All Good Idols Come to an End
On August 24, 2011, one of the great innovators, inventors, and business leaders of our time stepped off his throne. Steve Jobs, founder and president of Apple, resigned. This is a man who embodied American values. He was a rags to riches success, a self made man who in the last 15 years has soared past his colleagues and competitors and created the technological culture of today. He didn't merely invent products, he invented a paradigm. He created machinery before there was a perceived need, and then through marketing created demand out of thin air.
After hearing the news of Jobs resignation, a cry was heard in Egypt. Facebook friends made comment after comment about the expected value drop in Apple stock (as though any of them could afford it anyway). Blog posts and news articles hoisted Jobs up with overwhelming accolades, one article likening him to Michelangelo. I must admit, I'm a bit of an Apple fanatic, so the news affected me as well and I am worried about what will happen to the company in Jobs' absence.
As much as I do respect the business acumen and creativity of Steve Jobs, much of the praise being given to him yesterday was unsettling. It's one thing to respect, even admire someone for accomplishing great things, but what has been happening is something else altogether.
The prophets repeatedly pointed out the foolishness of idolatry. In Isaiah 44, the prophet describes the process of a man who grows a tree and with half builds a fire to cook the food he will eat that night and the other half builds an idol for him to bow down before. It is ultimately silly to light part of a tree on fire for cooking and worship the other half. It's counter intuitive to think something like that, created like that, could have any real power.
The modern person would look at that kind of idol making and think it is uncivilized, third world, and backwards. It would be easy to think that, because we don't carve gods out of wood anymore, we no longer have an issue with building idols. But this unfortunately is not true.
The heartache, the shock, and the denial that is quickly spreading through the Western World that the age of Steve Jobs is ending seems to be the same sensation felt by the Ancient Near East idol maker when the wooden idol he made accidentally lit on fire and turned into ash. We are being confronted with the reality that Steve Jobs will not last forever. The technological trailblazing we've been witness to is over. The meticulously crafted piece of wood has fallen into the inevitable fire, and we are all devastated.
All good idols come to an end. The finitude of false gods is the very thing that makes them false. Steve Jobs was a creator, but he can't create forever.
With all that said, I still can't wait to see what's new with the iPhone 5...