I am a West Wing fan, almost more than a fan. If I could buy one that looked professional, I would get a "Bartlet for America" bumper sticker and slap it on my car, and I don't even like bumper stickers. I'd lobby for the repeal of the 22nd Amendment so he could run again (albeit fictionally). I'd want to be a part of that administration.I am also, quixotically, an Apple fan. I have read the entire history of the origins of the Macintosh at Folklore.org, I have sat amazed at the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984, I have even watched The Pirates of Silicon Valley and the 1997 Boston Macworld Expo keynote speech. I read about Apple and Macintosh news, scan Macintosh-oriented blogs, investigate Macintosh software and hardware. ::sigh:: I don't even own a Macintosh.
But even more than either of these, I am a fan of Jesus Christ. I will praise His name until the day I die, I will go the tallest mountain or the lowest valley to proclaim His glory, He has but to call and I would answer. It it only because of Him that I am alive, and His love and grace are what keeps me going.
I've been watching Season Four of The West Wing, and read something yesterday that caused me to stop, pause, and think about each of these things of which I am a fan and how they relate to one another. Why do I get so worked up about each of them? Why do I spend my free time thinking about politics, or Apple, or my faith? What I came to realize was that my fascination with them is that they embody the same virtue. Or, rather, the first two echo the virtue of the third.
Whether it's Josiah Bartlet or Steve Jobs, or the cultures surrounding them, their single most valuable virtue is their ultimate and infinite reality. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way - they are completely real, completely open with who they are and what they believe. They might not always be 100% honest and forthcoming, but they're never trying to be someone they're not. They are, in short, "the real thing."
In The West Wing, this shows up in a dramatic way. At the beginning of Season Two, we're shown flashbacks into the early days of the Bartlet campaign, before the campaign even began. We're shown how Josh is originally working for Hoynes, and we already know a bit about his character by then. On his way to see Governor Bartlet, Josh stops over to see Sam in New York. As the conversation wraps up...
---------------
JOSH
It's good seeing you.
SAM
It's good seeing you. I miss you.
They start to walk in separate directions.
JOSH
Hey, congratulations on that partnership.
SAM
Josh!
They turn and face each other.
SAM
Hoynes. He's not the real thing, is he?
JOSH
See, that- ...the thing you gotta know about Hoynes is-- [approaches him]
SAM
It's okay.
JOSH
I-I'm saying--
SAM
Josh..... What are you doing?
JOSH
I don't know. What are you doing?
SAM
Protecting oil companies from litigation.
Josh nods.
SAM
They're our client. They don't lose legal protection because they make a lot of money.
JOSH
I can't believe no one ever wrote a folk song about that.
Sam grins.
JOSH
If I see the real thing in Nashua, should I tell you about it?
SAM
You won't have to.
JOSH
Why?
SAM
You've got a pretty bad poker face.
---------------
Josh then goes to Nashua, NH, where he hears this exchange between Governor Bartlet and a man in the audience:
---------------
MAN
Governor Bartlet, when you were a member of Congress, you voted against the New England Dairy Farming Compact. That vote hurt me sir. I'm a businessman. That vote hurt me to the tune of maybe, 10 cents a gallon. I voted for you three times for Congress. I voted for you twice for Governor.
We see Josh again, still reading the newspaper.
MAN
And I'm here sir, and I'd like to ask you for an explanation.
BARTLET
[pause] Yeah, I screwed you on that one.
Josh looks up, surprised.
MAN
I'm sorry?
BARTLET
I screwed you. You got hosed.
MAN
Sir, I...
BARTLET
And not just you. A lot of my constituents. I put the hammer to farms in Concord, Salem, Laconia, and Elem.
Josh looks really shocked and is now watching Bartlet.
BARTLET
You guys got rogered but good.
The man sits down.
BARTLET
Today, for the first time in history, one in five Americans living in poverty are children.
We see a still surprised Josh.
BARTLET
One in five children live in the most abject, dangerous, hopeless, backbreaking, gut-wrenching poverty, one in five, and they're children. If fidelity to freedom and democracy is the code of our civic religion then surely, the code of our humanity is faithful service to that unwritten commandment that says "We shall give our children better than we ourselves had." I voted against the bill 'cause I didn't want it to be hard for people to buy milk. I stopped some money from flowing into your pocket. If that angers you, if you resent me, I completely respect that, but if you expect anything different from the President of the United States, I suggest you vote for somebody else. Thanks very much. Hope you enjoyed the chicken.
The audience applauds. Josh claps too.
---------------
Just reading it now, my eyes begin to water.
