Job (the Movie)

I watched the movie titled Jobs which is about founder of Apple company, Steve Jobs. One thing I like about the movie is the strong similarity in appearance that the cast of actors playing the various characters have with their real-life personalities. I couldn’t have thought of a better actor who bore such semblance in appearance to Steve Job than Ashton Kutcher. And I thought he delivered a compelling performance of Steve Job as portrayed in other sources – Intense, independent-minded, domineering, manipulative, revengeful, cold, ambitious. Co-actor Josh Gad played the part of Job’s trusted friend, co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak, who spots the milder geeky personality, quite the Yin to Job’s Yang, and complementing the business acumen of Job with his technical genius for hardware engineering.

The basic storyline, probably well-known to most people familiar with the biography of the various personalities of the computer industry is as follows. Job discovers a prototype of an unprecedented graphic-interface computer in Wozniak’s house which Wozniak had been working on as his own personal project. He convinced Wozniak to start a company together and market the invention. They obtained the interest of a retailer who made a deal to buy the new invention from them. Job and his team begin working to produce the agreed quantity of the invention in Job’s home garage. Apple later expanded, this time having a board of directors, one of which playing the role of the antagonistic role of the disapproving shareholder representative. Job head-hunted for John Sculley from Pepsi to lead the marketing team at Apple. The board later became dissatisfied with what they saw as Job’s exorbidant spending of money into his unprofitable pet project, and replaced him as CEO with Sculley. Job quited Apple. Many years later, with Apple floundering and in need of direction, the new board invited Job back to the company. Job was reinstated to position as CEO, and led Apple to become the world’s most valuable company.

Job is portrayed as a character with a brilliant intelligence but with a terrible personality. He is casted as this genius who knows better than everyone else, and criticisms or opposition from others are never constructive, but are mere stumbling blocks towards the ideal that Job knows better. Job perceives difference in opinion as a lack of foresight on the part of others. He yelled at a fellow game designer at Atari because that colleague was of the opinion that the prevailing technology does not allow for color games, and demands to be given his own project to lead at Atari. He smartingly proves that colleague of his wrong by introducing the game “Breakout”. A judgement of his subordinate in his team developing the Lisa computer that multiple typefonts is not a necessary urgent development is construed by Job as an irreconcilable difference of vision, which merits that subordinate an extremely harsh shelling and firing by Job in front of all the other team members. When the board of Apple remarked that the Apple II failed to sell well because of the high price racketed up by Job in developmental cost, Job retorted back by laying the blame squarely on his marketing director for poor marketing strategy. There is no second guess on Job’s part that the opinion of others might be correct. He is confident that he is right and they are not. And supposedly for Job, being a jerk is justified if you are right. Well, I suppose it is better than someone who is wrong (or simply because he is the boss), and behaves like a jerk regardless. But I would think that working environments would be more civil and humane if we take away the ‘jerk’ manner of dealing with people altogether.

I like this quote attributed to Job that was made at the end of the show - “When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way that it is. And that your life is to live your life inside the world, and try not to get in too much trouble, and maybe get an education, and get a job, and make some money and have a family. But life can be a lot broader than that when you realize one simple thing: that everything around us that we call life was made up by people that are no smarter than you. And you can build your own things. You can build your own life. Build a life. Don’t live one, build one.”

I guess a good question that people can ask themselves in their daily lives is how things in the society or the world they live in can be better, and if they are capable enough, to find ways to achieve that vision. This can be in both the little and the big things.  For Job, his belief of a better world is in the technology products he develops. But I am sure that there are more things in the world that can be improved than just technological advances. For one, I believe society can be kinder, caring, and more compassionate, and people should look out for the interests of one another rather for themselves alone.

What is true Faith?

Today’s sermon at church by the pastor was about faith. The pastor gave his sermon based on Hebrews 11 and his sermon was titled Faith of the Ancients. The character of Abraham was used as a model of true faith.

