Disney's "Wish" & Unanswered Prayers

One Crazy Theological Movie Review

This essay has been a long time coming. I initially posted a version of it last December but removed it when Mere Orthodoxy picked it up for their print edition. That edition finally came out two weeks ago (pictured below), and the online version appeared on their site today. So…I am free once again to share the original with you! This piece will take you on a journey. I hope you enjoy reading it half as much as I enjoyed writing it.

— Ross

Let me just say, I am not the kind of guy who “hate watches” animated Disney films. I’m a true believer. I grew up on Disney movies as much as—no, probably more—than Bible stories. They shaped me. And yes, I will admit I am a bit nostalgic for the days of Beauty and the Beast, etc, if for the music alone. But when I watch a new Disney film, I don’t come cynical. I come rooting for it. I want my kids to have the same experiences I had as a kid. I don’t want to leave thinking about the conversations I now have to have with them about a certain problematic theme: “So kids, are we sure it’s good and noble to sacrifice all history, tradition, family, and heritage for the glory of your secret sacred self?” or “Remember when the little woodland creatures were joyfully singing, ‘We are our own origin story!’? Do you really think that’s true?” (This actually happens in Wish, by the way. But more on that later.)

My point is I want the story to resonate. I want my children to see the kinds of fairy tales they’ve grown up hearing and reading before bed. I want them to feel scared and yet brave, sad and yet inspired. I want them to experience a hero, an ordinary person not unlike my own sons and daughters, who is caught up in a much bigger world where things matter, where courageous decisions can be made, even by children, and where love—especially self-sacrificial love—conquers all.  This was generally the storyline of Snow White, Robin Hood, Cinderella, Pinocchio, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, and I’m sure plenty of others. Anyway, I said I wasn’t here for nostalgia. Moving on.

Wish was an interesting film, philosophically speaking. 

The Plot

King Magnifico is a seemingly benevolent sorcerer who uncovers the power to grant wishes. He and his wife, Queen Amaya, found the kingdom of Rosas on an obscure island in the Mediterranean where people from all nations come to restart their lives and possibly have their wishes granted. The key word being…possibly. The cost of joining the island kingdom is that they must give up their heart’s greatest wish to the king on their eighteenth birthday in a ceremony which involves the wish being extracted and given to the king as a floating blue sphere of light. In the same ceremony, the person’s memory of the wish is completely erased. And if you’re thinking, “This sounds like a bad idea,” you’re actually the only one, because the people of Rosas are unequivocally stoked about the whole thing: “Forget without regret!” Anyway, the king keeps these blue spheres “safe” in the highest tower of his castle, which is where our protagonist enters the picture. 

Asha, a teenaged girl from Rosas, is granted access to this tower during a job interview for a position as the king’s apprentice. There she beholds the countless wishes of the kingdom which haven’t been granted, and in particular, the very innocent wish of her 100-year-old grandfather. Why, she wonders, have such wishes not been granted? Naturally, she asks the king if he would consider granting her fading grandfather’s wish. “Today is his 100^th birthday.” The king says no. In fact, he cannot grant the vast majority of wishes, because even the seemingly best wishes could be “unsafe” if used in the wrong way. He’s just trying to keep everyone safe. Asha pushes back. How could this be? The people of Rosas are good people with good wishes! The king is flummoxed by her disrespect. But apparently he’s not evil (at this point). So he lets her go. That night, Asha, feeling shocked and betrayed, goes on a Pocahontas-style jaunt through the forest in search of the meaning of it all, and ends up making her own wish upon a star. To her surprise, the star responds and descends as a cute little baby star, which brings a momentary burst of light and joy to the whole kingdom, while also transforming most of the creatures of the forest into talking/singing/dancing beings. 

After this unusual burst of light, the king perceives that another source of wish-granting may be afoot. So, against his kind wife’s urging, he resorts to darker magic. Meanwhile, Asha has found a way to smuggle herself into the high tower of the king and steal her grandfather’s wish back. She succeeds and returns the wish to her meek grandfather who had urged her not to do it, but is thankful when he gets it back. Back in the tower, the king realizes, by means of a forbidden spell book, that he can use the wishes of the kingdom to gain power for himself. And if you’re thinking, “This is exactly what he was already doing,” you would be wrong again! Before, apparently, he was just keeping their wishes from them. Now he’s literally squeezing the wishes into himself and their light of each wish is turning from blue to swamp-thing green! Always a bad sign. Thus the king is transformed into a very powerful, very evil sorcerer (think: Jafar after he gets the lamp). Oh no. Asha formulates a plan to steal and restore everyone’s wishes from the tower of the evil king. But this can’t happen. He’s too powerful. That’s okay, they have the magic of the little star. But now he’s stolen the baby star. That’s okay, they can wish on other stars. But now he’s clouded the sky with his swamp-thing green magic. Oh dear. At last, Asha finds the solution: we’re all made of stardust. We are stars. (We are our own origin story, remember?) So, at Asha’s urging, they make one collective wish from within their true selves to overcome the sorcerer, and…