Here is a politician that risks his political career for his morals. He is willing to sacrifice public opinion for what is right. He's not even doing it because he thinks it'll play well- he's saying it because he actually means it. In the next episode, we see Josh going back to see Sam in New York.
---------------
MR. GAGE
Sam!
Josh knocks on the window, causing Sam to look over to him. Josh is pretty much just standing there, looking really wet and vaguely... prophetic.
MR. GAGE
Sam.
Sam can't take his eyes off of Josh.
FEMALE LAWYER
Sam, we're in the middle of a meeting.
SAM
Yeah.
MR. LOCH
Sam, we're not indifferent to the concerns of the environmentalists... Excuse
me, Sam?
Josh points to his non-poker-playing face.
SAM
Yeah.
MR. LOCH
It doesn't quite feel like I have your attention.
SAM
Yeah.
Josh is still pointing to his face, smiles and nods slowly, Sam laughs.
SAM
Yeah! Yeah.
He shuffles his papers, then pulling away from them.
SAM
I'm not going to need that.
MR. GAGE
Sam? Sam! Sam, please keep your seat! Sam, where are you going?
Sam gets up from the table and walks to the door. Josh opens the door for him.
SAM
[shouts back] New Hampshire!
---------------
Why go to New Hampshire? What has Josh found? ....The Real Thing® . Bartlet, throughout his presidency, strives to be The Real Thing. Compassionate, articulate, admirable, noble, just... but more important than any of these things: he is real. He doesn't say what he says in order to please anyone in particular, he says what he thinks, what he truly believes. He's real.
So is Steve Jobs. Lots of people have varying opinions of the man, but being a historian in part, I strive to find as many primary sources as I can to assemble an image in my head of who he is. I invite you to do so as well. Search for his quotes, his speeches, his interviews, stories about him, etc. (Fake Steve doesn't count). Folklore.org is a great resource, partially because it tells a wonderful story, but also because it gives you a much more rounded view of Steve Jobs' character than you might read from any of the unauthorized biographies.
One of the most distinct features of Steve Jobs is his "reality distortion field." To quote those who experienced it firsthand: "In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything." Some have chalked this up to him being an amazing salesman; that he could sell screen doors to the Navy, that sort of thing. But I have long suspected that this wasn't true, and blogger John Gruber put it this way last fall:
Jobs’s extraordinary marketing savvy and famed reality distortion field leave some people with the impression that he’s a talented fabulist. That’s wrong, though — Jobs, in my opinion, is a terrible liar and a poor actor. When he’s able to convince people of things that aren’t true, or that are exaggerations of the truth, it’s because he believes what’s he saying. The reality distortion field isn’t something he projects willfully; it’s an extension of his own certainty. Remember his on-stage demo last year of the Motorola Rokr iTunes-compatible phone? His contempt for the device was palpable; when he failed to successfully switch from song playback to accept a call, he seemed poised to just toss the thing off-stage and cry out that it was a piece of garbage.I really couldn't have put it better myself (probably because I'm not a full-time technology blogger). Jobs is clearly someone who doesn't like to sacrifice what he thinks for what he feels people want to hear. He is creative, inventive, and most of all, real. Bill Gates has made some statements in random interviews about digital rights management (DRM), and they might have been genuine, but by posting an open letter yesterday about DRM and saying:
If he struck you as at least somewhat unenthusiastic on-stage at WWDC, I say it’s because he was unenthusiastic, because he really couldn’t bring himself to be happy about showing these Leopard features that aren’t ready to be shown.
The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.
Steve Jobs, well... sounds convincing. His argument is thoughtful and eloquent and, wouldn't you know it, believable. I'm not quite sure what it is, but when I hear Bill Gates talking about DRM, I'm not sure if I believe him. I'm more likely to believe he's just saying it to win favor with a segment of consumers. After reading about the original Macintosh and seeing its introduction, I can see reality itself in Jobs. He's not putting on a show for anybody, he's The Real Thing.
When Christ was here on earth, there was something obviously different about Him. In Matthew, Jesus approaches two life-long fishermen. Jesus walks beside them, says, "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." At once, they left their nets and followed him. At once. Then He came across two more, and a similar situation takes place: he called to them, and immediately they left their boats to follow him. In the same way, Jesus called to Matthew the tax collector, and he followed Jesus. These men, and others like them, gave up everything they had ever known (some, like Matthew, living quite successfully), to follow this "Jesus" guy. This "Yeshua bin Yosef", son of a carpenter from Hicksville Nazareth. Why? What was it about Him that made them drop everything for Him? My suspicion for a while now has been that there must've been something different about Jesus that got their attention, something that caught their eyes and shouted out, "I am The Real Thing®. I want what's best for you and I can even see inside your hearts... you yearn for The Real Thing, and I am The Ultimate Reality. Follow Me."
