A Couple of Billionaires...And the Difference Jesus Makes
Bill Gates was known as a cut-throat competitor in the business world, who accrued his colossal fortune both by dint of his genius for innovation, and his ruthlessness in pursuit of wealth and power.
He has never been a religious man, and has indicated that, at most, he is an agnostic.
In an interview, he declared, “I’m not somebody who goes to church on a regular basis. The specific elements of Christianity are not something I’m a huge believer in. There’s a lot of merit in the moral aspects of religion. I think it can have a very, very positive impact.”
He has also said, “Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.”
But, his life began to dramatically change direction after he married Melinda French in 1994. Melinda was the product of Catholic schools, and presumably had significant exposure to Christian teaching…including many a Sunday spent in worship. I don’t know whether she considers herself a Christian, now.
Nonetheless, she seems that she had a significant effect in getting her husband to radically alter the direction of his life, and now he finds vastly more pleasure and purpose allocating his resources to causes that help to promote health, education, and which fight poverty.
It is not by accident that the foundation into which he has poured those billions is known as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It was clearly Melinda’s values that made the largest charitable foundation on earth, possible.
Those values were shaped by the teachings of Jesus, even if the Gates’ family does not profess faith in him as their Savior.
And, when the Gates Foundation was looking for allies in the fight against malaria, they discovered that the United Methodist Church was a powerful, efficient, and effective one.
One of the ways in which the church has helped to dramatically reduce the malaria rate in Africa, is through teaching and preaching in those very services which Bill found so inefficient. (Actually, I’m not sure that Bill has attended enough church services to have any real idea what happens in them.)
Melinda Gates has openly praised the United Methodist Church for its work, in partnership with the Gates Foundation, several other charitable groups (both secular and religious), the UN, and several governments.
The late Steve Jobs rejected Christianity, over the issue of suffering. According to his biographer, Walter Isaacson: At age 13, Jobs asked the Lutheran pastor of his parents' church if God knew about starving children. "Yes, God knows everything," the pastor replied. Jobs never returned to church, refusing to worship a God who allowed such suffering.
Ironically, Jobs was never known for his great philanthropy to alleviate that suffering. It’s not that he didn’t do anything, but what he did do, pales before what Gates has done. Jobs knew about starving children and had billions of dollars available to him to help end their hunger. Instead, toward the end of his life, he raged that he would spend his whole fortune, if necessary, to crush the folks who had created the Android phone to compete with his iPhone.
There’s been no news about how his vast estate will be distributed, but Gates has declared that he’s giving each of his kids $10 million, and the rest of his fortune will go to the foundation. (Warren Buffet has also pledged to give virtually his entire fortune to the foundation, as well, and has already donated billions to it. They have both prevailed on Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook to also give most of his vast fortune to charity.)
Jobs identified himself as a Buddhist. And like every human…Christian, Buddhist, agnostic, atheist… he was a bundle of conflicts and inconsistencies. A former girlfriend said, “He was an enlightened being, who was cruel. That was a strange combination.”
Jobs apparently felt that was an apt description of the God he rejected, but couldn’t do better, himself.
He would condemn the dangers of materialism, while urging consumers to rush out and buy every new iteration of the iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc. (Interesting, that a Buddhist had his most popular products all start with “i” when the negation of self is the ultimate goal of Buddhism. Maybe that’s why he used a small ‘”i.”)
There are plenty of people who profess to be Christians who are also “strange combinations” and I am NOT saying that Buddhism provided Jobs with an excuse for his cruel side. It is certainly not a cruel faith.
Apple now has about $100 billion at its disposal. It would be nice to see some of that go toward ending the hunger and suffering Jobs’ professed to find so offensive that he rejected Christianity because of it.
Strangely, he never seemed to get the part of the Christian message that says God calls on us to help alleviate each other’s suffering, and is not content with us just enriching ourselves while doing little to care for one another.
I doubt Bill Gates will ever quite grasp the “utility” of faith, though I will not write him off. But, he has discovered that Jesus had a point when he asked, “What does it profit a person to gain the world and lose their soul?” He has found a far greater satisfaction in devoting his life and wealth to helping the people Jesus called, “the least of these.”
Interestingly, it was also the “least” of those three people…Melinda Gates…who appears to have been the one who saw great need in the world, and a great opportunity to make a positive difference. Perhaps, she recalled hearing, during one of those “wasted” Sundays in church, hearing about Jesus saying stuff like, “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.” And “It is more blessed to give, than to receive.”
She seems to have learned those lessons well. And now, even Bill gets it, even if he doesn’t realize who had a role in changing his life, and who is changing the world, through him and his wife.
That's what he might discover, if he spent his Sundays a little differently.
In Ministry With You,
Bob Morwell
