This short story was suppose to be about the nature of miracles and the origin of faith. Or perhaps the difference between faith and religion or perhaps just the loss of magic and the disillusion of identity. Perhaps it was just trying to be funny.

The Story of Brian, Savior

Brian was sure that he was in fact Jesus Christ. It wasn’t that he was obviously insane; he didn’t involve himself in passionate arguments about being the messiah, nor did he ever run naked through the streets shouting about it. He didn’t go around trying to cure anyone or attempted to speak ancient Hebrew either. No, he was just calmly and rationally convinced that he was Jesus and therefor didn’t have to make a fuzz about it.Being Jesus made him one of the nicest persons you could ever meet; the most benign personality and overbearing nature you could find. Perhaps that is why people around him just chose to live with this minor quirk in his character. People eventually stopped arguing with him about this being The Savior situation and also eventually stopped trying to force him to do a miracle for them, just to see him fail. He never would try anyway and he never got even the least bit defensive about the whole thing. But whenever anything extraordinary and fortunate would happen, and it actually does a lot if you pay attention to it, people would look at Brian with a slight smile waiting for him to take credit for it or play along with the joke. Instead he would just smile gladly, not saying anything at all. And that made him rather annoying to be around, at least on those occasions.

Eventually Brian met Maria. She was a charismatic redhead who was neither particularly slutty or particularly holy either. She was very smitten with Brian though, that much was obvious to everyone. And Brian loved her in a very physical way without it having any major effect on his belief in being The Son of God. People soon gave up questioning him about how this could be. Brian didn’t know a lot of about theology, as it turned out, and didn’t involve himself in such discussions.

Being the Savior didn’t spare Brian’s life the hardships and defeats of human life, and soon he lost Maria. She didn’t die or anything dramatic like that, but she did have too much to drink one night in town and went with the wrong person home. Pain was written all over Brian’s face in those times, but no one had the heart to ask him if this changed his idea of being Jesus Christ – though, many probably thought about it. Maria was heart broken as well, and perhaps, being Christ, Brian should have forgiven her. Perhaps he did forgive her, but she just never forgave herself. No one knows.

Brian and Maria never found each other again. People noticed that Brian stopped talking about being Jesus Christ, but then he hadn’t actually ever talked about it much himself. But people stopped asking him and stopped looking at him with that daring smile, whenever something seemingly miraculous happened. So, the idea itself just sort of went away. People grew up and rumor has it that Brian lives with his wife and two kids in a small town today. He works as a customer service agent and does nothing spectacular with his life, as far as anyone knows.

People probably expected more of Brian. Even when he lost Maria people obviously expected his reaction to be something exceptional. That he would violently forsake this cloak of goodness and kindness that he had chosen to wear. That somehow this idea of being Christ would resolve in some manner that it never did. But then, Brian never really was anything special in any other way than his belief in being Jesus Christ and in the kind nature that followed this belief.

Perhaps he had just watched the wrong movie as a child and took the joke too far.

By Jeppe Grünberger