened the doors to compete with Apple.

Although they didn’t know to at the time, consumers should have cheered.  In the next 3 years there would be products in their hands that weren’t on the horizon before Android.  There would be eReaders, phones with two screens, free phones with capabilities of some laptops, phones just like the iPhone, tablets, digital audio players, and not to mention great phones that were nothing like the iPhone.

There would be so much innovation by so many players.  I don’t think Google even knew what they had just released.  Steve Jobs did.  Android went from 2% market share to being the market leader in less than 2 years.  Amazing.

Critics would ask, “but at what cost?”  They would say that Android is so fragmented it’s impossible to develop something for it.

In my experience these people have usually had some form of encounter with developing for iOS before they come to Android.  They expect Android to be just like Apple, but from Google.

Android is not for the person that wants everything that Apple has done, but doesn’t want it from Apple.  If you want to cheer for a team and vilify a competitor, Android is not the platform for you, you’d be better off with Windows Mobile (I realize this makes you cringe).  Most complaints about Android stem from the idea that they’re not like Apple, and to those I say, “well, go buy an iPhone or develop for iOS”.  What’s that you say, “but I hate Apple”.  Do you really?  You seem to like everything they’ve done and want Android to do the same, maybe you just like being different for the sake of being different?

Android is about anyone innovating.  iOS is about Apple innovating.  Apple makes some great stuff, but unless you can land a job there the breadth of your innovations will be between the two memory address Apple allows you on the few processor cycles they let you run on.

So I say quit complaining about fragmentation.  Google has done the impossible.  They’ve become the market leader with Android and they’ve done it on a system that allows everyone a chance to make something amazing.  Sure it’s fragmented, but that’s what happens when a bunch of different people innovate.  The alternative is just trusting that the engineers Google and Apple have hired are the only ones who can make compelling products for the masses.

I prefer to have an open system to allow anyone to build something users will love.