Freeing Yourself from the Curse of the Redshirt, the Expendable Crewman

“Nobody wants to be the expendable crewman,” my friend Mark said over the phone the other day. For some strange reason we were talking about how in the original Star Trek, when Kirk, Bones, Spock, and some anonymous crew member in a red uniform beamed down to a planet filled with hostile aliens, the crewman in the redshirt always ended up dead, while Captain Kirk scores the sexy alien who looks vaguely like a Victoria Secret model, only with green skin.

I loved Star Trek.

To ensure the story had conflict someone had to die and it could’t be Kirk, Spock, Scotty, or Bones (unless it was a show featuring time warps where the deceased Kirk, Spock, Scotty, or Bones comes back by the end of the show, but that’s another story). Trekkies dubbed this guy “the redshirt” or “the expendable crewman.”

And no one wants to be that guy.

But many of us get up each morning, don our redshirts, and beam down to a hostile environment with a sinking suspicion we are indeed expendable. That’s why I don’t wear red much. I don’t want to be the next target.

Do you feel expendable?

But seriously. There is always someone who can do our jobs better, is better looking, is younger, or older, or smarter, nicer, funnier, taller, newer, or just all around better.

For example, when I first decided to go into church planting four years ago, after over twenty-five years in the pastorate, a younger pastor–an expert in church planting–advised me that, at my age, I should consider church redevelopment instead. Translated that means, “Old guys like you can only handle dying churches. Leave the real, hard work to us younger guys.” I wanted to punch him, but he was considerably younger and I didn’t want to hurt him.

He saw me as a redshirt, completely expendable. I’m glad I listened to a higher authority on what I can and can’t do.

Have you been told you’re the expendable crewman?

God, the higher authority, doesn’t see you that way. 

I find it ironic that the Being who needs no one else in order to exist does not view us as expendable while many of us who desperately need each other in order to survive treat each other as disposable.

Is that because we’ve been conditioned by a throw-away, newer is better culture? Probably. But we created that culture.

The deeper reason for this attitude might be that we believe if we treat others as redshirts on our crew then we must be the indispensable James T. Kirk–or his equivalent. Treating others as expendable makes us feel as though we are not. Work-a-holism boils down to this.

“I must . . . make . . . myself . . . indispensable,” we groan under the load while our children, spouses, friends, and sometimes God himself wait out by the trash dumpster.

But doesn’t this only make us more insecure?

Thus we’re constantly looking over our shoulders for our replacement, creating a vicious circle. We know he or she looms there because we were once someone’s replacement.

The true source of our security.

This is why knowing we were created and loved by an Indispensable God is so crucial to living healthy, spiritual lives. It gives us a true, unmovable foundation to base our lives on.

God does not need you or me in order for the world to keep spinning, for the world to be healed.

Better! He wants us to play a part.

God is not waiting for someone better to parent your children, sing your song, love your spouse, do your job, pray your prayer, write your book, right a wrong, weed your garden, laugh with your friend, be a part of your community, or dream your dream. God chooses to love you and out of that love chooses to use you.  God’s choice makes you non-expendable, not your false belief that you can live without others, nor your IQ, fast car, job, or lofty, faulty self-image. So take off that damn redshirt and get busy.

Eugene C. Scott is non-expendable in part because he can perform the “live long and prosper” sign without glue or masking tape. Please join the Living Spiritually community by following his blog and clicking here and liking the page. He is also co-pastor of The Neighborhood Church.

How To Have A Relationship: A Biblical Adventure

By Brendan Scott:

God loved me before I was born.  Sometimes I just let that sink in.  When I was inside my mom’s womb my creator loved me.  Maybe that’s why I was born premature.  I was ready to take part in His great creation, ready to experience His love.

A premature birth nearly cost me my life.  Fortunately, a group of loving and skilled doctors worked round the clock to save my life and I joined my family after 13 days in the hospital.

My God loved me as I grew up.  He loved me as I messed up.

Joining my family was the best thing I ever did, not that I had much of a choice, but if I did I would choose them a thousand times over.  My parents taught me love and grace.  They loved me as I grew up.  They loved me as I messed up.  They taught me how to have a relationship with God.

I’ve always known God loved me, but I didn’t start building my relationship with Him until I was a freshman in High School on a mission trip to Costa Rica (This trip probably started my love for Central America as well).  Like any freshman, almost everything I did was meant to impress someone, or more truthfully a girl. This particular girl read her Bible every day, which I found very attractive.  As we walked the beach in Jaco, Costa Rica and shared our hearts I knew my life would never be the same.  But instead of falling in love with a girl.  Instead of finding my “one”, I commited to reading my Bible.  And that is when my real relationship with my creator began.

He loved me before that night and he loved me after that night when I messed up with girls and other relationships.  He used that night to start something beautiful.  A couple  years later I felt Him asking me to be more committed.  At that point I was a Sophomore in College, struggling with self confidence and reading my Bible and spending time with Him most of the time, but if I was too tired or just not in the mood I would decide not to open the Book.

