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In today’s episode, a young boy decides that it’s his mission to do evil. There’s just one problem: his parents are devoted Christians! Will God or Satan win the fight for the boy’s soul? Keep listening to find out!
Doing Evil Part 1 – Transcript
Welcome to Welcome to Easy Stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from OK to Good, and from Good to Great. I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show. Today’s intermediate-level story is called Doing Evil. This week is part one, and next week will be part two. As always, the transcript and PDF are available at EasyStoriesInEnglish.com, and you can find the link in the description.
Today’s story is a bit interesting. If you grew up in a Christian country, or at least a European country, you’ll probably know a lot of the references, but for those who didn’t, I’m going to explain them as much as I can.
This story is also quite personal. You may remember that I was raised Catholic and then I became an atheist. An atheist, A T H E I S T, is someone who does not believe in God. I was an atheist for many years, and then I recently joined the Anglican church – the Church of England. So, in a way, this story reflects my own spiritual journey, although I was never as dramatic as Tobias, the main character of the story.
Because yes, Tobias decides that it is his mission to do evil – to be as bad as possible – which isn’t exactly a Christian value.
Most Christians, if they take their religion seriously, go to mass every Sunday. Mass is the religious service where Christians pray to God and share the host – the holy bread that is eaten at communion. At mass, people sing hymns – religious songs. One hymn that’s mentioned in this story is All things bright and beautiful, which goes like [sing]. It’s a very nostalgic hymn for me because I remember singing it in primary school when I was very young. Aww!
Christians might also ask themselves questions like ‘What would Jesus do?’. ‘What would Jesus do?’ is such a common question for some people that they abbreviate it to WWJD. Another common saying is ‘God works in mysterious ways’, which is very useful. Whenever someone asks me a question about something strange, I like to say ‘God works in mysterious ways’.
Naturally, Christians also reference the Bible a lot. For example, there is the story of when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet with his hair. The twelve disciples, D I S C I P L E S, were the followers of Jesus: Paul, Peter, Matthew, Judas and so on. There are also many stories about tax collectors in the Bible. In the ancient Middle East, tax collectors were seen as bad people who couldn’t be trusted.
People talk about ‘having a cross to bear’, meaning that they have a difficult task that they must do. For example, maybe you have to care for a sick family member, which takes up a lot of time, and this is your cross to bear. This refers to when Jesus was crucified on the cross. He had to carry, to bear, his cross before he was killed on it.
Another phrase that comes up in this story is ‘money is the root of all evil’, which reflects the idea that money can turn good people bad.
There are many traditional ideas which do not come from the Bible, but from the Church’s later interpretations of it. For example, there are many different teachings on sin. A sin is an action that is considered morally wrong, and many Christians believe that when the world ends, God will judge everyone for their sins.
Hundreds of years after Jesus’s death, the idea of the seven deadly sins came about. These are the worst seven sins: pride, greed, wrath – which means anger; envy, lust, gluttony – which means eating too much; and sloth – which means being lazy. And speaking of the seven deadly sins, one of them, pride, comes up often in the expression ‘pride comes before a fall’. This means that you should not be too proud, too sure of your own greatness, or you will fall – something bad will happen.
Then there are the more normal, everyday parts of being a Christian. Usually, after mass on Sunday, the church serves tea, coffee and biscuits and everyone has a chat. This is the coffee rota. A rota, R O T A, is a rotating system where each week a different person is responsible for something. For example, many jobs such as bartending work on a rota – people take it in turns to work different days. A rota is essentially a schedule.
This kind of volunteering is common in religious spaces. People might also volunteer to visit the elderly, or volunteer at a chapel. A chapel, C H A P E L, is a small church or religious space, usually somewhere like a school or a hospital.
Given that the UK has been a majority Christian country for about a thousand years, it has deep roots in popular culture as well. The Chronicles of Narnia is a popular series of fantasy novels for children. You might know the first book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where a group of young children discover the magical world of Narnia hiding in a wardrobe in an old house. The author of the series, C. S. Lewis, was a devoted Christian who also wrote many books about his faith, such as Mere Christianity.
Alright, those are all the cultural references, so I’ll just explain some words that are in the story.
‘The Lord’ is a phrase Christians use to refer to God. Traditionally, a lord is a type of noble, but we use ‘the Lord’ to refer to God to show respect to Him.
Hypocrisy, H Y P O C R I S Y, is when you say one thing but then do another. People who practise hypocrisy are hypocrites, H Y P O C R I T E S. For example, if you tell other people that they should recycle to save the planet but you are too lazy to recycle yourself, then you’re a hypocrite.