What exactly is faith? There seems to be many definition of what faith is. For this sermon in church today, the pastor states that faith is expressed in obedience to God. The pastor points out Abraham’s obedience to God’s command to go into a new land, as well as to God’s test of him to sacrifice his son Isaac. A Christian friend who recommended me to go for deliverance services in order to receive healing from my tension headache tells me that the faith asked of is not so much about believing that God will heal me, but more of an experimental nature of recognizing the possibility that God may heal me. He terms it “experimental faith”.

I was googling about Christian solutions to obsessive compulsive disorder. Okay, the reason is that I suspect that I might be suffering from a certain obsessive compulsive disorder known as “hypochondria” in that I have preoccupative thoughts about health-related worries. I have worried about things like “damage to cardiovascular health due to passive smoking”, “mercury poisoning from breaking lab thermometer”, “electromagnetic radiation from CRT computer screen”, “brain damage from alcohol consumption”, “brain damage from hitting head on floor” etc. Perhaps this preoccupation with my tinnitus and tension headache are also obsessive in nature, and over-proportionate to their severity. These obsessive health-related worries can be quite debilitating as they can occupy my thought for an entire day and last for months. I was thinking that Christianity might offer solutions to my obsessive worries.

There is this Christian psychiatrist by the name of Ian Osbourne who has written a book titled “Can Christianity cure obsessive-compulsive disorder?” He has a website with the address ocdandchristianity.com where he writes information on strategies to deal with obsessive compulsive worries. His proposition borrows from his understanding of a new approach in the world of psychology to deal with OCD named “responsibility transfer therapy” (RTT). The idea of RTT is for the sufferer of the OCD to release himself or herself from the obsessive worry by transferring the responsibility of the worry to another person to handle. For example, a person who worries obsessively about not turning off the gas before leaving the house would delegate that responsibility to check that the gas is turned off to another person, thereby relieving him or her from some measure of that obsessive sense of responsibility to ensure that the gas is turned off. Using this psychology paradigm to describe the Christian approach of trusting in God, this responsibility is here transferred to God. An excerpt from the website below.

“A person suffering from fire obsessions, for instance, turns to God and allows him to take responsibility for the prevention of fire. The individual tormented by contamination obsessions gives to God the responsibility for whether or not he will get a disease. The person who fears she has offended God leaves responsibility for any offense to God….Devout individuals with OCD must work to resist compulsions. In doing so they demonstrate or prove, both to God and to themselves, how much they trust him and love him.”

This Christian RTT approach relies on the notion of faith in God in its method. The writer has provided an excerpt of what faith here entails.

“Theologian Martin Buber illuminates the issue. In his seminal book, Two Types of Faith, Buber begins with this proposition: “There are two, and only two, types of faith: The one from the fact that I trust someone . . . the other from the fact that I acknowledge a thing to be true.” Religious faith, according to Buber, always involves, most basically, either trusting in God or believing in a revealed truth. It is the first type of faith, he is displayed on every page of the Old Testament, as well as in most every sermon by Jesus. It involves unconditional trust in a God who is personal, vital, loving, and trustworthy.

This has great relevance for OCD sufferers. One of the things most puzzling about them is their inability to be reassured about their obsessional fears. People with religious obsessions can be told again and again that Jesus died for them, and that salvation awaits them, yet they still have agonizing doubts. Obsessionals, in fact, have great difficulty in believing in any fact that directly opposes one of their obsessions. OCD sufferers cannot even take as a fact what they see with their own eyes: they can stare straight at a light switch, see that it is off, and yet fear that it is on.  OCD sufferers have a hard time believing in facts. They are doubters. Yet they are very good at trusting in others. It is trust in the person of God—in his power and his mercy—that OCD sufferers must rely on.

For instance, in the case of a person who obsesses that a fire will start in her stove, the right kind of faith is to leave the possibility of a fire with God. If God should, for God’s own reasons, want a fire to start, then he will start one. If he doesn't, he won’t. The wrong kind of faith is to have “faith” that a fire won’t start. For another example. Suppose a person obsesses that he has lost his salvation, and will go to

hell. The right type of faith is to leave his eternal destiny in the hands of God.

