Here's to the Crazy Ones

I thought I didn’t know what Steve Jobs sounded like. I never watched Apple’s big press conferences or product releases, and I haven’t seen any of the Steve Jobs documentaries or films . . . I only read about it all—the news stories, the summaries, the characterization of Jobs in Ed Catmull’s book, Creativity Inc., about Pixar.

But that’s Steve Job’s voice in the above video, Think Different, one of those Apple ads that was more than an a TV commercial. It first aired when I was an impressionable 22 year old set to embark on a life I wanted to prove could be different than the one society would prefabricate for me. Here’s the text of the voiceover:

It was such a brilliant ad and an inspiring message of the power of being unique, true to yourself, and fitting in with 100 million people who feel the same way.

We want to be individuals. We want to be different. We want to be authentic.

And just one more thing: we want to fit in.

Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Muhammad Ali, Albert Einstein, Amelia Earhart, Jim Henson, Pablo Picasso, and Steve Jobs all stand out in history, they all thought different . . . but how well do you suppose they ever fit in?

Do you see what this commercial does? It makes swimming against the tide of societal norms seem so dreamy. It makes standing on your own seem cute. Look at them all smiling in the video, it must have been a happy existence, right? And you can be just like them with the right electronics—let’s all buy them together!

Let’s disregard the commercialism for a moment. Even those people who genuinely did long to be something more than just followers, those with the courage to do it, they had to have seen that commercial, heard that message, and think, Yeah, man, I’m one of them. I know I thought that. I know I wanted to be one of them.

Think different became not just a tagline, not just a rallying cry, but also a label. It was an umbrella all of us—outsiders and free spirits and creative types—could stand under and know we weren’t alone. It felt so good to feel defined.

Deconstruct Different

I can still remember one stray comment on the Internet from the time I publicly announced that I no longer considered myself a Christian. I remember it because it changed my entire outlook on who I was and where I stood.

I had given my reverse testimony, my story about how I had seen another light and come to realize I didn’t believe what I had professed to believe. I shared the torment and the guilt and the struggle and the relief. I poured out my soul into a blog post (how embarrassing—who even does that anymore). And somewhere in the comments someone wrote, “Oh look, an evangelical Christian lost his faith. How original!”

It felt cruel for about ten minutes until it sank in. Oh yeah. I’ve joined an exclusive group of literally billions of people who don’t believe this stuff.

In the small pond teeming with evangelical believers, I felt like a pretty exotic fish. But when I looked around in the new ocean into which I had swum, I felt like I just entered the largest, deepest, most populated area in all the world and broadcast the message, “Hey, I’m in the ocean!” The only people who may have found that significant were off in a pond somewhere.

It wasn’t a movement. Leaving the Church didn’t have a cool name. What I had done wasn’t special. I had no rallying cry. I had no label.

If you try looking for a definitive point when deconstruction became the term to describe reevaluating and/or abandoning one’s brand of faith, I wish you the best of success . . . but I had very little. The emergence of that label, that graciously comforting label, doesn’t appear to have a defining watershed moment.

But we’re all pretty familiar with the confluence events that made it popular (and necessary) to think differently about faith. The 2016 presidential election. MAGA Trumpism. The #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements. Several renowned public figures announced their own personal departures from the faith.

It didn’t have a Steve Jobs at the helm, but Deconstruction became the Think Different of people of faith who realized two things: 1) They couldn’t just follow what the church at large was doing; 2) They weren’t alone.

When enough people start responding in similar ways to the same impulses, they inevitably develop a language. The word, the label deconstruction emerged as a popular word in that language, and it can be very comforting. Being united with likeminded people can be extremely helpful when we feel ourselves becoming untethered from the anchors of our reality.

But I want to remind you of something: being authentic to who you are is yours alone. You can find help and you can follow people you trust—and you definitely should do that. But. I hope you never lose, or you never stop trying to find, your unique voice and your unique way of thinking. Labels have a way of tying a bow on our thoughts. The moment we give us a name, it feels as though our minds can rest. Ahhh, THAT’S what I am! I’m deconstructing!

Labels and catchphrases help us stop wondering. And that’s okay as a temporary salve for a mind burning with questions. But please, never stop wondering. Don’t let the mantra to think different become in practice think no more. Don’t let deconstruction become the construct that feels too safe to leave.

I don’t believe we have all the answers, but I think we can find more. If we’re going to find them, though, we’re going to need all of us to keep thinking.

Keep thinking.