When you spit, and the past tense is spat, you go [spits]. In the UK, it is very rude to spit outside, but in some other countries, it is quite common. So be careful if you come here. If you spit in front of someone, they might think you’re insulting them!
Test the waters means to gently test a situation before committing to it. For example, maybe you have an appliance, let’s say a toaster, and the last time you used it it exploded and broke. You get it fixed, but you don’t want to cause any major electrical incidents, so before you toast bread with it, you test the waters by turning it on with nothing inside.
There is a reference in this story to the ‘days getting longer’. I’m aware that some of you live near the equator where the days stay roughly the same length all year round. In the UK, however, the days are much shorter in the winter and much longer in the summer. For example, some days the sun doesn’t go down until 10pm.
The tabernacle, T A B E R N A C L E, is the small box inside a church where the bread and wine are kept. During mass, the bread and wine are taken from the tabernacle and blessed, and then they become the body and blood of Christ and are shared during communion. The bread is also referred to as ‘the host’.
You might remember that at the start of the episode I mentioned Satan, S A T A N. Satan is God’s number one enemy. He is also known as Lucifer, Beelzebub or the Devil. Satan was once an angel in heaven, but was thrown out and now lives in hell. Since this story is about doing evil, Satan comes up quite a bit!
Boarding school, B O A R D I N G, is a type of school where students live there instead of living at home. Boarding schools were a lot more common in the past in the UK. These days, it’s usually only expensive private schools that have boarders – pupils who live there. The history of boarding schools has had a deep impact on British popular culture. Harry Potter was so successful because it took the traditional genre of boarding school novels and added magic to it.
And finally, something that happens a lot in boarding schools is bullying, B U L L Y I N G. Bullying is when you are mean to someone for no reason. Most bullies are found in schools, and like to make fun of and hurt other kids for fun.
Phew, that was quite a long introduction! Well done for getting through it. And now, as always, it’s time to listen and enjoy!
Doing Evil
PART ONE
Tobias’s parents were good Christians. They prayed every evening, they went to church on Sunday and they followed the word of the Lord. For many years, they tried unsuccessfully to have a baby, and although they never said it out loud, they secretly wondered if God didn’t want them to have a child.
But then, on a hot summer’s day, Tobias’s mother got pregnant, and nine months later the boy was born. Tobias means ‘God is good’, and it was true, because God had tested them and they had walked through the fire.
Tobias, however, was a bad Christian. Even as a baby, he cried all the way to church and all throughout the mass. When they baptised him, he bit the priest’s finger so hard the man said some very un-Christ-like words. When his parents prayed, he pulled on their hair.
Tobias’s parents hoped he might grow out of it. But as the boy grew, he only hated the Church more. Everything in it was carefully-constructed hypocrisy. He saw people offering to read at church, and knew they only sought praise. He saw people studying the Bible, and knew they only paid attention to the parts they agreed with. He saw those who helped the sick and elderly, and knew they only did it to make sure they went to heaven.
So when Tobias’s parents asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said, ‘I want to be evil.’
Many parents would have reacted with rage or laughter. But Tobias’s parents were not like other ‘good Christians’ who hit their children or shouted at them.
‘We’ve been too soft on him,’ said his mother, as they prepared tea and coffee after a church service.
‘Yes,’ said his father. ‘But we chose to do that. We wanted to shelter him from what we went through.’
They linked hands briefly, before returning to their duty. She pressed and poured the coffee with the care of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet. He laid out the biscuits in perfect, beautiful circles, like God arranging the seeds of a sunflower.
They did not say what they were thinking. Their prayers were not enough. Tobias must learn through action, through service to God.
So that evening at supper, they encouraged him to volunteer to help the elderly. When he refused, his father said, ‘Alright then, Tobias. But we’re going to have to stop giving you pocket money.’
‘Why?’
‘Well,’ said his mother. ‘You know how things are with the economy. But we also think you should earn it.’
‘By volunteering? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose? Volunteering is unpaid work. It’s in the name.’
‘Look,’ said his father, gripping his glass of water tightly. ‘That’s just how things are. Do you want to volunteer or not?’
Tobias considered it for a moment. Money was the root of all evil, or so they said, but then again, sloth was one of the seven deadly sins. So either way, he was doing evil.
‘No,’ said Tobias. ‘Can I go play video games?’
But a few days later, when Sunday had come and gone – and he had received no pocket money – he started to rethink his decision. That was that great video game coming out soon. He just needed a few more weeks’ pocket money to buy it. And it had lots of violence in it. Surely that would make up for the volunteering? And actually, this might be an opportunity…
He went downstairs where his parents were pretending to watch TV but really talking about him, and said, ‘I’ve changed my mind about the volunteering.’
