Sold!

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I had the opportunity to celebrate Mass this afternoon over at the Catholic Archdiocesan Youth Center (CAYC, Lorong Low Koon), for the youths and young adults undergoing the School of Witness (SOW) program.

In my homily, I mentioned something about Steve Jobs and his way of 'selling' a product, from an interesting read here. When he first introduced the iPad into the public's eye and subsequently the world, he sold us the idea that this device is “magical” and how it is a great way to experience the Internet. He also gave practical examples of using the iPad and emphasized its ease of use and how fun it is, basically for anyone, to use. When his competitors jumped onto the bandwagon recently and started selling their iPad killer tablets, they talked about how they had dual-processors, included so many gigs of memory, and ran the latest Android OS. They reiterated the great tech specs their tablet had compared to the iPad and other tablet devices. Time will tell whether these tablets will 'kill' the iPad.

However, noticed how Jobs sold his iPad that captured the imagination of millions of people worldwide that his competitors had to play catch-up to. While the competitors spoke of technical superiority their product may have over the iPad, Steve spoke of how his product will change people’s lives. It is as if, the article mentions, while his competitors were trying to sell toothpaste, Steve was selling white teeth! Between white teeth and toothpaste, it is a no-brainer which most people would gravitate to!

What's this got to do with our faith life?

The article which is one of the items where my homily runs on, mentions that the method of Jobs sales pitch can teach us something about how we evangelize our faith to others. Certainly, we do need to know and pass on the technical details and teachings of our faith - the hows, whys and what-nots. But these are not the main first things to use to get people's attention. Instead we must proclaim that Christ has changed our lives and that he can change yours/others as well. Those who are in most need of Christ will be drawn to our experience and it will lead them to want to know more about this Jesus Christ and his Church that have so radically changed our lives.

I am assuming that we ourselves, who are in this evangelizing mission, have lives that are radically changed by Christ, or that we have experienced Christ profoundly to be able to share this experience.