You get the picture. 

In fairness, the plot is inventive and not as formulaic as perhaps I’m making it sound. But in a strange way, that’s its greatest weakness. For decades, what made Disney fairytale movies so powerful was precisely the fact that they were intentionally conveying stories that were far older than their writers, directors and audiences, stories which had been told and tested over hundreds of years, sometimes even longer. Wish, on the other hand, is a story for our time, for better or worse. Mostly for worse. Don’t get me wrong. I did not feel like my kids were being made victims of super-cynical woke messaging. If anything, Wish felt more like a return to early 2000’s optimistic multicultural expressive individualism, as though the Disney powers-that-be had had a heart-to-heart after a couple of commercial busts and figured they’d dial this one back a bit. Like, “Hey, let’s maybe not be front-and-center evangelists of critical theory in this one. Maybe let’s see if we can just tell a story that entertains, turns no heads, and replenishes the bottom line.” Perhaps it will. But it’s funny how, when you kick the woke activists out and just try to make something that will “please all audiences”—and you have no traditional story to fall back on, just a bottom line that needs to be fed by organic demand—you might just end up revealing what the actual underlying philosophy of our moment looks like. And that philosophy may not be as new as we suppose. Here it is…

Wish, a movie about granting wishes, is a genie story. But not the one you think. Wish is an inverted genie story. The philosophy of our moment is an inverted genie story. Not Aladdin, but Prometheus. I know, I know. What on earth am I talking about? Bear with me… 

The Genie Story Arc: Tricking The Trickster

You know the genie-and-the-wish trope. It’s one of the most recognizable patterns in storytelling. A character comes across some mystical being who can grant wishes. “I can wish whatever I want and it will be granted?” 

“Yes,” says the genie.  

“I’m in,” says the human. 

But there’s always a catch. Be careful what you wish for, etc. What begins as, “I’m instantly rich and happy!” quickly becomes, “I’ve never been so poor and miserable.” (Btw, if you’ve ever looked into the long ugly history of lottery winners in our country, you begin to realize why these ancient stories have stood the test of time.) Anyway, the word “genie” is an Englishization of the Arabic word “jinn,” which is a kind of spiritual being much like a fairy or a daemon. These are low-level spirits who boast the power to grant wishes to their “master,” but usually, they also have their own agenda. Despite the claim of Robin Williams’ superb song, “Friend Like Me” in Disney’s Aladdin, genies and fairies and the like are not concierge-style wish-fulfillers who only want to make their masters happy. They’re usually up to something. They may call you “master” in the moment, but the very reason they deal in wishes is because they know there’s no better way to enslave a human being than through his or her own desires. 

We see this in many European fairy tales. Sometimes an explicit bargain is made between the spirit and the human, as in Rumpelstiltskin or Faust. Sometimes the tradeoffs are more implicit or concealed. One Thousand And One Nights catalogs a number of such stories from further East, including the Aladdin story. You can also find the pattern in Greek mythology. For instance, the greedy King Midas is granted one wish from the god Dionysus after doing him a favor. He asks that everything he touches would turn to gold. He gets his wish and soon discovers his error: He nearly starves to death and turns his beloved daughter into a golden statue. Finally he begs for mercy and Dionysus acquiesces. Interestingly, to reverse the spell, he must wash in the river Pactolus, which brings to mind some parallels with the story of Elisha and Naaman, who must put aside his pride and wash in the river Jordan to remove his leprosy. 