‘Oh, really!’ said his mother, far too happy. ‘Did you pray on it?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Tobias. ‘I asked myself, “What would Jesus do?” and well, you know the rest. When do I start?’
Tobias’s parents were so relieved that they never imagined he might have a secret plan. Yes, he would help the elderly, but he worked evil into his service: when he gave them tea, he spat in their cups.
Three times a week, Tobias returned from the old people’s home with a big smile on his face that covered his sins like a cloth. Within a few weeks he earned the money to buy that video game, and his parents decided to test the waters again.
‘Do you still want to be evil?’ asked his father, casually, as if he hadn’t been lying awake at night thinking about it.
Tobias took a big bite of lasagna and chewed. His parents watched him with the suspicion of tax collectors. He swallowed and said, ‘Yes! I want to be as evil as the day is long. And the days are getting longer now, aren’t they? All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small…’
His parents shared a look that contained a long, painful conversation.
The next day, while Tobias was at school, they took all his video games and locked them in a box in their bedroom. It was a small box, a bit like the tabernacle.
For a while, Tobias’s mother considered unlocking the tabernacle, putting the games back and throwing it out of the window. It reminded her of something from her childhood: a shelf, high up so she couldn’t reach it, where her mother kept books she didn’t think were ‘suitable’. But before she could do it, she heard the key turning in the lock – Tobias had come home.
‘Tobias,’ she called.
Tobias froze on the stairs. He was already heading up to start his game.
‘Yes?’ he said sweetly. She came out to meet him on the stairs.
‘You know how you’re always complaining about being cold in the playground at lunchtime? Well, why not volunteer in the school chapel? I’ve heard the children who help there are very nice. There’s Georgie from church – you know her.’
‘I don’t want to,’ said Tobias plainly. ‘They’re all weirdos. No offence to Georgie.’ But secretly, he thought she was the weirdest. Not only did she help at the school chapel, but at church as well.
‘Well then,’ said his mother. ‘That’s fine.’
He moved past her, but just as he was opening the door to his room, she said, ‘We’ve decided to put your games away, just so you know. You have exams coming up, don’t you?’
He turned, slowly and coldly.
‘But let me guess. If I help in chapel, then you’ll think the Lord is on my side and I won’t need to worry about exams. Correct?’
‘Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways, Tobias, and—’
‘Message understood, Mother.’
And he disappeared. Tobias’s mother felt weak and had to go sit in the kitchen. The way he’d said the word ‘Mother’ reminded her of herself, so many years ago.
Three weeks passed. Every day after school, Tobias sat in his room and read The Chronicles of Narnia. They were his favourite books as a kid, and he knew practically every word, but now they just reminded him of the situation his parents had put him in. It was such obvious Christian propaganda. How had he never realised? Now he read the books out of hate.
Worst of all, when he lay in bed at night he could hear the video games calling out to him from the tabernacle in his parents’ bedroom. His father kept the key on a chain around his neck, day and night.
Eventually, Tobias gave in. He sat in silence in the car on the way to school, and then just before jumping out the door said, ‘I’m going to start helping out at chapel. I hope you’re happy, Dad. Bye.’
Tobias knew his father hated not getting the last word, so at least that way he got a small victory.
The chapel wasn’t as bad as Tobias expected. The weird kids were pretty quiet. He thought Georgie might start talking about their church and embarrass him, but she kept to herself. They spent most of their time chatting and reading, and occasionally praying. And they got lots of free food. All he had to do was move books and chairs around and clean a bit. It also made the teachers like him, which he hoped would mean better marks.
But still, he hated how religious it all was. For years, Tobias had been avoiding Christian summer camps and after-school clubs. His parents had never forced him to go to anything other than Sunday morning mass, but they had certainly encouraged him. Now he was surrounded by crosses and Bibles every day, and it made him feel sick.
Getting his video games back helped a bit, but Tobias started to wonder if it was worth it. Still, this was an opportunity, he told himself. He got a lot of pleasure out of spitting in the old people’s cups, and he was sure that there would be a similar chance soon enough…
About once a month, a priest visited the school and held a mass. For some reason, the priest liked Tobias. He supposed it was because the priest wasn’t there long enough to really get to know him. But now that he was helping at the chapel, he’d have the chance to show the priest his true self.
Before mass started, the priest stood in the chapel and prepared the host, while the rest of them helped him get ready. It was awful seeing these kids offer to carry the priest’s bag and hang up his coat. Tobias stayed at the back and said as little as possible.
‘Thank you for your help, children,’ said the priest. ‘I’m just going to go to the toilet and then we’ll start.’
