Genies, World Peace and Real Work
In the year 2000, a film was released that became a (surprising?) box office smash, giving rise to many quotable quotes and memes. The film Miss Congeniality, starred Sandra Bullock as a not-so-graceful FBI agent from New Jersey, who goes undercover as a contestant in the Miss United States Pageant in order to protect the other contestants from some immanent death threats. One of the more memorable parts of the film is when William Shatner, who plays the pageant host, Stan Fields, is asking the pageant contestants the question, “What is the one most important thing our society needs?” And they all had the identical answer…..”World Peace.”
Don’t we all wish for world peace? Of course. But there is something about the simplicity and automation of this response by the line of pageant contestants that comes off as both syrupy sweet and incredibly hollow. I mean, sure, we all wish for a utopian world in which there is peace and harmony, but is “world peace” really an answer to the question of the most pressing need in our society? It’s really just a couple of words that we throw at a problem that seem like the best answer but aren’t really an answer at all.
When I think about this question of the most pressing societal need in theological terms, it makes me think of a parallel question – If you could pray one prayer to God and have that one prayer answered, what would that prayer be?
Our text from the Hebrew Bible today deals with this very question. God appears to Solomon in a dream, not long after he has taken over as King of Israel after the death of his father, David, and God says, “Ask me what I should give to you.”
Solomon, unlike nearly all political figures today, tells God he is so young and he feels unprepared for the role as king. He knows there is so much he doesn’t know, and so Solomon asks God for an understanding mind to govern the people, a mind that is able to discern good from evil. God is so pleased at this request, noting that Solomon doesn’t wish for riches or long life for himself, but rather selflessly asks for tools to be able to lead God’s people. So God grants Solomon this request for an understanding and discerning mind.
When I was younger, I was always intrigued by the concept of genies. If I stayed home sick from school, I knew that I would get to watch back to back reruns of I Dream of Jeannie, the 1960s sitcom about an astronaut who falls in love with a genie in a lamp. Later in junior high, the Disney movie Aladdin came out, so a popular question on the school bus became, “What would your three wishes be?” Even as a child, I always understood this question as a kind of moral test. Would I choose all selfish wishes – money, fame, a handsome celebrity as my boyfriend? Would I choose some of the wishes for me and some to help others? Or would I ask for wishes that did the most good in the world, even if they don’t directly impact my life of privilege?
This moral test is not so very different from the one posed in the exchange between God and Solomon, where God asks, “What should I give to you?” Solomon could have so easily asked for something for himself that made ruling easier but that really only benefited him. He could have asked to be the most powerful military ruler of all, squashing anyone who dared to challenge his authority and making it easy to expanding his rule over others by force. He could have asked for all the money in the world so he could buy his way to more power. He could have asked for God to smite all those who he declared his enemies. But he doesn’t. Solomon asks for wisdom, for a mind that can discern the difference between good and evil, and there is so much power in this request and so much instruction for us in seeking how this request pleases God.
One of the most important things to note in this request is that by asking for a discerning mind, Solomon is not asking God to do any of the work required in his role as king. By asking for a discerning mind, Solomon is asking God for the tools to do the work of ruling himself, so that he can rule ethically and morally. He doesn’t ask for God to make all the people good or to eradicate all evil from the world. He asks God for tools that will help him know the difference between the two so that he can guide God’s people through a world that has both good and evil throughout.
God is pleased at Solomon’s request and grants him this understanding and ability to discern good from evil. So what are we to take away from this Biblical story? What does it mean that when God appears before Solomon and says “Why can I give you?” he responds in this way and God is pleased?
Reflecting on this text over the past couple of weeks has me thinking about the concept of prayer. Since God has yet to visit me in person in a dream or awake (unless I totally missed it), the primary way that I ask God to for help is through prayer. So often, I think that we can focus our prayers on those things that we want God to do for us, and sometimes rightly so, because there are many things that are outside of our human abilities - “Please God, cure this cancer now.” Or, “Please God, help this airplane make it to its destination safely.” Or, “Please God, protect me from people who might harm me.” Praying this kind of prayer helps me to feel more calm. They help to lift a burden or a worry off of my shoulders and literally “give it up” to a higher power whenever I am feeling helpless. There is great utility and importance in these kinds of prayers. They ease our hearts and minds and strengthen our faith in God as a higher power who can hold those things that we struggle to carry on our own.
However, this exchange between Solomon and God reminds me that there is another kind of prayer that I need to be praying often – a prayer that God will give me the tools to work to solve problems on my own, or through communal work with others. This encounter reminds me that God delights in the times when we take ownership over the roles that God has tasked us with and the callings that God has placed on our hearts. God delights when we don’t shy away from doing the hard work ourselves, rather than asking for all of the problems to be magically fixed or erased.
This is the difference between our God and a genie granting wishes. God is always in relationship with us. We are God’s beloved creation, made in the image and likeness of God. And as such, God is always participating in the world with us, and we continue to be co-creators of life in this world along with God. So it makes sense that we are not supposed to only pray the kind of prayers that ask for God to fix or change things. It makes sense that God delights when we ask God to give us what we need to help, to fix, to change, and to make this place more like the world God is intending.
So should God appear to you and say, “What would you like me to give you?” what will your answer be? Rather than asking for “world peace” or some other giant fix or problem erased, if we took a note from Solomon’s example that was pleasing to God, what might be the tools you ask for that don’t seek to remove the burden of work, but that better equips you to do the work of God?
So what will you pray for? Will you balance your prayers that entirely lift burdens up to God with prayers that invite God to help to prepare and equip you with whatever needed work God is calling you toward?
(And by the way, it’s still totally OK to pray for world peace, maybe just not as your only prayer!)
Amen.
(Photo Credit: Everett Collection)