The point is, when it comes to genies and fairies and gnomes granting wishes, user beware. Dealings with these beings are rarely what they seem; more like dealing with a demon than an angel. In genies stories, it’s not the most high God granting your wish, nor an angel, nor even Zeus or a high king or a high-level principle (e.g. Disney’s “wishing on a star”—we’ll get to that). Again, genies are low-level spirits. They literally come from low places and confined spaces. Rumpelstiltskin is a little man who enters the room through a hole in the wall. Genies come from lamps which are hidden underground, in caves, or underwater. They want to be “let out.” They’re not all-powerful and they’re not always entirely evil. But they usually are tricksters. And the power of their trick lies in a particular kind of straightforwardness: They will give you what you wish for, quite directly. But getting what you wish is the trick. They use your desires against you. And that’s what enslaves you. 

There’s a deeply Christian truth hidden in the genie story arc, and it’s something like this: Beware the spirits which propose quick, straight lines between your deepest desires and getting them. The genie’s offer or bargain or “gift”—however it presents itself—has a hidden cost to the wisher. Thus, the hero of the genie story is almost never the genie. The hero of the genie story is the man or woman who is able to see beyond the allure of the genie’s magic by way of some higher principle.

In the case of Rumpelstiltskin, the girl gains her freedom in the end by tricking the trickster. By solving the mystery of the little man’s name (discerning his identity), she rises above the little game of wishes he was trying to play with her, and she wins. In the tale of King Midas, the king is not exactly a hero, but he does gain freedom from his curse by humbling himself, repenting of his wish, and accepting a more patient form of mediation between desire and consummation (e.g. washing in the river, appreciating the value of his daughter over the value of gold, etc). In humility, he is exalted. Impressively, Disney’s Aladdin actually does both of these and more. When Aladdin sacrifices his final wish for the good of the genie, he manages not only to transform and free himself but also to transform and free the genie. Genius. (No pun intended—the word “genius” is related to the word “genie”).

So that’s the genie story arc.

Jesus & The Genie in the Wilderness

In light of this pattern, we can now propose that something like the first genie story occurred in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve were tricked by a low spirit in the Garden to take what they desired and were cursed for doing so. But that version is incomplete. Adam and Eve do not become the heroes of their story. For their redemption, we have to wait for another genie story—perhaps the grand finale of all genie stories—in the pages of the New Testament in Matthew Chapter 4. 

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and promised to grant him three wishes…

Okay, fine. The text doesn’t say, “promised to grant him three wishes.” But that is what happens…and in a Middle Eastern desert no less! Of course, the tempter does not need to ask Jesus his wishes. He’s no second-rate genie. He already knows. The devil’s temptations are “tempting” precisely because they approximate Jesus’s own desires: to end his hunger, to reveal his true nature, and to save and rule the world. Are these things bad? Of course not. So why do we call them temptations? For two reasons: (1) the means by which they’re being offered, and (2) the one through whom they’re offered. This fallen spirit of the wilderness—the same spirit who spoke to Eve in the garden through the mouth of a serpent—offers Jesus a straight-line path to fulfilling his good purposes, rather than trusting in the more patient and mysterious mediation of the Father’s plan. Sound familiar? In the desert, Jesus retreads the story of our ancestors in the garden, reminding us that the forbidden fruit was not forbidden because it was bad. Rather, it was forbidden because it was good. So good that it had to be approached properly—in right relationship to the Father. And how does Jesus deal with the genie’s offers? He denies them by humbling himself according to the highest principle of all, the will of the Father. But that’s not all. He also tricks the trickster by leveraging—rather than merely denying or negating—the power of Satan, in order to bring about the will of the Father in the end. But for that, you have to read all the way to the end of the Gospels.

Prometheus: Hero Or Villain?

Okay, now that we know the general shape of genie stories (low spirit offers wishes; hero leverages the power of the low spirit without falling prey to it by appealing to a higher principle), we’re almost ready to consider Disney’s Wish, which, as I have said, is an inverted version of this pattern. 

In ancient mythology, the best example of an inverted genie story is the Greek myth Prometheus. Prometheus is a Titan to whom Zeus gives the privilege of shaping human beings out of clay. Prometheus’s love for humans eventually trumps his love for the gods. Even though the gods presumably provide for human beings, Prometheus eventually views the relationship between humans and the gods as zero-sum. Humans are better off ruling themselves, he thinks. So, one day, when Zeus is expecting a sacrifice from men, Prometheus tricks Zeus by offering the bones of the sacrifice disguised as the best meat, reserving the actual best portion of the animal for humans. For this improper and deceitful sacrifice, Zeus removes fire from the earth. So, on behalf of the human race, Prometheus scales Olympus and steals the fire of the gods, which humans then use not only to cook their food but also to forge metal weapons and other technologies which were previously available only to the gods. For this betrayal, Zeus punishes Prometheus for eternity by tying him to a cliffside and having eagles come each day to eat his regrown liver. And yet, Prometheus’s gift echoes through the ages. After all, are we not now even more powerful than the gods? 