Tobias waited for the priest to leave the room and then looked around. The others were all getting their things and heading for the hall. He only had a second to do what he needed to do.
A few minutes later, mass began, but when the priest removed the cloth to reveal the host, there was nothing there. The teachers all looked for it, but nobody could find the host. They started checking everyone’s bags, and Tobias was the first to offer his up. The priest looked at him suspiciously, but said nothing.
The head teacher was furious. ‘This is outrageous!’ he said. ‘To think one of our children would steal the host! The body of Christ!’
‘Here it is!’ cried a girl.
And she held up Georgie’s bag. Georgie turned bright red and started to cry.
‘Georgie,’ said the priest. ‘Oh, Georgie.’
‘It couldn’t be her, Father!’ said one of the chapel helpers. ‘She prays more than any of us!’
‘Did anyone see what happened?’ said the head teacher.
Then Tobias, who had been waiting for this moment, stepped forward.
‘I saw it, sir,’ he said. ‘I should’ve said something before, but I couldn’t believe my eyes. I didn’t want to think…’
He looked at Georgie, who was now as pale as the host itself. Sorry, Georgie, he thought. Someone has to bear this cross, and it’s not going to be me.
‘I forgot my bag in the chapel, and when I went to get it, I saw Georgie doing something with the host. I thought she was just looking at it, but she must have stolen it.’
‘He’s l-lying!’ said Georgie. ‘I was out here with everyone else. A-ask any of the other chapel assistants!’
But they all stepped away from her, leaving her in a circle of her own shame.
That evening at supper, Tobias couldn’t stop smiling to himself. He was practically blushing from what he had done. Now that was evil.
‘Say, you’re in a good mood,’ said Dad. ‘I would’ve thought an evil kid like you would be sad after mass.’
‘Mm,’ said Tobias, quickly filling his mouth with food. He knew what was coming next.
‘So do you still want to be evil?’ said his mother.
‘I am evil,’ he said, pushing his plate away from himself. ‘That’s not going to change.’
‘Well,’ said Dad, turning to Mum. ‘We tried. I guess there’s only one thing left.’
But Tobias was already leaving the table.
The next day, Tobias came home from school and went to play video games. He had half-expected his parents would take them away again, but he wasn’t going to complain. He focussed completely on the game, trying to block out thoughts of his ridiculous family.
A few hours later, though, when he got up to go to the toilet, he found the door locked.
‘Hey!’ he said, banging on the door. ‘I’m trapped in here!’
No response. Maybe his dad was out in the garden. So he banged harder. ‘Hey, come help me!’
‘Pray on it,’ called his father.
Tobias stopped, struggling to understand what he had just heard. Slowly, he realised what was happening.
‘You can’t force someone to pray!’ he shouted. ‘That must be illegal!’
He heard footsteps approaching.
‘Clearly, Satan has made his home inside you,’ said his mother sadly. ‘We’re worried about you, Tobias. We don’t know what else to do.’
‘You could try leaving me alone.’
‘Tobias,’ said his father. ‘We’re serious. If you don’t change your ways, we’re going to have to send you away.’
Tobias blinked. ‘Send me away? What, like on holiday?’
‘There’s a… boarding school,’ said Mum.
Tobias felt sick. Sending naughty children to boarding school was something that happened in films. He wasn’t bad like that, was he? Yeah, he had punished Georgie when all she deserved was a bit of bullying for being a weirdo, but nobody knew it was his doing.
And how was he any worse than the people who pretended to love God but only went to church for the gossip? The Christians who pushed gay people out? The priests who touched children? He was honest. He didn’t pretend to be good like the rest of those hypocrites. He wasn’t trying to go to heaven even if it did exist.
But Tobias felt his beliefs being stretched, tested, and he didn’t like that. It all felt a little too much like the story of Jesus Christ, and he was sick of that guy.
‘Fine then,’ he said, as calmly as possible. ‘I’ll pray.’
And he got on his knees by the door, closed his eyes and began the Our Father.
‘Our Father, who art in heaven…’
His father breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Dear Lord,’ he whispered. ‘We thank you for bringing Tobias back to the light.’
‘…as we forgive those who trespass against us…’
Tobias pushed away his father’s voice, pushed away his own voice. He disconnected from the prayer, felt it as if it were a priest saying it and not him.
There was no way he was going to pray to their God. He had never gone fully atheist – he found the atheists just as annoying as the Christians – but right now, this locked door before him felt like a barrier separating him from the God he’d been told about his entire life, and he had no desire to break it down.
