Jobs versus jobs

The celebration of Steve Jobs continues, and today's USA Today had yet another opinion piece on his greatness. As with many prior articles that have appeared in various publications since his death, this one once again quotes from the Stanford graduation speech he gave a few years ago, which is excerpted here:

• "The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it," he told students at Stanford in a commencement speech in 2005."
• "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. … Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Today's article attributed this insight to his Buddhism and the manner in which Buddhism views death. Since he seems to have embraced Buddhism, it no doubt impacted his view of the world and of life. I do have some issues with this point of view, however.

First,  Jobs' take on this is very modern, if not post-modern. He assumes that to do meaningful work requires loving that work. Unfortunately, for most of history the vast majority of people have had very little choice in their work. Constraints of education, poverty, tyrants, war, and culture have pushed most people into their work, most often just to provide the basic necessities of food and shelter. Jobs' philosophy reflects our very spoiled and privileged time and location in history, and when taken to its logical conclusion it would say that most work is not meaningful and that most people lived meaningless lives. That is quite opposite to what Christianity implies, which is that all work (assuming it is ethical and honest) can be done as an offering to God with inherent value and meaning, and all lives have inherent meaning.  If circumstances consign us to menial labor, that job can still be offered to God and provide satisfaction in doing it well. (see Eccles.2:24-25). Having choice is a great privilege and luxury, but it is not what determines meaning.

Second, Jobs' philosophy is quite counter to Christ's teaching that 'to find your life you must lose it'. Jobs' emphasis seems to be on looking inside yourself to focus on what pleases you, to find what provides 'self-fulfillment'. Christ, on the other hand, taught that we must look to God and please Him, and then whatever we do will be meaningful. The one is very self-centered, the other very God-centered.

The fundamental difference, to me, seems to be why we work: do we work to please and fulfill ourselves, or do we work to glorify God? To work in order to glorify God is certainly not to 'waste your life', as Jobs said, but it is very much like 'living someone else's life', though the 'someone else' is really the 'Someone Else'.