This question, which the story of Prometheus raises, is the subject of two of the most famous literary works of the early 19^th Century, two works which were published two years apart, by members of the same household. In 1818, Mary Shelley published The Modern Prometheus, which she had begun writing at the age of eighteen (no big deal). That book is now known by its more popular title, Frankenstein. It is, of course, the tragic tale of a man who, by way of great technological advances, gives life to his own version of a human being and suffers the dreadful consequences for his actions. At the time of publication, Mary’s more famous husband Percy Bysshe Shelley was finishing up a poetic work entitled Prometheus Unbound. Percy’s work—published two years after Mary’s, though he started it before—is generally a much more positive take on the Titan who stole fire from the gods. Modern humanity, as he envisions it, has been shaped much more in the image of Prometheus than Yahweh. Must have been some lively conversations in that household!

In retrospect, Mary’s work has become perhaps the unexpected champion of the two. You can hardly graduate high school without being assigned Frankenstein at some point along the way. And yet, as a culture, we seem overwhelmingly to have chosen the side of Percy. Indeed, it’s hard for us not to think of Prometheus as the sacrificial hero of the human race, just as the Greeks did. 

But that’s not the way ancient Christians saw him. 

The Promethean story also has biblical parallels, yet with stories which are not so heroic as their Greek counterpart. First, Prometheus parallels the story of the Fall in Genesis 3, which we have already mentioned. But to put it in more Promethean terms, humanity is convinced by a rebellious spirit to steal the gift of knowledge off of a divinely forbidden tree rather than trusting and waiting for it. In so doing, the relationship between heaven and earth is broken, humans are cursed, and chaos ensues. (Yet, notice, they do keep the knowledge they took. There’s no putting the fruit back on the tree.)

But another story of another “fall” comes next, which parallels the Promethean details even more closely. In this story, Adam and Eve’s sons Cain and Abel offer separate sacrifices to God. God receives Abel’s sacrifice but rejects Cain’s sacrifice as unworthy (probably because, as tradition holds, Cain withheld the best parts for himself). This should sound familiar. In response, Cain kills his brother Abel out of envy. God then exiles Cain even farther from the garden and puts a special mark on him, a double-edged mercy-judgment, which both protects and shames him. Interestingly, Cain’s offspring become the first metal workers, weapons makers, and city-builders, using these god-like inventions to protect and supplement themselves in a world where murder now exists. In summary, first they steal knowledge, then they steal power. This then leads to further falls, as we see in the story of the Flood and the Tower of Babel later in the pages of Genesis.

In the end, both Genesis and Prometheus depict a world in which humans are persuaded into seeing their relationship with God (or the gods) as zero-sum. Thus they become prone to stealing what they could have waited for, withholding their best sacrifices, and using supplemental “technologies” (the fruit, fig leaves, weapons, and cities—or fire!) to become like gods without having to enter into a trusting relationship with God. The details differ, of course, but the pattern is much the same. The main difference between the two stories is the perspective.

The greatest difference between the oldest Bible stories and the oldest pagan myths is not merely that the Bible stories really happened and the pagan myths did not. In fact, many of the greatest pagan myths describe true realities, sometimes even real-life events (e.g. Gilgamesh and the other flood narratives). The main difference is, in pagan myths, the story is told by an unreliable narrator. 

Imagine two cultures witness the same world-altering event. Both cultures experience the same phenomena, but because they prioritize different things, hold different values, and worship different gods, they see the same reality through entirely different lenses. If the event is a war, for instance, they might disagree about what constitutes courage and wisdom. They might even disagree about who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, or even about who won and who lost. For this reason, the stories may appear quite different in the end, even though they are dealing with overlapping realities.

In this light, Prometheus can actually be seen as a retelling of the Fall of Man. Except, through Greek eyes, it wasn’t a Fall at all. It was humanity’s Rise. Imagine your culture’s stories have never mentioned a good Creator/Father/King like Yahweh who made and loved the world, a God of gods who is working all things for good, etc. Imagine, instead, that your stories depicted greedy and capricious deities in the heavens ruled by Zeus, who was himself the most greedy and capricious of them all. Then, of course, you would long for a Prometheus to set you free from the untrustworthy whims of the gods, to make you great, perhaps even greater than they.

