stay hungry

The Word for today:
Proverbs 19:1-20:13

(Note:   This article was first published on this date in 2011.)

I was a schoolteacher for about 15 years. I loved the students and I loved the teaching. But I couldn't stomach the institution. It was a trap where vision found confinement.

I feel the same way about the institutional church. I was confined in one of those for about 11 years. It wasn't solitary confinement by any means. There were some others there who wanted to know and grow--to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (1)--and so for Christ's sake I dove deeply into the Word of the LORD in search of its treasures. I even managed, by the gifting grace of God, to bring some of its gems to the surface. Then I re-gifted every pearl I'd been given back to my students. I loved them and I loved the teaching.

But in this world, when vision meets a brick wall, the wall wins. Jesus Christ knew this, and managed to stay unconfined by never becoming aligned with the bricked-in 'church' of his day. "Gentlemen" (he as much as said), "I don't need your organization."

***

Any of my students will tell you that I have a characteristic parting line. As a Bible teacher, it was, "We love you to pieces, to infinity and beyond," which I repeated without fail at the end of each Sunday's lesson. As a schoolteacher, it was, "Drive slow and stay hungry," repeated at the end of class every Friday.

I tell you all of this because a giant died in the Valley today.

He had a nearly-biblical last name--Jobs, the plural of Job. He was not my brother-in-Christ (as far as I know) but I always felt an affinity towards him, the affinity that the Spirit of Christ always feels for the lost. The affinity was reflected in those parting lines I printed above. "To infinity and beyond" was a line I'd lifted from his animated blockbuster, "Toy Story." I and my students were well aware of the allusion.

But it wasn't until just a few years ago when I discovered that my other departing admonition--"Stay hungry"-- bespoke yet another priority I'd unknowingly shared with Steve Jobs. The phrase was not originally his or mine, but he spoke at length about it in the concluding portion of the commencement address (2) he delivered to Stanford University graduates in 2005:

"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. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: 'Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.'
It was their farewell message as they signed off. 'Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.'  And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish this for you:

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much."

***

We who share faith in Jesus Christ are bound for glory, for infinity and beyond. And yet we remain entrenched behind our rigid walls as our spirits become more confined and sclerotic by the day,

despite a Savior who freed us to be not just free but free indeed (3); who exhorted us to hunger and thirst for what's right in a world wronged (4);

and despite His Word, which exhorts us to be fools (in the eyes of the world) for Christ (5).

***

It saddens me that the giant genius of Silicon Valley has gone to his infinity without the Savior whose image he bore,

and it saddens me even more that Steve, working only with Jesus' distorted surface image, could live a life of greater liberty than we who have been imbued, through and through, with Jesus' free, hungry, and holy Spirit.

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(1) 2 Peter 3:18 (2) a video of the speech, in its entirety, can be found here; (3) John 8:36; (4) Matthew 5:6; (5) 1 Corinthians 4:10