The Son

I have a friend who is a maximiser - he is working on his physique, his useful knowledge repertoire, or his investment strategy every hour of the day.  In a group discussion he once mentioned his great fear is losing it all by getting married and having kids.  He described his (existential?) horror of having kids like this: "my parents had me, and their parents had them, and their parents had them, and for what?  Someone has to come at the end of that chain and be the point of it all."

I often think of this since that (quickly debunked) gospel of Mary which spoke of Jesus' wife. I guess I think of a young Jesus getting married, maybe going through infertility and marriage difficulties, and his wife dying in childbirth with his son, and Jesus looking at his world and his place with new eyes and thinking 'someone has to be the reconciler of all this trouble in the world - someone has to be the point; maybe the turning point, I am the son the world was waiting for.' It would be like being born again, and finding your life other than it was.

To be clear, I doubt Jesus was married and it would mean nothing (theologically) if he had been. Still, this fiction has some charming aspects, from some points of view.  Jesus was a real man, far wiser than my friend, but still, real.