As my banner states, "These are a shadow of things to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ." (Colossians 2:17) I contemplated several themes and ideas about what to call this blog, but one idea that kept coming back to me was the concept of "shadows", used by C.S. Lewis often in both his novels and Christian books. In The Chronicles of Narnia (specifically The Last Battle), the "shadowlands" are used to describe the physical worlds in which we live. The "true" lands are their Heavenly equivalents. In short, everything in this world is merely a shadow of things in Heaven. That some of the feelings we have are only based on Heavenly feelings, that things exist in a sort of shallow way here on Earth, only to echo to what is true and real in Heaven.
This past Sunday, the sermon at church was on "Thin Places." These, the pastor described, are places or things in your life that allow you to see God. Almost as if there was a curtain between here and Heaven, a sort of sheer curtain of rippled glass that, at places, had spots in it where you could see through to Heaven clearer. I believe that there are really physical places here that are like that, but also believe that experiences, emotions, and relationships serve the same purpose. They can, at times, allow us to see clearly through the curtain toward Heaven, toward what God had originally intended for us to have and experience.
So why do I like President Bartlet and the other characters of The West Wing? Why do I admire Steve Jobs and Apple? It's not because they're saints, but rather because they, at more times and in more ways than many other things, echo that which seems to be Heavenly. All the good qualities which I see in them, I see even stronger in Heaven.
But, they are merely shadows. It is nice to admire Bartlet and Jobs, but why settle for the sizzle and not the steak? The Reality, The Real Thing®, is Christ Himself. Let's seek that and put it on a bumper sticker.
Postscript:
The image above, with the iMac G4 bowing in front of the cross, is used without permission from the Christian Mac Users Group, CMUG. I'll contact them at some point soon and ask for permission.
When Christ was here on earth, there was something obviously different about Him. In Matthew, Jesus approaches two life-long fishermen. Jesus walks beside them, says, "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." At once, they left their nets and followed him. At once. Then He came across two more, and a similar situation takes place: he called to them, and immediately they left their boats to follow him. In the same way, Jesus called to Matthew the tax collector, and he followed Jesus. These men, and others like them, gave up everything they had ever known (some, like Matthew, living quite successfully), to follow this "Jesus" guy. This "Yeshua bin Yosef", son of a carpenter from Hicksville Nazareth. Why? What was it about Him that made them drop everything for Him? My suspicion for a while now has been that there must've been something different about Jesus that got their attention, something that caught their eyes and shouted out, "I am The Real Thing®. I want what's best for you and I can even see inside your hearts... you yearn for The Real Thing, and I am The Ultimate Reality. Follow Me."
As my banner states, "These are a shadow of things to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ." (Colossians 2:17) I contemplated several themes and ideas about what to call this blog, but one idea that kept coming back to me was the concept of "shadows", used by C.S. Lewis often in both his novels and Christian books. In The Chronicles of Narnia (specifically The Last Battle), the "shadowlands" are used to describe the physical worlds in which we live. The "true" lands are their Heavenly equivalents. In short, everything in this world is merely a shadow of things in Heaven. That some of the feelings we have are only based on Heavenly feelings, that things exist in a sort of shallow way here on Earth, only to echo to what is true and real in Heaven.
This past Sunday, the sermon at church was on "Thin Places." These, the pastor described, are places or things in your life that allow you to see God. Almost as if there was a curtain between here and Heaven, a sort of sheer curtain of rippled glass that, at places, had spots in it where you could see through to Heaven clearer. I believe that there are really physical places here that are like that, but also believe that experiences, emotions, and relationships serve the same purpose. They can, at times, allow us to see clearly through the curtain toward Heaven, toward what God had originally intended for us to have and experience.
So why do I like President Bartlet and the other characters of The West Wing? Why do I admire Steve Jobs and Apple? It's not because they're saints, but rather because they, at more times and in more ways than many other things, echo that which seems to be Heavenly. All the good qualities which I see in them, I see even stronger in Heaven.
But, they are merely shadows. It is nice to admire Bartlet and Jobs, but why settle for the sizzle and not the steak? The Reality, The Real Thing®, is Christ Himself. Let's seek that and put it on a bumper sticker.
Postscript:
The image above, with the iMac G4 bowing in front of the cross, is used without permission from the Christian Mac Users Group, CMUG. I'll contact them at some point soon and ask for permission.
