I got a new phone the other day. It's got the biggest screen and the thinnest body I have ever seen in a phone. It does so much more than my last phone. And its not even an Apple product. It takes better photos and the screen's eye-popping resolution definitely makes Netflix more cinematic. This changes everything, just as the advertising promised. Although perhaps not quite everything. The baby still wakes me up in the night. My ongoing battle with customer services about returning a faulty printer continues. Everything has not changed. Perhaps I should call advertising standards for misrepresentation.
'This changes everything' has become an empty cliché. It was the advertising slogan for the first iPhone in 2007 and although it can be argued that Steve Job's combination of a phone and an iPod and an internet communicator was a major innovation, it has not solved world poverty or brought world peace. Yes, it was the most profitable product in history. But it could not cure the pancreatic cancer that took the life of its creator.
Steve Jobs is dead. The visionary director of Apple who has left his mark on the world's of technology, music, software, movies and animation and lived his life with a desire to 'make a dent in the universe' is no longer with us. He ended up with nothing, just as he told his biographer Walter Isaacson: 'I saw my life as an arc and that it would end and compared to that, nothing mattered...You're born alone, you're going to die alone...And does anything else really matter? I mean what is it exactly that you have to lose, Steve? You know? There's nothing... I want to believe in an afterlife... That when you die, it doesn't just all disappear. The wisdom you've accumulated. Somehow it lives on... But sometimes I think it's just like an on-off switch. Click and you're gone. And that's why I don't like putting on-off switches on Apple devices.'
I wonder if turning off any of your devices reminds you of your mortality? And yet if one of the wealthiest and most influential men in the world wrestled with his own mortality despite being surrounded by incredible wealth, a rapidly expanding business empire and fulfilling and innovative work, there's every reason for all of us to be thinking about life and death. Every person you see walking down the street, gathered round the coffee machine at work, standing at the school gate has to settle this issue one way or another. Is there something beyond the grave or is death the final switching-off?
Unlike my new phone, the events on that first Easter Sunday really do change everything. If Jesus really did die, stay dead for three days and then not just resuscitate in the tomb but rise victorious from the dead, this really does reshape the essence of human existence.
Here are 10 things to start with:
1. Life is not futile. It really does have a meaning ( 1 Corinthians 15: 12-20).
2. Jesus' resurrection is just the beginning – we will all be raised ( 1 Corinthians 15: 20-23).
3. The sacrifice of Jesus for the sins of the world was effective ( 1 Corinthians 15:21-24).
4. Christianity has evidence unlike any other faith to support its veracity ( 1 Corinthians 15: 16-19).
5. There's more to life than the accumulation of wealth and pleasure ( 1 Corinthians 15: 29-34).
6. Death is not the last word ( 1 Corinthians 15:54).
7. Our work is purposeful ( 1 Corinthians 15:58).
8. Death is not an escape. We will all have to give account of ourselves before God ( Hebrews 9:27).
9. Jesus is declared with power to be the Son of God ( Romans 1:4).
10. Everything that Jesus claimed is true.
I find it relatively easy to evangelise on behalf of my phone. I am convinced that its low-light photography is the best in its class. Chances are that even today I will find a way to drop that into conversation, or I will share a photo demonstrating its effectiveness on my Instagram feed. When I am having coffee with one of my colleagues or with a client and they spot my new phone, chances are that I have at least three reasons ready to give them as to why I decided to buy this particular model. But no product has changed the universe like the resurrection of Jesus.
I am reminded to be quicker and more confident to spread the word about the resurrection. It really does change everything.
Krish Kandiah's new book 'God is Stranger: What really happens when God turns up?' is published by Hodder (2017) and explores the challenging problem of why we so often we find it so difficult to recognise God and relate to him.
