I have a confession: sometimes I view my relationship to God like a poorly written and badly delivered joke. Where am I in this equation? I am the punch line, of course.

This is very àpropos, given my penchant for humor. If humor was a calling or a spiritual gift, you can bet I'd be constantly on the prayer hotline asking for that one.  Humor can defuse potentially awkward or difficult situations.  It's also a great defense mechanism, one of many in my arsenal. However, humor is a lot less humorous when you are the butt of the joke. Specifically, an evil Genie joke.

The evil Genie joke is a standard in many s' repertoire: someone comes across a magic lamp, and behold! The lamp contains a genie who is now at their beck and call, eagerly waiting to grant them three wishes (Except for wishing for more wishes. Apparently all the Genies caught on to that jig a long time ago.) These jokes highlight how important it is to be careful what you ask for or how you ask for it; while the genie gives the person exactly what they wished for, the result is comically undesirable (like the man who asked for a wife 30 years his junior, and the genie makes him 30 years older rather than making his wife younger).

Like the poor sap who's the butt of the Genie jokes, so I find myself sometimes with God, thinking He's given me exactly what I prayed for, but in a very disagreeable way. People often joke that you shouldn't ask God for patience, because He'll give you situations to build your patience. I think I might be taking this concept one step further, in thinking that He is punishing me for praying amiss by giving me the very thing for which I prayed.

It hit me that I was viewing things this way, when I thought back over a circumstance with a ministry team I served on for many years. When my husband and I first joined the ministry I had to turn from another dream of mine to go to graduate school, and so I told God, "Fine. But if we are going to join up, I want to go <em>all the way</em>." I'm pretty sure I had no idea what "all the way" meant at the time, but I am sure I didn't think it meant what actually transpired over those next few years. I ended up the assistant to the head of the ministry, sort of in the "inner circle", and privy to all sorts of information. At first it was an honor, but that didn't last long. My boss was a very difficult person to work for, and on top of that, my job was excruciatingly boring most of the time. I was essentially a walking appointment calendar and message service. I didn't enjoy my job in the least, but everyone assured me  it was my "calling" and that only I could do it.

In the end, after much prayer and soul-searching, I concluded that God couldn't really want me to continue in a job I hated for the rest of my foreseeable life, and that the leadership were wrong. So, my husband and I decided it was time for me to leave my job. After a few more weeks and a few more disagreements with leadership, my husband and I got the right foot of fellowship out the door of the ministry. As a result, we lost relationships with everyone who was still on the ministry team, people we thought were our friends for all those years. It was a difficult and painful, and while I regret some of the aftermath, the leaving I do not regret.

When I look back on this situation, sometimes I smirk and think that God gave me exactly what I asked for: to go all the way. In this case, apparently <em>all the way</em> meant being dragged through the hoops of the ministry until we left or were kicked out. I don't always view it this way. Sometimes I think I simply missed God's will altogether, or missed His timing to leave sooner, and sometimes I am simply thankful for His great mercy in releasing from there. But, often I drift back into viewing God as an Evil Genie, granting a fool's poorly worded wish.

At some point we all caricature God, making Him into our own Golden Calf, an idol of our choosing and creation. Some, especially those who had cruel or abusive fathers, think of God as an angry father or a punitive taskmaster. Others view God as an aloof spiritual being, one who never intervenes on earth; conversely, some people picture God as a cruel puppet master, causing and controlling the fates of every suffering soul. Those who are a tad more optimistic pray to their God, the cosmic ATM machine, waiting to indulge our every whim or fancy, like a shiny, new SUV or a new pair of Jimmy Choos.

I usually assume these characterizations of God reveal more about our own character and nature than that of God. But, maybe even this is too simplistic; perhaps our depictions do reveal certain aspects of God, just not the whole picture. There are examples, particularly in the Old Testament, where God gave the people what they wanted, even when it was not His will for them (e.g. granting the Nation of Israel a King to rule over them). So, perhaps God sometimes does play the part of the Evil Genie, and sometimes we play the part of the punch line.

What do you think: Do you see God in His image or one of your own creation? Are our caricatures of God merely a view into our own characters, or do they reveal partial aspects of the nature of God?

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