Steve Jobs, Al Davis, Roger Williams, and You

We have all been reading the remarkable life of Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs’s level of success was so high it’s hard to find a standard of comparison—people used names like Edison or Ford.

He was a visionary genius who revolutionized six different industries. His legacy includes Mac computers, Apple retail stores, Pixar studios, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, iPad. There is a biography about him called iCon. He was the inventor or co-inventor on 342 patents or patent applications.

He changed the way we think about computers, phones, music, movies, and retail stores. He made technology cool, intuitive, elegant, and easy to use. His passing leaves a crater.

Somebody said ten years ago we had Bob Hope, Johnny Cash, and Steve Jobs; now we have no Hope, no Cash, and no jobs.

In the 1800s the American dream was being born in a log cabin and growing up to be president. In our day it’s a kid starting a company in his parents’ garage that will change the world. That kid was Steve Jobs.

Then he died.

How successful is successful enough?

That same week he died, we read about another icon named Al Davis.

He was a kid from Brooklyn. Not a particular gifted athlete, but by sheer tenacity he became the head coach and general manger of the Oakland Raiders at a younger age than anyone else in professional football.

In an occupation full of the toughest people in the world, nobody was tougher than Al Davis. Just win, baby. He willed the Raiders to five Super Bowls. He achieved such prominence that followers around the country called themselves “Raider Nation.”

NFL Films rated the top 10 feuds of all time, and #1 was Al Davis vs. the whole National Football League.

He could be extraordinarily generous, but was not given to false modesty or self-doubt. When NY Yankees boss George Steinbrenner died, about a year ago, Al Davis said: “I judge sports figures based on individual achievement, team achievement, and contributions to the game. George was right up there with me at #1.”

Then he died.

How much winning is enough?

On the same day that Al Davis passed away, we read about an artist.

Roger Williams was the first pianist to have his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

He was called ”Pianist to the Presidents”; he played for nine of them. He was the only pianist to have a #1 song on Billboard charts. He was the best-selling pianist of all time, with 18 gold or platinum records.

(If you are not old, a record was a round thing they used to record music on.)

Not only that—he won a boxing championship in Navy during WW II.

How talented is talented enough?

For it is by grace you are saved, Paul said.

Human beings cannot stop longing for salvation. Even if we don’t believe in God, we want to be delivered or rescued from the something inside us that cannot be satisfied. I sometimes think in our day we have just secularized salvation. We have made it economic and therapeutic. Our hope for salvation lies in being successful enough or happy enough. We’re not there yet. But maybe with a little more work … a little more success.

And I wonder, in the church world, if we don’t end up spiritualizing a kind of salvation by works approach to ministry.

How big is big enough?

How fast is fast-growing enough?

How sold-out is sold-out enough?

How creative is creative enough?

I wonder if maybe some of us who work at churches or lead ministries or teach the Bible ought to start every day with those words: For it is by grace I am saved …

Ours can be such a strange little Christian subculture, where success consists in baptizing musical or cinematic or publishing trends from the broad culture and making them palatable for the faithful.

And we can look for our own smaller and safer versions of Steve Jobs, or Al Davis, or Roger Williams whom we think have reached “enough.”

What if Paul’s words mean there is no enough? At least not on this side. At least not on our own.

What if pastors and church leaders became the most grace-filled, grace-powered, grace-eased people in the neighborhood?

It’s all gift, Paul says. Grace is a gift received by faith. And faith too is a gift.

It will turn out, in the end, that nobody had anything to boast about.

That will be our joy.

That will be our pain.

That will be the death of us.

And that will be our salvation.

John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership Journal and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in the Bay Area of California, where Steve Jobs and Al Davis made their mark.