Story Time Part 1

It's story time.

Our story begins about the age of four when said child begins to comprehend why he's in that old building every Sunday and pinched to be quiet when he asks questions. That child, let's call him Angel, and that religion, let's call it Christianity, they seem to work well together. There are certain things that he's started to wonder, and questions he always felt too stupid to ask. The old guy up on the pedestal seems to have all the answers, it's pretty cool. See, there's this God fellow, and he wants everyone to do the right thing. And then there's this Jesus guy, and he just wants everyone to be his friend in heaven, which is basically like Six Flags plus the White House but better. So the two come to an agreement, and if you want to be Jesus' friend in heaven, you get to go there, but if you don't, you don't. At this point Angel can't even conceive of anything too bad, so you just don't get to go to that place with that cool guy. That's a shame. But all in all, it's a pretty good deal. So he tells his mom, "That's silly" when the old man talks about people who don't want to be friends with Jesus, "Who wouldn't want to go to Six Flags?" His mother, quite agitated by this random comment, pinches his ear "Would you be quiet?"

Now part of what was cool about Jesus, was that everyone was supposed to act like him and it seemed like everything would be pretty awesome if they did. No one would hate each other, everyone would be friends, and even if you were annoying, you would be accepted. He then found out basically EVERYONE he knew was already pals with Jesus, talk about late to the party. So he tried his best to act like Jesus (well, except to his little sister, but that's because little sisters are always the exception. They're like your ugly cat, it's alright for you to make fun of it and hit it with beanie babies, but if anyone else does you get to tackle them and make them tell the cat they're sorry.) And it seemed pretty nice, the big people liked him, and the other kids seemed to like how he was acting.

Fast forward to first grade. By first grade, everyone was starting to become different. Kyle, Angel's best friend, was now four and a half feet tall! He was a giant! Ken was starting to get fat, but not as fat as Kevin, who was 140 lbs. Then there was Cameron, who could talk up a storm and was the only other person besides Angel and Adam that could do addition. Adam was cool, he always knew what was going on and never had to try, he and Angel got along well. And it was awesome, because everyone was already friends with Jesus too. They all went to the same church and the same sunday school classes and everyone knew that you were supposed to be nice like Jesus, like mom and dad, like teachers.
Well, sure mom and dad would send Angel to his room now and then for things like not eating all the food he was given, or when he talked during The Simpsons, or when he didn't want to go outside and play with the neighbors. But that's what parents do, they get to break the rules a bit in order to make sure you're safe.

But then no one at school tried to act like Jesus. Everyone would always be talking about how Tyler couldn't read, or how Adam's mom didn't live at home, or how Cameron had a funny face; everyone would laugh and point and push them around when it came up. Angel had never heard about Jesus acting like this, so he asked his teacher during recess one day, "Teacher, did Jesus ever make fun of anyone for having a pigs nose?"
"Angel," teacher replied, "that's a silly question. You know you're not supposed to ask silly questions." So Angel, still not knowing the answer, ran back to his friends on the swings. But his friends were mad at him, called him an apple boy, and threw him off the swings and buried him under the gravel, because they were big and he was small.

Another time, he was just standing in line for the bathroom stall just after religion class. One of the younger boys walked out of it when Angel felt a shove and fell into the stall. Ken and Kyle both took him and put his head in the yellow water. "Stop making us look stupid," one growled. "Stop answering questions," said the other, "you're making teacher hate us." Tears and spit had made the water almost clear again by the time they stopped. Angel sat in the bathroom and cried until he couldn't cry anymore, then he dried himself off and went back in the classroom. And it was weird! No one looked at him funny, or mad, like he guessed they would. They all smiled and talked like nothing happened and Angel was confused.

Jump to third grade, by this time, Angel was used to being the odd one out. Every day they had a religion class, and learned that Christians act like Jesus, because that's what being Christian means, being a little Christ. But he couldn't ever understand why the teacher would yell at them for doing things that they were never told not to do. Neither could he understand why the other kids always acted like the bad people in the Bible. Last year, one of the teachers had said that all the answers to the questions he had were in the Bible, so he started reading it. By third grade, he had read most of the old testament, and the other kids would do things like the bad people in there, but no one would punish them for it.
One time Tyler shoved another girl down in recess and made her bleed. Angel ran over and tried to help her up but the teacher pulled him off of her and started yelling at her. "But it was Kyle!" Angel protested.
So everyone was taken inside and Tyler and Lauren and Angel were all taken to the principal's office. On the way, Tyler told both of them "If you snitch, then everyone will hate you and they'll beat you up." So when they stood in front of the Principal and Lauren was asked who pushed her down, she looked at the two boys. She looked over at Tyler, and then something made her point at Angel. "He did it," she said and then started crying and ran back to the room.
Angel had to stand at the wall and watch the other kids play for a week. Only one day of recess for hurting Lauren but then the rest for "lying." Before going back to the room, Angel went to the bathroom and cried. He asked God why he was being hurt for telling the truth, and why Tyler wasn't in trouble, when all Angel wanted to do was help. He never got that answer, but all answers are found in the Bible, so he kept reading.

By fifth grade, Angel was a trouble kid. Classes were never a problem, and there wasn't a homework assignment that he couldn't finish in class. He read the Bible, and other books, every day. He knew a lot of things, and the teacher would sometimes get them wrong. "Teacher, that's wrong," he told her one day while talking about planets, "you can't land on Saturn's Rings, they're not really there, they're just rocks. You can land on the rocks though, and that would be cool. But the rings aren't really rings." Because that's what you do when people are wrong, you help them be right, because that's what he was always taught in class and read about in his books. But Teacher didn't like being contradicted, so she sent him to the principal's office for back-talking. This was the first detention Angel got.
On Sunday, in Sunday School, Angel thought, "I can't believe some people don't believe in Jesus. Why wouldn't they want to?"

Jump forward to eighth grade, and Angel had read the whole Bible a few times now. He knew all the stories and all the best verses. He had the highest grades on all his tests. They took a test from the government, and it even made a college offer to teach him extra during the summer, but his parents said no because they didn't want their kid to be 'one of those kids.' He got bunches of detentions, and every time he did, he sat afterschool and read. It wasn't a bad deal.
Then over the trip, Angel hit one of the other kids with a pencil, and the kid's mom, their Sunday School Teacher, took Angel aside and said, "If you ever touch my son again, I'll kill you. I will hunt you down, and kill you on your doorstep." Angel told his dad who was on the trip, and he just laughed and said "That lady is crazy."

And every time he had questions about the Bible, he was told "the answers are in there." So he sat in church every Sunday and read the bible, but then he started getting yelled at for not paying attention to Pastor. Some of the things Pastor said weren't in the Bible though, so Angel realized he had two choices, Stop listening to Pastor when he was talking about things that weren't in the Bible or believe that there were things God wanted for them that weren't in the Bible. By the end of eighth grade, he decided to stop listening to Pastor.
When he stood up and was confirmed in front of the church, he knew he was lying to them by saying some of the things they wanted him to say, but he said it anyways because it made them happy.
~To be continued.