The OCDer is called to a deep kind of faith: trust in the ultimate power and mercy of God. We can be greatly consoled by a confident hope that God will prevent an obsessional fear from being realized, a hope that is based on our trust in God's mercy and love. But we can't have factual certainty.”

I appreciate the distinction made by the theologian in the excerpt above. Basically, it is a distinction of faith about the factual certainty of God doing something according to one’s wishes, and a ‘milder’, less demanding sort of faith of simply trusting in God. However, a question I want to ask is what kind of faith is actually asked of in the bible. And here, I can quote two scripture giving different answers. There is the one in Hebrews 11 which seems to indicate faith of the kind that requires belief in factual certainty of the fulfillment of the request to God – “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” Then there is the account of Jesus healing the leper in Luke 5. In that account, the leper begged Jesus “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean”. I thought that the faith expressed by the leper, as connoted by his words is more of the ‘milder kind’ in the sense that he has faith in the power of Jesus to heal, but he still leaves as a question of whether he would be healed on the basis of Jesus’ willingness to heal. Now, I will highlight that there is still a thin distinction between the faith described here with that ‘milder’ version of faith in the Martin Buber excerpt above. The leper expresses his faith in Jesus ability to heal, whereas Martin Buber’s ‘milder’ faith simply expresses trust in God given any circumstances, even if things go against the desired wishes of the person holding onto this faith. (Trust me guys, there is even more of such mind-numbing delineating of concepts and definitions in law studies, and some law school students who quite inadvertently develop a habit to see a need for clarification of such delineation in whatever they discuss. I see that theologians may come second in the running for such vain inquisitions)

Personally, I think the ‘milder’ kinds of faith is more reasonably to be asked of a person than a faith demanding a belief in the certainty of the fulfillment of the request. I mean, why does God have to require that his subject believe whole-heartedly that he, God, will do what the subject want before he does what the subject wants? It seems idiosyncratic to me.

In this website containing Philip Yancey’s synopsis for his book “Prayer – Does it make any difference”, Yancey concludes on that question of prayer with “I now see it [Prayer] not so much as a way of getting God to do my will as a way of being available to get in the stream of what God wants to accomplish on earth.” I don’t think Yancey is necessarily theologically substantiated in his drawing up of priorities of the different functions of prayers. I would like to think that I can and should use prayers to make God do the things I want him to, and that this is as equally important an aspect of prayer. There are many examples of such prayers in the bible where the prayee (pardon the legalese) is requesting God to do something that he wants. But I like how Yancey realistically acknowledges the predicament that believers face in having their prayers go unanswered and things not going according to their prayer requests, perhaps the reason why he came to, in my opinion, a disappointing conclusion that the priority of the function of prayers is more of to understand God than to expect a fulfillment of the prayer request. And I appreciate that he does not take the condescending tone that some Christians might take towards another believer by suggesting that that believer’s prayer is not answered because that believer did not have enough faith in God, or that that believer “did not ask for God to come into his or her heart”. A harsh logical understanding of scriptural passage may lead to such conclusions in my opinion.

Law school starts tomorrow for me, and I can’t say that I am feeling too prepared to deal with school given my prevailing conditions. I did experience a lot of difficulties for the past few semesters because of the tension headache, and perhaps, as what I suspect, from obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety disorder. Word has it that these conditions are chronic. But I am hoping for this phase to pass and for my mind to be more settled so that I can concentrate on my law studies. I am not sure whether Ian Osbourne whom I mentioned earlier is being truthful or simply trying to be encouraging, but I like what he wrote in his website about how “three of the greatest luminaries in the history of the Christian

religion: Martin Luther, John Bunyan, and Saint Therese of Lisieux” suffered from obsessional fears indicative of OCD as well, in particular, fear of loss of salvation. Martin Luther, progenitor of the protestant faith I know. John Bunyan I have heard of but am not too familiar, and the third one I have not come across (but I should read up on since she is so venerably described by the author, and to ensure that I come off as well-informed in case one of those smart aleck Christians start questioning me on my knowledge of Christian history). I am amused by his identification of disorders based on his study accounts of these historical figures and his thesis that “All three, even more remarkably, after receiving unhelpful advice from their church elders, found a way to conquer their tormenting thoughts through faith. Each found the same solution: Trusting absolutely in God’s power and mercy. In psychological terms, they transferred the responsibility for their obsessional fears to God.” Perhaps I may come to find a similar sense of relief from being able to trust God more.

