Dave Brisbin 11.9.25
The founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, was one of the most driven men of our time. His desire for more, his dissatisfaction with the status quo, created a lifelong willingness to strike out in radically new directions. Raised in the Lutheran church, by his teens he became disillusioned, dissatisfied with Christianity-as-practiced and non-answers to his existential questions. He embraced Zen Buddhism, spending three years in India, returning with shaved head and traditional Indian garb, which translated to bare feet and jeans in the Apple offices as tech innovation became his driving force.

Couple decades later, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Fought it with everything he had for seven years but by 2011, had accepted he was dying. Friends and family created a stream of visitors to his home, and conversations slowly morphed from business back to those existential questions he had never answered to his own satisfaction. His sister said at his funeral that after making eye contact with everyone in the room, his gaze refocused beyond them, over their shoulders at something only he could see. His last words were, “Oh wow! Oh wow, oh wow!”

To overcome the fear and uncertainty that radical change represents, to persevere through the time it takes to assimilate radical change, we need a tremendous amount of desire. We need to feel a divine dissatisfaction, the blessed unrest such desire creates. But where does all that come from?

If you’re reading this, it’s because you desire something more or different. But at a level that motivates? You could say that the entirety of Jesus’ message was a series of shocks to the system, a constant overturning of the tables of our status quo. The shocks are what break through business as usual and present the possibility of something more. Like a beautiful face that promises new relationship or a loss that lays waste to old ones, motivating desire always follows.

Death is the ultimate shock to the system. 

Jesus taught and lived a constant laying down of life-as-practiced to create the shocking space for something more. Something that will make us say, Oh wow!

Shock to the System

True North with Dave Brisbin is a podcast about the things that can bring you back to center, whether God, spirituality, community or family or all of them. Never esoteric or abstract for its own sake; always practical and full of common sense, we’re interested in exploring the effect of what we believe on our lives and questioning what we believe in light of the deep connection we’re meant to live. Dave Brisbin is an author, speaker, coach, and songwriter. He is the teaching pastor of theeffect, a faith community and recovery ministry in San Clemente, CA and executive director of Encompass Recovery, an addiction treatment center in San Juan Capistrano. For more on finding deeper spiritual expression free from limiting beliefs and behavior, go to davebrisbin.com.