For Steve Jobs, maybe life is like an "on-off" switch. "Click! And you're gone.

Walter Isaacson in his massive bio, "Steve Jobs" tells the story of Jobs attending a Lutheran church with his parents. All this came to an end in 1968 when LIFE Magazine published a shocking cover story on a couple of starving children in Biafra. Jobs took the magazine to Sunday School and confronted the church's pastor. "If I raise my finger, will God know which one I'm going to raise even before I do it?"

The Pastor answered, "Yes, God knows everything."
Jobs then pulled out the LIFE cover and asked, "Well does God know about this and what's going to happen to these children?"

Jobs announced that he didn't want to have anything to do worshiping such a God, and he never went back to church. He did, however, spend years studying and trying to practice the tenets of Zen Buddhism.

Years later, in reflection, he said, "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 would agree. But it's sad that He just shut the door to Christianity based on a presumption that God wasn't doing anything to alleviate suffering in the world. My question to Steve Jobs would've been, "If you are NOW so enlightened, what are you doing to relieve human suffering like that in Biafra?"

When Jobs learned that he had pancreatic cancer, one of his first calls was to Larry Brilliant, whom he had first met at an ashram in India. "Do you still believe in God?" Jobs asked him. Brilliant said that he did, and they discussed the many paths to God that they had been taught by the Hindu Guru Neem Karoli Baba. Then Brilliant asked Jobs  what was wrong. "I have cancer." Jobs replied.

One sunny afternoon when he wasn't feeling well, Jobs sat in the garden behind his house and reflected on death. He talked about his experiences in India four decades earlier, his study of Buddhism, and his views on reincarnation and spiritual transcendence. "I'm about fifty-five on believing in God," he said. "For most of my life, I've felt there must be more to our existence than meets the eye."

He admitted that, as he faced death, he might be overestimating the odds out of a desire to believe in an afterlife. "I'd like to think that something survives after you die," he said. "It's strange to think that you can accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures."

He fell silent for a very long time. "But on the other hand, perhaps it's like an on-off switch," he said. "Click! And you're gone."

Then he paused again and smiled slightly. "Maybe that's why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices."

From what we know of Steve's last days, he never had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. In fact, I believe that's why there was so much uncertainty and contemplation on life after death. Even Steve Jobs found it hard to accept the fact that you just flick an "off" switch and this whole thing is over. Nothing survives except maybe your company and some really cool products.

Steve Jobs' legacy is AMAZING!! It includes the following:

• The Apple II, the first personal computer
• The Macintosh, which begat the home computer revolution
• PIXAR, which gave us "Toy Story" and ramped up the miracle of digital imagination in cartoons.
• Apple stores which reinvented the role of a store in defining a brand.
• The iPod which changed the way we consume music.
• The iTunes store, which saved the music industry.
• The iPhone, which turned mobile phones into music, photography, video, email & web devices.
• The App store, which spawned a new content creation industry.
• The iPad, which launched tablet computing and offered a platform for digital newspapers, magazines, books & videos.
• iCloud, which demoted the computer from its control role in managing our content and let all our devices sync seamlessly.

Apple has surpassed Microsoft and everyone else as the most valuable company in the world. Steve Jobs accomplished a lot in his brief time here on earth.

But, having said that, I am reminded of the words of Jesus recorded in Mark 8:36, "And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything (even creating the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, Pixar, even Apple itself) worth more than your soul?"

Steve Jobs: Great visionary, inventor, marketing genius--why was he so mean?

One of Steve Jobs' great strengths was knowing how to focus. "Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do." Now there's some wisdom for all of us. At various times in my life and church, things have been so out-of-focus, and partly because either I or the church were doing too many things. At Apple, Jobs whittled everything down to just 2 or 3 innovative products being worked on at any one time.

Jobs also espoused the "team concept" and intentionally designed the Apple buildings and offices so that workers had to go some distance to the bathroom, walking across the atrium where there was coffee and lots of little areas to sit and chat. He wanted to force people out of their comfort zones so they had to "bump into" one another and possibly get inspired or energized by these purposely-designed encounters.

The greatest weakness of Steve Jobs' was how he treated and abused people, even in his own family. Jobs saw the world in binary terms. A person was either a HERO, or a BOZO. A product was either amazing or a piece of (fill in the blank). Products, ideas, even food was something that was either "the best thing ever," or it was crap, brain-dead, inedible. As a result, any perceived flaw could set off a rant. The finish on a piece of metal, the curve on the head of a screw, the shade of blue on a box--he would declare they they "completely suck" until that moment when he suddenly pronounced them "absolutely perfect."

Unfortunately, Steve's Zen Buddhism never produced in him a zen-like calm and inner serenity. He was tightly coiled, impatient, and made no effort to hide these flaws. The author, Walter Isaacson, writes, "Most people have a regulator between their mind and mouth that modulates their brutish sentiments and spikiest impulses. Not Jobs. He made a point of being brutally honest. "My job is to say when something sucks, rather than sugarcoat it," he said.

Andy Hertzfeld, one of the early Apple scientists who designed the Mac operating system, said, "The one question I'd truly love Steve to answer is, 'Why are you sometimes so mean?'" Even his family members wondered whether he simply lacked the filter that restrains people from venting their wounding thoughts or willfully bypassed it.

When finally asked this question, Jobs would simply claim, "This is who I am, and you cannot expect me to be someone I'm not."

The nasty edge to his personality was not necessary and it hindered him more than it helped him. He actually felt that berating and verbally attacking Apple team members would separate the A-team from the B-team and only leave him with the cream of the crop after all the weak ones who couldn't take it had dropped out, quit and gone to work elsewhere. He was left with some amazing talent who stuck it out, persevered and developed some revolutionary products, but he also drove away a boatload of talented folks who found a healthier work environment elsewhere.

