Deleted Scene

On most DVDs, among the bonus features, are "deleted scenes." Here, then, is a "deleted scene" from the sermon I'm working on for Sunday. I like it, but it just didn't fit. To find out what did make it into the sermon... come to church on Sunday!

In the Old Star Trek television series, when the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise was contemplating whether or not to engage in a risky mission for the sake of rescuing a stranded member of their crew, Mr. Spock, the logical Vulcan, would always argue that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. To his logical way of thinking, that meant that the entire starship crew should not be put in danger for the life of one man. The community is more important than the individual.

But, darn it! Captain Kirk always decided to engage the rescue mission anyway! Was it because he believed that the life of one person was more important than the lives of his entire crew, which he was willing to risk? I don't think so. I think he put his crew at risk because he saw the situation a little differently. He saw the individual who was lost as being a part of the crew, a part of their community. And he was willing to risk the lives of his crew for the sake of a lost crew member, because without that crew member, the crew was incomplete. He decided that the community should be willing to give up a little of its comfort, a little of its safety, so that it could be reunited with its lost member. After all, without that crew member, his starship community wasn't whole.