I think both Steve Jobs and Henry Ford were wrong. There’s an apocryphal saying (wrongly) attributed to Henry Ford, in which he says “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘Faster horses.’” And there’s a real quote from Steve Jobs (Business Week, 1997) in which he says, “People don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” Is it true that people cannot dream any more—that we can no longer leap from present realities into future possibilities because all we know are “horses” and all we want are “faster horses”? Is it true that we lack all imagination and creative vision so that the only things we truly want are shiny gadgets someone else drops into our field of vision?
Jobs and Ford may have been geniuses, but I hold a higher opinion of the human capacity for wonder and inspiration. To say that our world is limited to wishing for “faster” versions of the status quo is to deny the depth present in the human spirit. We don’t just want to minimize the side-effects of disease; we want to eradicate disease all together. We don’t just want to win our battles more efficiently; we want to stop all war. We don’t just want to see the moon through a bigger telescope; we want to walk on the lunar surface.
And to claim that humans don’t know what they really want until some capitalist makes a new product for us flies in the face of how any mother or father will tell you exactly what they want: they long for their child to be safe; or how any citizen of the world can easily tell the difference between a shiny new toy and the lasting beauty of a national park. Something within us is inherently creative as well as genetically capable of appreciating what is beautiful and precious. That ability is God-given. And it needs to be shouted out loud whenever the Jobs or Fords or rich and powerful would try and convince us otherwise.
Every year we lift up the fundamental value of Thanksgiving—of giving thanks for the blessings of life, whether present in family and friends, in healthy bodies or loving hearts, or just because of a great meal of turkey with all the fixings. And during the month of November, the church celebrates Stewardship Sunday—an egalitarian process of helping plan a budget and communally support our congregational ministry, whether it involves widow’s mites or a portion of King Midas’ treasure. The incentive behind both events is the same: We see what in life is important and we give thanks for it. And we dream grand dreams for today and audacious hopes for tomorrow, which is why we commit our resources to make them possible.
Jesus never talked about “faster horses” or selling people on a better “status quo.” Jesus spoke of a grain of wheat becoming a hundred stalks—a mustard seed becoming a thriving bush—and how God’s loving mercy far exceeds our very ability to imagine or conceive of it. Thoreau once wrote, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” Remember this with joy: You have been fearfully and wonderfully made by a God with whom all things are possible.
—Randy Bush