Me and My Brother - a Short Story by Jim H Christ (Chapter One)

Chapter One

Hello, many of you may think that you know me and that my name is James.  Well technically my name is James, however no one ever really calls me that.  Since I can remember, I was always called Jim.  Once in a while when my grandmother would get really irritated with me, she'd call out "James Hussein Christ, get your skinny butt in here!"  Other than that, I was rarely referred to as James.

Oh, Hussein?  Well yeah, that was somewhat of a family name.  Dad was Joseph Hussein Christ and all of my uncles and my brothers carried the Hussein name, even Jesus.  Mom of course was Marilyn
L Assad, but everyone just called her Mary. 

My earliest memories are from when I was probably 5 or so and we would go to Temple on Fridays and My Brother would drive everyone nuts with how he would go off on his own and corner one of the Elders or Rabbis and quiz them about their faith or about God's will for us and the meaning of existence and what our purpose was.  Even at 5 I knew that this was heavy talk coming from a kid who ate off of a dirt floor and carried wood and nails for food.  Dad would just shake his head and pray really hard.  Of course only grown men were allowed inside the main temple, but My Brother was insistent on making the most out of every opportunity he had to get involved, even before he "became a man".  Then things just went down hill after that, but I will save those stories for later.

I just assumed that My Brother was some combination of really smart and mentally defective.  The problem was, that his antics started causing trouble for me.

One day, I guess I was maybe 7 or 8 by now, we were walking down the road and I randomly, without cause or purpose, picked up a rock and tossed it in no particular direction.  My Brother said, "why did you disturb that rock?"  He went on, "do you think it was God's will that that rock be moved and you just became an instrument of God?"

I replied, "See, this is the shit that causes us to get our asses kicked by the neighborhood kids.  Why are you so weird, you freak?"  Then Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the light".

Not having a good response for that, I kicked My Brother in the balls and ran home crying.

I knew that our mom was the most gullible person in all of Nazareth and I used to play on this fact all of the time.  I swear that if Uncle Bart dressed as an angel and visited her and told her that God knocked her up before dad could afford to marry her and it wasn't dad's fault, I am sure that she would have believed him.  But, I digress.

So, knowing how easy it was to manipulate mom, I ran in the house crying and went to her and hugged her and said, "He threatened to drown me in the river, so I had no choice but to kick him in the balls and run away".  Just about this time My Brother limped into the room.  Mom said, "Jesus, what the heck is wrong with you two?"  This was the first of many times that My Brother used his favorite trick, we called it - "Playing the Martyr Card".  And Jesus said, "he knows not what he does".

Really?  What a jack ass? - I thought.

Me and My Brother - a Short Story by Jim H Christ (Preface)

Preface

Many biblical scholars believe that Jesus of Nazareth had at least 3 brothers, maybe 4 and possibly one sister.  His brothers names are chronicled in a few places within and outside of the gospels, the most significant being the Book of Mathew which names James, Jude and Joses.  Jude wrote a book that appears in the New Testament and also mentions Simon as another brother.  Jesus also refers to his brother Simon throughout the gospels.  The sister?  Well, they didn't really care much about women back then, did they?

This account is a story written by Jim (James) that might add some much needed insight into life in the early first century of modern times or at least it gives Jim a voice that he has not here to fore had.