Your Life as a TV Extra

It’s a bizarre thing, this life. You’re unceremoniously thrust into this ongoing drama. You spend the next eighty years trying to get a handle on the plot and your role in this story. Just as you’re beginning to grasp the faintest inkling of what that might be, your scene ends.

Really, if you get that far, you’re doing better than many. Many people end up like Macbeth, with more confusion and futility than they began with: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

 It would help us all a great deal if we could grasp one analogy. You’re an extra on a long-running tv show.

Your life and role is mostly given, though you get some small room for improvisational play (I  Corinthians 7:17). On your appointed day, you show up and walk onto a fully constructed set. It was there long before you got there, swarming with cameramen, designers, actors—both major and minor, teamsters, equipment and wardrobes. The show has years of interwoven plots, dramatic buildups and resolutions, and pre-existing relationships. You…are an extra. You are there for one day to play a specific role in a specific scene.

The Show You’re In

The story you have dropped into is the fall and redemption of humanity. The protagonist is Jesus. The antagonist is Satan. The cast of main characters includes wisdom, love, truth, justice, and faith. These heroes match up against folly, selfishness, deceit, manipulation, and cynicism.

Learn the story. Love the hero. Understand your scene thoroughly. What came before it? Where is it taking place? What décor catches your eye? What’s the mood? What’s the immediate source of conflict? How does your role in your scene make the protagonist look great? What are the givens of your character? What’s her background, motivations, strengths and weaknesses? Explore these. We all know an extra is still a three-dimensional character, even if she’s not the focus.

The trouble for many of us is that we spend our whole day on set (which is to say your whole life), trying to parlay your role as an extra into being the star. Your attempt is inconsistent with the show as a whole, and really would demand a total rewrite, or a different show altogether. But that’s what we keep wanting. Unfortunately, this misplaced effort means that we often perform our given scene rather poorly.

We find God’s response to such an effort in the book of Job, and it’s exactly what we’d expect from the director of the show. Throughout the book, Job (an extra like the rest of us) keeps demanding to sit down with God to go over the script. He’s got some major concerns with how his scene has been written. During God’s four chapters of response (Job 38 – 41), he doesn’t offer a word of defense for the script he’s written for Job’s life. Instead, he goes into great detail about all the givens of the world that Job lives in—a world that God created, and that Job knows nothing of. 

Job never gets an answer to his question, “why?” You may not either. Maybe, the implication is, once you’ve got a few thousand years under your belt, you’ll be in a better position to understand how God would answer that question.

Job’s role as an extra is still important. So is yours. For an extra on a tv show, it’s not that he is insignificant. He’s still the main character in his own life. His role is still essential to the show. As he plays it well, he moves the show forward. That’s our opportunity. Embrace your role as an extra in your scene today.