The Code That Changed Everything

In 1989, a British computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He created the protocols, wrote the code, and built the first web browser and server at CERN. It was arguably the most transformative invention of the twentieth century — the foundation for everything from online banking to streaming to the device in your pocket right now.

And then he gave it away.

Berners-Lee refused to patent his creation. He released it freely to the world, asking nothing in return. Analysts have suggested that a patent could have made him the wealthiest person on earth. But Berners-Lee believed the web would only reach its full potential if no one owned it. A proprietary web, he argued, would never have taken off. So he emptied his hands of what they held.

There is something deeply Christlike in that choice. Paul writes in Philippians 2 that Jesus, "though He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself." The Greek word is kenosis — a voluntary pouring out of what you have every right to keep.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is choosing to release what you could hold tightly, trusting that the purposes of the Almighty are served not by what we clutch but by what we give away.