THAT NEW KIND OF MARRIAGE - An Allegory of Salvation

My name is “Child”. My full name is “Child Sinner”. My parents are “Adam and Eve Sinner”.
I lived a pretty natural and ordinary life until I met “Christopher”. I had always been looking for the man of my dreams. The he came along.
With Christopher and me, right from the start it was one of those stormy romances, on again, off again, on again, off again. So when I first began hearing about this new scientific marriage technique that’s been discovered for merging two people into one, we just made up our minds one night, he and I, to throw caution to the winds and give it a try. I guess it just seemed high time for us to take some kind of permanent, irreversible step, and we thought – well, why not? Why not go all the way?
After all, people around us are always hopping into bed together these days, and it’s nothing today for couples to shack up. So when this new science of total fusion of two people became available and we began seeing it advertised all over the place, it just seemed like the natural thing for Christopher and me to do.
Of course, I realize that it must strike many people as shockingly grotesque, the very idea of two separate people being literally melted down into one. But if you stop and think about it, it’s really no more peculiar a thing than shaking hands, say, or kissing – to say nothing of making love! I mean, who thinks up such things? No matter how common they may become, there remains a perpetual kind of strangeness to the most ordinary gestures of intimacy. And ultimately don’t they all point in the same direction, towards a deeper and deeper union?
Naturally Christopher and I had a big church ceremony, and I won’t go into all the details of that. But the moment itself, that moment when the two of us were standing there hand-in-hand before the altar and were suddenly, physically, melded together – how can I describe that? Well, one thing I can say is that instead of being inside myself and looking out at Christopher, suddenly I felt that I was inside Christopher, looking out at myself! One moment I was minding my own business, more or less, and the next moment I was minding business for Christopher Saint – that was his full name.
Looking back on it I can see that before then, in spite of having a lover and all, really I was still behaving pretty much like my own person: single, autonomous, marching to a private drum – and expecting Christopher just to tag along! It was almost as though I was the only person on earth lost in my own little dream world. But ever since that mysterious transaction at the altar, like it or not, I’ve found myself living not my own life but Christopher’s.
Now I’m doing Christopher’s work, thinking Christopher’s thoughts, getting used to Christopher’s body as being my own body, and trying however clumsily to do all things just the way Christopher wants them done. And since there is legally only one living person now in place of the two, I even took his full name, first and last, as my own: Christopher Saint.
My parents, predictably, were outraged. They’d been dead against the thing all along, refusing even to come to the ceremony. And you should have seen them the day Christopher and I walked into their home as one person! I mean, on top of everything else, Christopher has this thick foreign accent, which to my ears sounds adorable, but which I know turns a lot of people off. So even before we got in the door my parents heard my familiar voice all mixed up with that strange voice. And as soon as they laid eyes on the face of their dear daughter pressed shamelessly into the face of this foreigner, and saw my lips moving with his in a kind of perpetual osculation – well, they freaked right out. They had no idea who I was anymore, they said, and merely to look at me, all wrapped up in that man, sent shivers up and down their spines.
From the way they carried on, you’d have thought I’d been lost to them forever! You’d have thought that getting joined and fused together with a strange man was something unutterably disgusting, even perverted, for a decent woman to do. Well, if it had been anyone else besides Christopher Saint, I’m sure I’d agree with them. But Christopher just happens to be the soul of decency, the ultimate paragon of purity and goodness. How can you argue with true love? And besides, being called “Child Saint” sounds pretty good.
I don’t mean to imply that it’s all been smooth sailing for Christopher and me. We’ve had our ups and downs, believe me, and I can’t honestly say I don’t ever miss myself the way I used to be. The fact is, I do get frustrated not being able to run my own show. I know it’s silly, since there’s no going back now. But it’s one thing to BE one with another person, and it’s another thing altogether to FUNCTION as one.
In the beginning, especially, the two of us weren’t coordinated at all, and I’m sure that’s partly what put my family off. It was as though I and a perfect stranger had thrown a horse blanket over us, with him wearing the horse’s head and me being the horse’s you know what. And we were pretending to be a dancing horse. We kept tripping over each other’s legs, stepping on toes, getting in each other’s way. What a sight!
And so we were constantly having these long discussions about how to work things out. My feeling was that the only sane way to operate was on a fifty-fifty basis: half of the time we’d be me, and the other half we’d be him. What could be fairer than that? But Christopher, being from the Old Country, wouldn’t hear of it, and seemed determined not just to share my life but to take it over completely!
Even now, there’s hardly a day goes by when we don’t have to talk this issue through, and sort out what it all means. And again and again Christopher has to explain patiently to me that what actually happened, that moment before the altar when I got joined to him, was that I DIED to my old existence, and a brand-new person was formed. Can’t I see how preposterous it is, he’ll argue, for me to keep on trying to revert to my old independent self, when that self is now nothing but a dead shell? When I don’t even have a living body to call my own anymore?
“So what about you?” I’ll pout. “It’s a two-way street, you know. How come you get off scot-free?”
“Oh, but I don’t, “he answers simply. Don’t you remember that I died too?”
And at that, the very shadow that crosses his face will steal across mine, and I’ll feel my lips begin to tremble just as his do. And in my eyes, - which are really our eyes – the tears will spring. And then in our heart I’ll know that he is right. Then I’ll know that fifty-fifty is impossible, and that nothing makes any sense anymore but for the two of us to become totally and unconditionally identified, immolated and fused into one another.
So it hasn’t always been easy, living in Christopher Saint, or having him living in me. He can be so difficult to figure out sometimes, so full of inconsistencies. I mean, first he’ll say one thing, and then he’ll say something else that sounds to me exactly the opposite. Like we’ll be on our way to the supper table, for example – and I’ll be starving – and suddenly he’ll remember that he has to make this important phone call, and the next minute we’ll be throwing on our coat and heading out the door to some dire emergency. And right in the middle of that he’s liable to stop and spend some time playing around with the neighborhood kids! That’s just the kind of a man he is.
You never quite know what he’s going to do next. And yet somehow he expects me to be able to keep up with all of this, and even to read his mind. Because he’s doing it all, remember – inside of me – right inside my mind and body, - even though meanwhile what I want sometimes is to get on with a few harmless and quite legitimate plans of my own. Like fooling around with some of my old friends, or maybe sleeping in on Sunday morning, and so on. I tell you, it can be mighty painful, always being yanked in two directions at once.
But then, I guess the truth of it is that I felt much more like a schizophrenic BEFORE meeting Christopher than after. For somehow, in spite of everything, I’m more myself now than I’ve ever been. And the better I get to know Christopher on the inside, the more his odd behavior on the outside seems not so crazy or inconsistent anymore, but makes perfect sense to me. You really have to walk around in a person’s shoes before you start seeing things their way.
So that’s why I can so heartily recommend this new scientific technique of fusing people together, whatever little problems it might create. Mind you, I’d never dream of doing it with anyone except Christopher Saint! I mean, getting hooked up like this with the wrong person would be sheer hell!

On that day you will realize that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.
John 14:20

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