Bill Gates Sr Showing Up for Life – Hard Work

I continue with the audio material by Bill Gates Sr, Showing Up for Life. In this segment, he talks about the value of hard work.

One of the reason Bill Gates Sr gave for working as hard as he did when he was younger was that he likes working, and the challenge of making decisions where there is the risk of failing.

Another reason was because of his father. He recounted that in his first summer job during high school, he worked as a ‘swamper’ in his father’s furniture store, lifting furniture and delivering them to people’s home. In 1912, his grandfather, William Henry Gates agreed to $733 to buy a furniture store in downtown street Bremerton. Bill Gates Sr said that his Dad’s life revolved around the store. His image of his dad was him walking around every night picking up coal that had fallen off the trucks and putting them into their coal box. Coal then was used for heating. The reason was due to the era of the Great Depression and there was the fear of poverty. Bill Gates Sr stated that his father had learnt what it meant to be poor long before the Depression, who as an eight years old, sold newspaper in the freezing cold of Alaska to help the family get by while his dad went panning for gold. As an eight grader, he gave up school to support the family. He didn’t go to movies or ball games, fish or bowl or hike, or take a vacation.

Bill Gates Sr recounted how in the early days of Microsoft, his son, Trey (Bill Gates) and his partner, Paul Allen worked, ate and slept in their first office where they wrote software programs. There were no days off, and they worked at the same relentless pace for decades.

It is ironic that I remember coming across a quote by Bill Gates which goes “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” I suppose one can dispute the conventional wisdoms sometimes, and see things in more than one way.

Another contrarian remark that I read came from Warren Buffet who quotes Ronald Reagan - “Hard work never kills anyone. But why risk it?”

In addition, I think it also important to question whether one’s hard work is being adequately rewarded for. Is there a better way to do things? And who stands to gain from all the hard work that is being put in, especially when one is working for another person as an employee?

The wisdom teacher in the book of Ecclesiastes makes some really apt points about work to put things into perspective. In Ecclesiastes 4:4-8 – “And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Fools fold their hands and ruin themselves. Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind. Again I saw something meaningless under the sun: There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother. There was no end to his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. “For whom am I toiling,” he asked, “and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?” This too is meaningless— a miserable business!”  The point here is moderation when it comes to work. To not be like the fool who impoverishes himself with his laziness, but it is also meaningless to work oneself to the bones and deprive oneself of enjoyment in life.

Some people work to the extent that they forget how to live life when they are not working, and find it difficult to enjoy themselves on their vacation or on their day off. What comes to my mind now is a snippet from Lee Kuan Yew, who speaking from his own experience, called on elderly Singaporeans to be more “productive” and work as long as they can: “You work as long as you can work and you will be healthier and happier for it. If you ask me to stop working all of a sudden, I think I’ll just shrivel up, face the wall and just that,” he said. It’s like he doesn’t know what to do apart from working anymore. I like this quote from one of my favourite writers of all time, Lin Yu Tang, from his book “The Importance of Living” – “If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live”

I suppose my approach when it comes to work is to learn to find means of earning a living where I find fulfillment and do good, and to bargain for my fair share of wage commensurating with the profit I gain for the company, and to find ways and means in society to which I can invest my money, such as through entrepreneurships or through investment vehicles like stocks and shares.

I wouldn’t want to have to work to such an extent that I have to compromise my Christian commitments, such as not going to church on Sundays or constantly missing on weekly fellowship meetings, or I won’t have to time to spend with my family. And I guess it would be necessary to set out the rules from the start when finding employment that I would draw the lines as such. As of now, I am not sure whether I am someone who can handle too much stress or too much work, such as having to work overnight and going on sleep deprivation.

