Steve Jobs on Human Nature: Right or Wrong?

I can't source this quote, but someone attributes it to the deceased Apple CEO Steve Jobs:

"Technology is nothing.  What is important is that you have faith in people that are basically good and smart.  And you should give them the tools.  They'll do wonderful things with them."  

Whether Steve Jobs actually said this is of little importance. I hope no one goes around making memes of this quote (it came from a trustworthy source). But what is important is the content.

How can Steve Jobs say such things -- that people are basically good and smart -- when the U.S. government during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations have, through its use of technology, it's military technology, destabilized the Middle East?

The United States has used all kinds of technological advancements to bomb, shoot, snipe, kill it's alleged enemies in the Middle East. Not only that, but that same technology has ended up in one of the hands of the worst terrorist organizations in the world, ISIS. They aren't using it as farming equipment.

Note that Jobs didn't limit it to computer technology. He said "technology." But even if he did limit the meaning to computer technology, the U.S. military is in the business of using that too.

One can't exempt non-government employees from these implications.

One can not say that only they -- the U.S. government -- is evil but the rest of us are "basically good and smart."

No, we are all fallen (Romans 3:23).

And this is evidenced not only on the daily but by the fact that we vote the people that make these decisions into office.

Gospel people don't put in power people who believe in the gospel of nation-building or salvation through bombing other nations.

...or any other gospel.

But that kind of politics aside...

...our fallen nature is showcased in our ability to use technology in Planned Parenthood clinics to tear babies apart ISIS-style. 

And of aborted babies that aren't killed in that way, their organs can potentially be sold.

Sometimes, the eyeballs of these aborted children fall into the laps of their murderers, and then they coldly laugh at it.

"Basically good and smart" people use internet technology to visit websites like Ashley Madison to arrange affairs, so they can discretely commit adultery on their spouses.

We use medical technology to mutilate our God-given organs. And if that's not enough, we use another kind of medical technology, or medical advancement (hormone pills), to "help" the same people "transition" away from their God-given gender.

We drug young boys who are perfectly fine or misdiagnose them and call their "condition" ADHD,

And how could I forget, we use the power of the computer to create digits in bank accounts and create money that have no corresponding token or bills in the real world. Modern central banking is nothing more than ancient coin-clipping. It is counterfeiting writ large. It is theft.

And in many of these cases, we are in agreement with them.

We rationalize them.

We intellectualize.

We philosophize.

"...They'll do wonderful things with them" we are told.

Yes, the possibilities are endless.

How many of these instances of "giving them tools" have to be listed before we lose faith in the assertion that "people are basically good and smart"?

We have technology, and we have shown that we are barbaric.

The cure to the barbarism expressed in our human nature is our ongoing sanctification and salvation in Jesus Christ.

Greed is not good

"Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life." (Colossians 3:5-7)

(Update at 8:28 PM: So I am still studying and ran across this scripture. Jesus himself is speaking: "And he said to them," Take care! Be on your guard against all kind of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Luke 11:15)

Greed is, quite simply, a sin, under the category of idolatry.

Of course, Wall Street businessmen and politicians aren't the only ones capable of being greedy, or impure, or having (sexual) passion (outside of the will of God), or evil desires. The large part of society who are non-politicians have the same capacity.

And "on account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient."

The upside to all of this in the next verse.

"These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life."

Through Jesus, who is also called Y'shua or Yeshua, through his death on the cross and the power of his resurrection, we are able to be forgiven for our sin and are enabled by the Holy Spirit (the Ruach Hakodesh) to live holy lives. Formerly greedy people, formerly sexually passionate people, and so forth, who once lived those lives are capable of living new ones.

May the Gospel of Jesus Christ flourish in the hearts of men...

...including the Wall Street crowd and the political class.

Guy Fawkes and Us

So much for the textbook Catholic high school teaching on Guy Fawkes.

The Whiskey and Gunpowder blog has an excellent article based on its namesake that explores the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1700's and the Gunpowder Plot of the early 1600's.

The following passage really made me think of something I'd thought of before:

Anarchists and various anti-government types often appropriate a stylized simulacrum of Guy Fawkes’ face as their symbol because Guy was the one caught preparing the barrels of gunpowder. He is most closely associated with the anti-government plot in the popular imagination…

But Guy wasn’t interested in permanently or drastically reducing the reach of power of government; he merely wanted a Catholic monarch in power to persecute the Protestants, instead of the prevailing situation in which a Protestant monarch was persecuting the Catholic minority.

Guy was actually much like your garden-variety nationalist. He wanted his kind of people in power. This is not unlike the supporters of the few politicians we like — like Ron Paul.

The Republican Party and the Democratic Party aren't small-government or pro-civil liberties. They just kick and scream as if they are. But really, it's just that their version of big government isn't being posed on the rest of the nation.

That's it.

And it also reminded that statism has so many different incarnations (in this case religious) that we really have to question whether it was the religions themselves or something else that was the cause of it.

I don't know. Maybe something like, you know, the human heart.