It hit me though, He had always loved me and deserved more than an occasional night committed to him.  At that time I was struggling to fall asleep, constantly worried about my life, what I had done and had not done.  He told me to give him everything, each night.  And so on December 23 2004 I decided to read my Bible and spend time in prayer each night for a year.  Funny enough I hardly have trouble sleeping anymore.  Funny enough I haven’t missed a night in more than seven years.

How can I worry when I know He has always loved me no matter what?

This commitment has been difficult.  Like I said in my blog about running, Living Spiritually takes being attentive, being in position, and being submissive.  I find being attentive and being submissive the hardest out of these three to commit to.  Some nights I am just so tired and then sometimes I just don’t want to hear what God has to tell me.

I have often thought of giving up my nightly time with God, taking a break, but then I think that I might miss what God has to tell me.  And so I continue.

Then this last December as I was reading through the Psalms, I heard God tell me to invite the rest of my family to live spiritually with me.  Nah, it wont work, I thought.  You’ll never know if you don’t try, I heard God say.  And so I tried.  Now, a month in I have noticed a change in my family.  We are sharing our prayers with one another, sharing how God is working in our lives.

I have also noticed a change in my time in the Bible.  The words have come alive again.  This last Thursday as I read Psalm 139 God reminded me that he has always loved me.  He has always known me.  He made me special and strong.  Even as I have lived each day perfectly or gone afoul He has loved me. He has seen my every action and He knew my every move before I even made them, and He still loves me.

He searched me.  And He knows me.  And He loves me.

How can I not live with confidence?  How can I not show grace to those around me?  How can I not live spiritually with this knowledge?

He has filled me with joy and I pray I do not forget this Psalm.

I challenge you, my readers, to open the Bible and start a relationship with your creator.  He has loved you always, and if you join him on this Biblical Adventure His love will change you forever.  It’s a ride worth taking.  He has always given me the strength to continue reading and I know He will do the same for you.

Join me and my family in Living Spiritually.

Psalm 139

For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.

¹ You have searched me, LORD,
and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
you, LORD, know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts,^[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.

¹⁹ If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
²⁰ They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
²¹ Do I not hate those who hate you, LORD,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
²² I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
²³ Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

Is God a Control Freak?

By Eugene C. Scott

There have been times when life has been completely out of control. And there seemed nothing anyone could do to change it, fix it, or stop it.

Even God.

It was as if my life were a passenger jet first wobbling, then looping and finally plummeting out of control. But before it hits the ground I bust into the cockpit only to discover God chatting it up with the co-pilot (and no, contrary the popular bumper-sticker, I am not God’s co-pilot and neither are you), while He is also texting and updating His status on Facebook. In the meantime my life is heading down nose first.

“Who’s in control here?” I shout. “Don’t You know You’re not supposed to text and drive? Grab the wheel. Get a grip!” God simply smiles and shrugs and goes back to texting.

People who believe in God love to talk about God being in control. By this we usually mean that we believe God can and should keep most–if not all–evil, bad, or even slightly uncomfortable situations from befalling us.

Given life’s raft of tornadoes, cancers, marriage break-ups and daily disappointments, it doesn’t seem that God has the same agenda. Is God is in control of this wildly tilting planet of ours? This discontinuity between believing in a loving God and living in an unpredictable world is the genesis of the question “how could a loving God allow (insert painful, devastating life circumstance here)?”

Most of us–even those who don’t really believe in God–understand that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being should be able to prevent the personal and global problems of the world.

Yet life does not reflect any such controlling God. Not mine anyway. To me God seems to be anything but in control. But it’s not just me–or you. Even the Bible seems confused on the issue of God being in control. God did not stop the first two of us from making a bad choice. Then–like dominoes–character after biblical hero stumbles and falls: Abraham, Jacob, Saul, David, Judas, Peter and Paul to name the biggies.

Consider the story of Joseph. God gives him a big dream and then lets his brothers nearly murder him and finally sell him. Israel ends up in slavery for four hundred years. Moses tries defending some poor Hebrew slave and is cast into the desert for another forty years. Yes, Moses eventually sets his people free. But couldn’t God have prevented those tragedies? Wasn’t there a better way? Not according to God.

Or on a smaller scale, couldn’t God have kept my father or mother in this world just a little longer? In Navy terms, God doesn’t run a very tight ship. This pain and struggle that often permeates our lives leaves us a choice. We must believe God is in control and we have done something for which God has removed his controlling hand and let us swing in the wind, as Job’s friends claimed. Or to cease to believe in God, as C.S Lewis once did and so many others have.

Or to rethink how God and control interact.

Love requires freedom. Control kills love’s response. I have complete power over a toy remote control car. Not so a kitten. I can make the car turn left, right, back up, stop. But I can never win love from it. A kitten, however, listens to me not. It runs free and ignores anything I say or do except the opening of a can of cat food. But I can win love from that . . . well maybe using a cat was a bad example but you get what I mean.