I heard that as a lawyer, the working hours are long, especially in the private firms. A senior I know relates to me how she is getting burned out from the long hours and workload she is getting from a big law firm, and having to work throughout the weekends. It makes me apprehensive on wanting to choose such a law firm to work at. On the other hand, I have heard how work life is pretty balanced being a Deputy Public Prosecutor at the Attorney General’s Chamber.

I really could do better by knowing how to make money, and not be trapped in the conventions where I earn a regular stipend working hard and long hours for others. I suppose I will try studying how rich people make their money to see if there are effective ways of making money without exhausting myself with too much work.

Bill Gates’ Sr Showing Up for Life - Showing up

Bill Gates Sr is the father of the Microsoft founder Bill Gates. He was a prominent lawyer in Seattle who owned his private practice, but is now retired. In this audio material by him titled Showing up for life : Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime, Bill Gates Sr talks about the values he holds on to in life.  He has adopted the suffix "Sr." to distinguish himself from his more famous son. Bill Gates, his son, gave an introduction to the audio material, addressing to his Dad that the next time people asked whether he was the real Bill Gates, to tell them ‘Yes’, and that he is all the things the other one strives to be.

The first chapter of the audio material was about showing up. Bill Gates Sr states the following in the audio material.

“When I was a young lawyer in the 1950s, I first became involved with causes in the community by joining the board at the YMCA where I had spent many happy hours as a college student. After a while, I decided I wanted to do more in community and help out in a hands on way. So in addition to pro-bono work, I started serving on communities and boards, everything from chamber of commerce to school levy campaigns. Over time the nature of them change, and the numbers great. My wife Mary was showing up for her own list of cause. Why do I show up so much? Well, I suppose there are many reasons. I show up because I care about a cause, or because I care about the person who asked me to show up, and maybe sometimes because I get irritated when other people do not show up. My obsession with showing up has become a joke among my children; still I noticed that they have picked up the habit. And frankly, that is what happened to me.  I started showing up because as far back as I can remember, I watch people I admire show up.”  

I like the perspective that Bill Gates Sr gives about showing up and volunteering for causes that there are in one’s community. Indeed, I think such a value has rubbed off his son Bill Gates who now undertakes philanthropic work with his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is about taking initiative to volunteer at causes where help is required, and I think Singapore society can do better if people take on a more volunteering spirit when it comes to helping out in community causes. For myself, I figure that I should be more active in helping out with causes around my community, whether this be in school, in church, or in my neighbourhood. During the last campaigning for the Singapore general election in 2011, the member of parliament for my constituency, Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, was doing his rounds going from house to house to greet the residents. He told me that I could help serve the community by serving out administrative roles for the residents’ consultation sessions with the Member of Parliament. I was reluctant to because I wanted to spend more time studying for law school. But since I am now on leave of application, I figure I might want to give it a try. It would be an avenue for me to interact with the residents from Yishun coming from different walks of life, and to understand the issues that they face in life.

I wish I could show up for more causes in law school and in church, but I do suffer from some self-confidence issue about my capabilities. For example, I initially signed up for the pro-bono club at law school, but I decided to pull out when there was a project which required members to research and write about how prevailing laws should be reformed. I have not been doing too well in law school, and I find research and writing difficult for some strange reasons, so I was worried that I may end up not being able to put things together. I tried joining the LSIRC (Law School International Relations Committee) when I first came into law school because I thought it might give me an avenue to interact with Japanese exchange students as I was quite fond of Japanese culture. But I was rejected after the interview, presumably because I did not exude the quality of being sociable enough to interact with foreign students on exchange. But I did volunteer in one such activity that was organized by the committee by bringing out some law female students from Hong Kong University around Orchard.

I really wish I could ‘show up’ more in life, and participate in more causes and activities in life. I suppose it would really help if I overcome my lack of self-confidence, and if I were to inculcate a more pro-active approach to going about things in life by actively identifying causes and participating in them.

This lesson on showing up reminds me of the parable of the talents in the bible where the lazy servant was punished for not putting his talents to use, whilst the industrious servant was rewarded for putting his talents to use. I suppose the moral of the story is that there is an obligation on us by God to put whatever talents that we have to good use, and we will have to account to God on how we exercise our talents while we are here on earth.