This is the story of Prometheus. It is also the story of Babel. And in many ways, it is the myth of our modern world.

Over the past couple of centuries, thanks to certain technological, political, and philosophical revolutions, we have almost unknowingly begun to trade the Christian view of the heavens for a pagan view. At the same time, the faint warnings of Frankenstein have given way to modern promises of Prometheus Unbound. This is where the symbolism of Wish begins to reveal the philosophy of our moment.

Who is God, we say, but an ambivalent deity who blesses and curses according to his own whims, who withholds from one what he gives to another without discernible reason or cause? In the past, what could men do but worship this God of Heaven who gives life and death as he sees fit? But now we live in a new world of knowledge, technology, freedom, and individual rights. The fire is ours. Our knowledge and power work better than his ever did. We used to pray. Now we go to the doctor. Better yet, we ask the internet, by way of Google or ChatGPT. Modern man asks no favors of Yahweh and makes no sacrifices to him. We make our own bargains with reality. We make our own gods. And our gods are making us great. The problem of divine withholding has been overcome. We choose. We demand. We receive. 

Even the familiar cry, “Down with the patriarchy!” fits well into this worldview. At first glance, of course, it seems to be no more than a commentary about gender roles. But it’s deeper than we realize. The word patriarch has to do with fatherhood. In other words, the question we’re beginning to ask ourselves—and which the movie Wish forces us to ask quite directly—is this: Why would we want a Father in the heavens when we can have a genie in our pocket? After all, the genie always, immediately gives what we want as soon as we ask. (Note that the word immediate literally means ‘without mediation’.) 

In response to this, of course, the traditional genie stories would warn, “Beware. The genies may be granting wishes now, but their own agendas will come to light sooner than later. It’s tempting to trust low-level wish-granters, but in order to win in the end, you have to appeal to something higher.”

But Wish is not a traditional genie story. Wish is an inverted genie story. Not Aladdin, but Prometheus, a startling reflection of the philosophy of our internet-algorithm-centric moment. After all, what is an algorithm but a genie that gives us whatever we wish immediately from an infinite bank of unearned knowledge and power?

Ultimately, what we get in Disney’s Wish is a pagan myth modernized. Or, you might say, a version of the Christian story paganized. Wish depicts a true pattern, except…it’s told by an unreliable narrator who mistakes the bad guys for good guys and defeat for victory.

The truth is that we do have a King who has established a new kingdom. He has invited all to enter in. And he has said to us, “Ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you.” And, yes, there is a catch. It’s not exactly that we must “forget” our wish as soon as we give it to him, as in the Disney version. Our King puts it this way, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you.” But, honestly, is that better or worse than Disney’s version? Again, it depends on your perspective. 

Abiding in the king and letting his words abide in us could be conceived as such a palpable and demanding form of allegiance as to be much worse than forgetting. “You may have your wish as long as you commit your heart fully to me and allow my thoughts to live in you.” Yikes. From a certain perspective, Jesus is a worse tyrant than King Magnifico. Now add to that the fact that many of his greatest servants have not seen their requests directly answered. Some are still waiting. Some die waiting (e.g. Hebrews 11). 

Whether by King Magnifico or King Jesus, the writers of Wish see no reason our wishes should be mediated by any higher authority than ourselves. “So we can ask for whatever we wish,” they seem to say, “but we’re supposed to trust him to be the arbitrator of our wishes, to judge how and when and in what way to grant the desires of our hearts? No. Such a king cannot be trusted. He is too high and out of reach. Even a star, in fact, is too high and out of reach. We need a low-level spirit, a rebellious spirit who can steal what the high king will not immediately give. We need no king. We need no star above. We are our own origin story.” 

In this way, the teenaged Asha, the new modern Prometheus, becomes the hero of the story, climbing into the heavens to take from the king what is rightfully ours. Yet Disney’s modern Prometheus does not come with the stark warnings of Frankenstein’s monster. No, she comes as “Prometheus unbound,” the good genie to replace the bad father. And thanks to her, we can be our own origin story.