A world in which love exists, much less thrives, must favor love and danger over control and safety. Therefore, God, unlike us, seems to eschew control.

If God is not in control, who is? Or is God simply a wimp?

God is no wimp. And God is indeed sovereign. Surprisingly so. In God’s surprising sovereignty prevention of pain gives way to redemption of pain.

In 1990 I was offered my first ordained pastoral position, associate pastor to families in a large church in Bloomington, IL. Dee Dee, my wife, and I prayed, sought advice, studied, debated and decided to accept the position. We moved, lock stock and two young children. A mere two years later spiritually, physically and emotionally broken I was ready to give up this dream of serving God in the pastorate and strap on my carpenter’s tool belt again. The church we went to serve was a broken, dying place. The senior pastor was on his umpteenth affair and the congregation took its pain and confusion out on anyone new and vulnerable: The Scott family.

What was God thinking? We asked for wisdom. God could have prevented the whole thing.

Instead God redeemed it.

In the middle of this came a phone call out of the blue. “I hear from a mutual friend you’re in a difficult church,” the pastor I had met at a wedding in Denver years ago said. For some reason I told this virtual stranger my story.

“Our senior pastor went through something very similar here as an associate pastor. Can he call you and talk to you about our need for an associate pastor to families?”

Almost two years to the day after we moved to Bloomington, we were on our way to Tulsa, OK. We spent almost nine years serving at Kirk of the Hills. Some with equal pain to Bloomington.

But Dee Dee and I return to Tulsa often. Our youngest daughter, Emmy, was born there.  Our oldest daughter, Katie, son-in-law, Michael and two beautiful grandchildren still live there. You see Katie married Michael, a boy who came to love Jesus and my daughter in the Kirk of the Hills youth group.

Redemption indeed. God could have prevented the pain of Bloomington. But he chose a better story! A story of taking our pain and turning it into something more beautiful than any Van Gough, Remington, sunset or seascape.

God is no control freak. I love Him for that.

God Loves You…And Likes You Too!

Do you ever question God’s love for you? Do you ever wonder if God loves you—but he doesn’t like you? If so, then you’ll appreciate today’s reading from the Bible.

Welcome to the first day of our year-long journey through the life-changing word of God. Thank you for participating in our community!

Today’s Reading

Genesis 1:1-2:25

Matthew 1:1-2:12

Psalm 1:1-1:6

Proverbs 1:1-1:6

Insights Into Today’s Reading

• Genesis 1 and 2 are really separate accounts of creation. Notice that Genesis 1 refers to “God” while Genesis 2 uses the phrase “LORD God.” Any time you see “God” in the Old Testament it usually refers to the Hebrew word Elohim. “Lord God” almost always refers to the Hebrew word Yahweh. Here’s a tidbit of interesting information: the word for God in Arabic is Allah, which is very similar in pronunciation to Elohim.
• The Bible begins and ends with references to the tree of life: Genesis 2:9 and Revelation 22:2, 14. However, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—from which Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit—does not appear in Revelation.
• The use of Adam’s rib for the creation of Eve  appears in ancient Sumerian texts. The Sumerian word for rib is ti. Interestingly enough, ti means “life,” just like Eve does in Genesis 3:20.
• Note how the beginning of Matthew highlights the presence of questionable women in Jesus’ genealogy (Matthew 1:3,5,6).

My Response

You know, deep down, I think many of us assume that God doesn’t really like us. He tolerates us—begrudgingly—but he’d prefer NOT to hang out with us. Why? Because we have sin, vestiges of darkness in our lives.

Today, I began our first day’s reading…and couldn’t move past the first two verses. Genesis 1:1-2 (NIV) tells says:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

Notice that the darkness was hovering over the surface of the deep. And what does the passage also tell us was hovering over the dark waters? The Spirit of God.

God wasn’t repulsed by the darkness.

All my life, I’ve assumed (at least subconsciously) that God reacted to the dark places in my life like two positive sides of the same magnet. But not only does he thrive in my dark places…he’s at work. In those places where I think he doesn’t exist, he’s there. In those dark places that I  hide from him, he’s there. He’s unafraid and un-repulsed by my dark areas.

It reminds me of Psalm 139:7-10:

Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths,^a you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

A few other insights that hit me about Genesis 1:

• God’s power. Whatever he speaks, happens. He says, “Let there be light”…and there is light.
• God’s character. Everything God creates is good. The New Bible Commentary points out that ‘Create’ is something that only God does (the verb is used only of God in the OT).
• The interrelatedness of God’s creation. We share a common creator as creation. Obviously, we’re different because we’re created in God’s image. But we’re related to his creation and given the charge of taking of God’s creation. Genesis 2:15 affirms this.

Conversation Starters

• What does the creation passage tell you about God?
• Do you long for anything that was present at creation and lost as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin?

How is God speaking to you today through today’s reading?