The Atonement

V

"What are you doing?" The voice repeated, curious. The voice maintained no anger nor upset tone in his voice. It was a surprise to Tweek, to say the least. Still, he was scared out of his wits. He was caught being a little snoop and now he was going to pay for the consequences that would await him.

"Haha I am not doing anything, I uh, aren't you mad father?" He hummed quickly, dropping the box onto the ground. He didn't care if he was being rude with the whole dropping of the box. He cared more about messing around with the pastor. Forget everything that he just read. It was amusing to make fun of him because of how much a stick in the mud he was. Craig needed to let up.

Craig didn't find himself very pleased with what was told to him, and so he narrowed his eyes. "I am not your 'Father' nor is any other teacher of God. The only person that you may call that is your own birth father and God." He paused as the box fell to the ground. Lucky for him, Craig thought, I don't get mad at that sort of thing.

The Youth Pastor moved around a little bit, grabbing the box that fell onto the ground and begun to clean it all up. It was evident that he didn't mind any of the contents. Hell, he didn't even mind that Tweek was snooping around. It was a sensitive topic, however. Craig was never one to share those stories with anyone, but Tweek was different from other people. It wasn't necessarily because he trusted the young man, but rather the fact that this was a lesson that all of God's children should know. The stories that Craig had were especially useful when dealing with someone like Tweek.

The lessons that were able to be told from these stories would hopefully shape up Tweek's attitude toward Craig and religion. While some may take Craig's stories as a sign of weakness, Craig himself thought otherwise. Why else would he keep that little painful box of memories? The pastor just wanted to help the troubled youth that would come to him. That was one thing that the pastor was very passionate about.

The picked up the remaining amounts of the items that fell, and once he grabbed them all and set them back in the box, he locked it up and started to speak. He spoke softly as if concerned to scare Tweek.

"Listen, I know that you haven't had the best youth, but instead of reminiscing in the past then why don't you look to the future? To me, your future looks bright. You have so much potential ahead of you, boy." He started by saying, wrapping an arm around Tweek's shoulder; Tweek was unresponsive. "I'm not dumb, you know. I may have taken Calculus at a Christian Boys Camp, but I still took it and passed. I meant to keep that box open. I knew that your sinner self would want to explore and be nosy. I don't know what you expected to find, but I know that you found it."

Tweek nodded hesitantly.

"Listen, you have to realize that you can't- you cannot flaunt your body around. If you do that then you attract unwanted attention. Besides, you should wait until after you get married. It's alright if you have already committed the act, young child, but you still can get redemption. You can pray your way out of the hole of sin that you have created- do you know the story of Adam and Eve?" He paused as he waited for a response.

Tweek shrugged. "Yeah, Eve got knocked up by Adam and they created more people or something like that. So what? How does some stupid, mythical story have any relevance to what we are talking about, Pastor?"

"Well," Craig laughed softly at Tweek and ruffled his hair, "You see boy, there is more to that story than you may think. In the very beginning, God created everything. He made the fowl, the fish, the crop, the universe and even man. He made Adam on the sixth day."

Craig glanced over to Tweek, who was obviously bored out of his mind yet again. Religion was so boring and he hated it. Why couldn't it make sense?