“Unanswered Prayers” & The Long Game

In 1991, Garth Brooks, probably my favorite country singer, had a #1 hit song called “Unanswered Prayers.” It was apparently based on a true story, and it started out like this:

Just the other night at a hometown football game
My wife and I ran into my old high school flame
And as I introduced them, the past came back to me
And I couldn't help but think of the way things used to be

She was the one that I'd wanted for all times
And each night I'd spend prayin' that God would make her mine
And if He'd only grant me this wish I wished back then
I'd never ask for anything again

Basically, having run into a woman he once loved, standing next to his wife, Brooks concludes that he is grateful not to have gotten what he wished. Here’s the chorus:

Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers
Remember when you're talkin' to the man upstairs
Just because He doesn't answer, doesn't mean He don't care
'Cause some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

The point of the song, of course, is not that God doesn’t answer prayer. It is that seemingly “unanswered prayers” are actually mediated by the Father for our good. Therefore, if we wait and trust and keep praying, we will see that his ultimate answer is even better than we had hoped. It is a great gift, says theologian Garth Brooks, to have a divine mediator for our deepest desires.

But that was then (before the internet?), and this is now. Times have changed. Now, it seems to us almost unthinkable that someone—especially a loving God—would stand in the way of us getting what we most deeply desire. For instance (forgive the highly charged example, but it fits!), that a parent should stand in the way of their 14 year-old having permanent “gender-affirming” surgery, which statistics show they may soon regret. But instead of trusting, abiding in their father and mother, such children will often (on the internet) seek out those spirits who promise to grant their wish without mediation. And will that be, for them, a blessing or a curse? 

In the Old Testament, the low-level gods of the nations (which the early Christians came to call “demons”) tend to give like genies. Your wish is their command, as long as you give them what they want in return. This is why the people of God are so often willing to run after false gods, even to the extent of being tempted to sacrifice their own children, as was the practice of neighboring tribes. Satan also provides straightforwardly. His promise to Eve in the Garden was true, and she got what she wanted quite directly. But that turned out to be a curse, not a blessing, in the end. 

By contrast, Yahweh is playing the long game. And this fact can be quite frustrating for those in his camp. He is building a more patient kingdom, mediating our desires over time—even over generations—until they become one with his. His goal is not merely to give us what we want, but for us to become the kind of people who want the very best thing, which is him. This is why so much of the Old Testament is about waiting in exile and why, surprisingly, so much of the New Testament is about trusting God in the face of suffering and disappointment. That’s right, even when the Messiah finally appears, he does not straightforwardly end the exile of his people. He does not immediately establish a visible earthly kingdom, as was expected. Needless to say—or perhaps in our age it needs to be said!—this was a big disappointment for his disciples. It took them the whole of the Gospels and well into the Book of Acts to figure out that Jesus was playing a different game. “Can’t he just be a genie for once? We’ve seen him feed five thousand. Let’s make him king by force.” But no, he disappears into the crowd, unwilling to take the straight-line path to the top. 

We want the Promised Land without the wilderness first. To be branches untouched by the Father’s pruning. To have fruit without roots. But that’s not his way. 

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches. (Matthew 13:31-32)

And…

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12:24)

Conclusion: The Genie & The Genius

The writers of Wish were right about one thing. The king and the wishing-star are too high and out of reach for us. Thankfully, especially at Christmastime, we are reminded that we serve a king who came down. And when he did, he faced the same genie-like temptations as we, yet without sin. But Jesus did not only become for us the final hero of the genie story. He is also the final fulfillment of the inverted genie story. Jesus is the last and true Prometheus, the one who created us long ago, and then came down from heaven to be our advocate. Except, instead of rebelling against the Father on our behalf, he showed us what it meant to trust and obey Him. As the true and final mediator between God and man, Jesus brought the “wish” of the Father to his people and the “wish” of the people to the Father. And in the end, in the ultimate inversion, he let the great genie Satan have his way with him on the cross, only to reveal that Satan’s final victory was also his eternal defeat. Just as Satan had used our desires against us, Jesus used Satan’s desires against him. Whereas the first Adam was tricked, the second Adam tricked the trickster, and restored humanity to God.

It is almost as though Christ came into the world as the one who first redeems and then fulfills not just the Scriptures but every story—and every wish!—even the sorely mistaken ones, if only we trust and wait for him to do so. Our relationship to God in prayer is not that of a master to a genie. It’s more like a madman to a genius. He comes to us, sits with us, and abides our ravings. Over time, as we learn to abide with him through the frustration of not immediately getting what we wish, he makes us sane again and, ultimately, gives us the desires of our hearts.

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