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.
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