Steve Jobs: Is death the best invention of life?

After his death last week, Steve Jobs is getting a lot of press here in Brazil, even though the devices he helped create are beyond the reach of most Brazilians. The phrase that keeps popping up most frequently in the Brazilian media is taken from Jobs’ commencement address at Stanford in June 2005: “…death is very likely the single best invention of life.” His statement begs the question: Who invented death?

Rather than tackle that question, Jobs used his perspective on death as a motivational factor for living: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition.” As one Christianity Today writer said, this is the gospel of a secular age.

While death can be a motivating factor for Christians, it is also a sign that there is something fundamentally wrong in the world—a fatal defect in the operating system of every human being on the planet. The Bible describes death as God’s idea. It is the inevitable consequence of the shared human desire to highjack the Creator’s plan for peaceful and productive community with himself and with others. The human quest for independence and freedom leads not just to physical death, but also to alienation from each other.

The Christian solution for the problem of death and decay does not spring from individual intuition, as Jobs’ worldview suggests. Rather, it is an initiative of the Lord of the universe, who took on human form in order to begin the restoration of all things. Jesus of Nazareth is a living, breathing illustration of what humanity could and should be.

Jesus showed us that being truly human is not summed up in creative thinking, but in humble submission to the Creator’s original blueprint. Jesus’ death says (among other things) that life results from loyalty and obedience to our Maker. His resurrection is the promise that, because life was invented before death, therefore death does not have the last word.

Someone might observe that the Christian gospel is all ethereal hope about what will happen after we die. But this is an incomplete understanding of the message of the Scriptures. The gospel lived out by Jesus is very much linked to the here and now. His model prayer, that the Father’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, points to the relevance of creation theology. Since we are all created in God’s image, the way we treat each other is a reflection of our respect for the Creator (or our lack of it). We are God’s representatives on earth, placed here in order to care for his good creation.

Rather than stifling human creativity, the gospel of Jesus frees us to become who God intended us to be today. We are still flawed, yes, but motivated by the hope that the revolution begun by Jesus two millennia ago is the prelude to a complete reboot of human existence, when he will wipe out all injustice, and reconcile all things to himself.