Every now and then, a wise colleague would pull Jobs aside to try to get him to settle down. Lee Clow was a master at doing this. "Steve, can I talk to you?" He would quietly say after Jobs had belittled someone publicly. He would go into Jobs' office and explain how hard everyone was working. "When you humiliate them, it's more debilitating than stimulating," he said in one such session. Jobs would apologize and say he understood. But then he would lapse again. "It's simply who I am," he would say.

Steve Jobs was wrong. He didn't have to be the way he was. It was a choice that he continued to make day after day. His quest at Zen Buddhism and inner peace was elusive and had no impact on changing his life. In my next and final post, we'll look at how Steve Jobs approached his mortality once he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Did he feel secure in his beliefs or was he troubled about possibly not knowing God?

The Legacy of Steve Jobs from one who's never drunk the kool-aid.

Recently, I read the bio, "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson. For the record, I do not now own, nor have I ever owned anything made by Apple. There is this cult-like worship for anything Apple makes which leads me to believe that the typical Apple customer has drunk way too much of the Apple Kool-Aid (available only at Apple stores). These individuals may never darken the door of a church, but they'll stand in line for hours to be the first to own a new iPad or iPhone. For me, that's a bit creepy, but it's part of their identity. They hang with friends who have Mac computers and don't want to be ostracized for having a HP or Dell laptop. Having said this, I have great admiration for Steve Jobs. In fact, any business school that's worth anything should have a course or two on the Apple mindset.

Steve Jobs was a genius, but he was also a deeply flawed individual (more about this in my next post). He confided to close friends that he was driven by the pain he felt at being put up for adoption.

Jobs was a master at distorting reality. When confronted with pregnancy of his girlfriend, he simply denied that he was the father, even though he admitted to sleeping with her.

Some Apple (Mac Team) members said that Jobs could almost hypnotize them. "He reminded me of Rasputin," said Debi Coleman. "He laser-beamed in on you and didn't blink. It didn't matter if he was serving Kool-Aid. You drank it."

Now here is what set Steve Jobs apart from the rest of his peers. He had a passion for making a great product, not just a profitable one. The goal was never to make lots of money. It was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater.

Throughout his career, Jobs liked to envision himself as an enlightened rebel pitted against the evil empires of IBM, Microsoft and Google. He was fighting the forces of darkness and his mindset was that this was the most important thing that anyone could ever do. Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi with the challenge: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want to change the world?"

That was the slogan that we used in Campus Crusade for Christ when I was in college: "Come help change the world!" We got lots of students who committed to becoming missionaries in Campus Crusade because they wanted to make a difference in the world, and apparently, that's what Steve Jobs thought he was doing with Apple products.

Jobs was like Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. He had a split personality. He could be charming one minute and then very cruel the next minute. He had a perverse eagerness to put people down. I'll give you some more insight into this aspect of Steve Jobs in my next post...stay tuned.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

When I hear the latest polls which have Obama and Romney locked in a dead heat, and in some cases, Obama ahead by 4 points, I fear for our country. We have met the enemy and he is us.

We have a president who is leading the charge against success and individual achievement. If you're successful, you don't deserve your success because you got it on the backs of other people. 

According to Obama, if you're Bill Gates of Windows, Steve Jobs of Apple, Ray Kroc of McDonald's, Walt Disney, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Larry Page of Google--you don't deserve your success because you've stolen it from other people; you've stolen their labor. We have the president of the United States denigrating the entire concept of success and attempting to dismantle the American dream.

Thomas A. Edison, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs

Once upon a time, we celebrated success and wanted to be like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford,Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Ray Kroc or Larry Page, but now we've got a president who has successfully brainwashed half the country with his "class warfare rhetoric" that this kind of success is "criminal" and not really deserved. According to Obama, these successful, innovative  entrepreneurs did it with the help of government and other people, and they're ungrateful.

We now have a president who has never held a job, never met a payroll, not even operated a lemonade stand and he is out there attacking those who are successful, who innovate and create jobs for millions of Americans. Men like Thomas Edison who invented the light bulb and electricity without any government help, as well as Henry Ford who invented the modern assembly-line. Walt Disney pioneered animation, built Disneyland and Disneyworld, and Disney Studios in Burbank without any financial assistance from Uncle Sam. And then there is Steve Jobs--If he would've waited for the government to invest in Apple, there would be NO iPad, iPhone or Macbook Pro today!

For Obama, it's always about expanding government at the expense of free enterprise and the private sector. Government is always the "good guy" and small business, companies and corporations are the "bad guys."

Here's what Obama said last Friday in Virginia to a cheering crowd:

FOLLOWERS: That's right!
OBAMA: You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, "Well, it must be because I was just so smart!"
FOLLOWERS: (laughing)
OBAMA: There are a lot of smart people out there. "It must be because I worked harder than everybody else." Let me tell you something. There are a whole bunch of hardworkin' people out there!
FOLLOWERS: (cheers and applause)
OBAMA: If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help!
FOLLOWERS: Yeaaaaaah!
OBAMA: There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.
FOLLOWERS: Yeaaaaaah!
OBAMA: Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges! If you've got a business, you -- you didn't build that!
FOLLOWERS: Yeaaaaaah!
OBAMA: Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
OBAMA: Look, i-i-if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own.

Obama's goal is to convince the American public that whatever success you've achieved as a businessman or employer is not deserved. You haven't earned it; you stole it from the little people, the poor people. This is what Obama learned at the feet of Frank Marshall, his self-described mentor and an avowed communist. This is what his father in Kenya taught him. But the sad thing is that now we're at a tipping point where half the country believes in what Obama is saying, and are giving him their full support.

As Pogo said, "we have met the enemy and he is us."