A Complex Narrative About the Nature of Messiahs

By Tony Fonseca

02/08/2005

LeBlanc, Toby. The Messiah Complex. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2004. 272 p.

Despite every religion’s insistence that its god is THE God, that there can be no other, it seems that every culture contains its own unique legend about a supernatural hero—a messiah—who lives among the people¹, and one day magically differentiates himself by using his powers to save the day. Yet few people ever stop and seriously consider the pressures that must come to bear on this half-human entity that fulfills his destiny by choosing to accept the responsibilities of being a savior. Neophyte  author Toby LeBlanc² does just this in Messiah Complex, where readers meet a young man who relates that being a messiah did not come naturally, that having ultimate power is something that one has to learn to live with. 

In Messiah Complex, Chris tells his story of growing up with the powers of a would-be God. He discovers that for every hearts he lightened, for every human he enlightened, there were just as many hearts that he left heavy, just as many people he left in that dark of their destructive thoughts and emotions. Institutionalized as an adult, Chris’s final act is to tell his story. 

The novel works psychologically, in that throughout readers are allowed to suspend disbelief and take at face value the fact that Chris actually does possess supernatural powers, or they can choose to view him as an unreliable narrator who simply suffers from a “Messiah Complex.” LeBlanc ingeniously balances both interpretations from start to finish, and when he does supply what would amount to giveaway scenes which lead readers to approach the novel as dark magical realism, he makes sure that these scenes are filtered through Chris’s consciousness, thereby keeping the nature of his divinity questionable at all times.

The premise of the novel is simple: LeBlanc poses the issue of what struggles a god would have to face while growing up and being raised as a “normal” child. In this respect, the novel is as close to a true second coming narrative as anything I have seen, for here god’s early years are packed with self-doubt, with unintentional abuse of power, and with the intricacies of belonging to both the worlds of the human and the divine. This particular messiah, Chris, is blessed with supernatural power (namely the power to look into any individual’s eyes and see that person’s soul, including all of his/her secrets) and divine knowledge, and he tries to use these responsibly; however, he soon figures out that revealing the truth about themselves to people can sometimes have dire consequences. Simply put, he finds that many people cannot handle the truth—and some will kill themselves when faced with it.

But there is enough genteel wit and subtle humor—as opposed to say using over-the-top humor a la Christopher Moore—to prevent the novel from proselytizing. For example, Chris’s high school years, which make up the first half of the novel, are replete with the shenanigans and silliness that typically make up a young boy’s preteen and teen years. He takes up with a group of kids that includes a “party animal” and born leader, a “holier-than-thou” type who turns out to be a regular guy with deep religious beliefs, and misfit twins who serve as comic relief. As a high schooler, Chris also takes up with the novel’s modernized Mary Magdalene, the slutty cheerleader who turns out to have a heart of gold and a soul, but is nonetheless a human being trapped in a hell of her own making (and ultimately her of own choice).

Approaching the nature of divinity humorously, LeBlanc teaches without preaching; in fact, one would be hard pressed to find references to religion per se anywhere in the text. This is not to say that the novel does not attack its central idea seriously. Throughout, Chris deals with the history of his “immaculate conception” (he was conceived as a test tube baby, and his father is one of the novel’s mysteries), with his eventually being ostracized from society, and with his inner battles when maintaining close relationships with imperfect human beings.

Though it is not horrifying in nature, Messiah Complex does teach about monstrosity. Specifically, the novel’s monsters are those human beings who feel the need to rid themselves of anything which smacks of the divine, of any person who challenges their view of human nature being essentially dark and banal. These monsters serve as their own demons, creating hellish imprisonment for themselves due to fatalistic tendencies, and because of the human propensity to wallow in emotional and sometimes physical filth (hence, the popularity of Jerry Springer, The Real World, Fear Factor, and The Simple Life). Chris addresses the monstrous nature of humanity directly in his narrative, when he prefigures his own demise, and explains, among other phenomena, the crucifixion of the Christian God:

But that is why you kill us. You have to get rid of the threat to your routine. You have to prove to yourselves that what we are saying is not true. We have to die. Then our Message is bunk isn’t it? We taught immortality and you killed us. Guess you shot our Philosophy all to hell! But then, after time, when our residual presence has been destroyed, you all begin to get over the intimidation factor. You go back and start reading what we have written or said (or at least one version of it). You embrace and believe it. All of a sudden someone has the bright idea of setting up rules around your philosophies making it impossible for the next messiah with the next saving Message to even make his point. In no time, this new messiah is dead too. And the cycle continues.

On second thought, perhaps there is a bit of the horrifying in LeBlanc’s novel.

¹LeBlanc himself sets the stage for reading the novel this way, with these memorable opening lines:

You know me. I have been around for centuries in one form or another. I am Muhammad. I am Buddha, Gandhi. I am Mother Theresa. I am Zoroaster. I am Socrates. Well you get the picture. Yes. I am a messiah. A Chosen One. That’s right, I said it. Messiah. You all hate me and you all love me. All at the same time. It is in your nature. That’s why there is so much hype around me. You love me because my message lasts forever and brings the world to a temporary Utopia. When Utopia runs out, I am created anew. Supply and demand. I coach you through the tough times. You hate me because you don’t understand me. You love me as a great mystery. You hate me because I don’t seem natural. You love me because of this, too. You hate me because you are not me.

But I am you.

²Toby LeBlanc is a graduate student at his alma mater, Louisiana State University in the Counselor Education program, and is studying to become a licensed professional counselor.