So while Tobias’s parents thanked God for saving their son, for all things bright and beautiful, Tobias said his own prayers in his head. And he didn’t pray to God. He prayed to Satan.
This habit continued every day. After school, Tobias was locked in his room until he said his prayers, and at night, his parents knelt on either side of him until he prayed again. Tobias struggled a bit at first, made it believable that he didn’t want to do it, and then gradually gave in, all while speaking different words in his head.
While he was in the school chapel, he wrote prayers to Satan in his notebook, which he memorised on the walk home. Then he tore up the paper and threw it in a bin round the corner from their house, just in case.
By the time evening came, he’d learned his new prayer.
Satan, he ‘said’ one night – his lips said other words, words which he’d long stopped hearing, but in his mind he spoke the truth. Lord of all darkness, Mother of death, Father of evil. Show me your ways. Help me trick my parents. Help me be the snake that tempts the good.
And then, months into praying, Tobias heard something. Yes, months had passed. The old Tobias would have fought, screamed at his parents, but now he understood that this was war. And in his darkest hour, help came to him.
At first, he thought he must be imagining it. But gradually, the voice got louder and clearer. It laughed at his parents’ stupid prayers, and it said to Tobias, I will give you strength, but you must find the path yourself. Be brave, Tobias.
Tobias almost made it to the end of the school year. The voice gave him power, and he returned to his acts of evil, planting even blacker seeds. Not only did he spit in the old people’s tea, he poured in salt and dirt. He kept rats in the cupboards of the chapel, feeding them food from the canteen. The next time the priest came for mass, he slipped a rat into his clothes and watched the chaos unfold, then blamed another student for it. And he prayed to Satan three times a day, convincing his parents that he really had made a turn for the good.
But pride comes before a fall, as they say, and it all fell down at once. One of the old people got sick, and they discovered what Tobias had been doing. The teachers found the rats, and Georgie confessed she had seen Tobias feeding them. And one night, while praying with his parents, Tobias said the quiet part out loud.
‘Satan, please bring death to all my enemies.’
‘WHAT?!’ said his mother.
‘I knew it!’ said his father.
Tobias jumped to his feet. The voice in his head screamed at him to run away, but where would he go?
‘What do you mean, you knew it?’ he said, trying to buy time.
‘Tobias, I can’t believe—’
‘I could tell you weren’t really praying! I felt it. Child of Satan!’
Tobias’s mum burst into tears and left the room. For a while, Tobias’s father simply stared at him. Tobias hoped he might calm down. But finally he got up, said, ‘Think about what you’ve done,’ and then left the room. Click. The door was locked again.
Tobias went to the window and tried to pull it open. It was locked as well, of course. He ran at the door and tried to break it, but all he did was hurt his shoulder.
‘OW!’ he shouted.
He kicked his bed, he bit and screamed into his pillow, but nothing could put out the fire that was burning in his heart.
All that, all that for nothing.
No, not for nothing, said the voice.
‘What’s the point?’ said Tobias, fully aware that he was talking to himself like a mad person. ‘What did I get from all this?’
You must be patient. Good things come to those who wait. Keep believing.
‘Yeah, right.’
Three long days passed. Tobias’s parents brought him food, and eventually his school work, but they did not let him out. It seemed like they expected him to keep fighting, but he didn’t see the point in shouting and breaking things. He couldn’t jump out the window, anyway, without seriously hurting himself. He briefly considered going on hunger strike, but he knew the hunger would just make him feel worse. At least this way he could enter into his fantasy world, speak to the voice in his head, pray to Satan. It comforted him, reminded him he wasn’t alone.
Then, one morning, a van pulled up outside the house. The sound woke Tobias up, and he looked out the window.
ST GUMMARUS’ SCHOOL FOR NASTY CHILDREN, it said on the side of the van. Quiet footsteps came from the corridor and the sound of the key turning in the lock.
Tobias jumped out of bed, still in his pyjamas, and got ready. As soon as the door swung open, he made a run for it.
‘No!’ cried his mother. He pushed past her and ran down the stairs.
His father waited at the bottom, blocking his way, but Tobias pretended he was going to jump over him, and then quickly slipped between his legs. A knock came from the front door, so Tobias ran to the back, through the garden and started climbing the fence.
‘You won’t get away!’
Tobias’s father caught up to him and grabbed his foot. But Tobias had worn socks to bed, and his father’s hold slipped until he was left with nothing but a sock. Tobias laughed and swung himself over the fence.
And right into the hands of two pork-faced men. Tobias screamed as the men caught him and carried him to the van outside the front of the house.
‘You can’t do this! Religion or not, this is illegal!’
Tobias’s parents said nothing. They simply stood by the door and watched. Tobias’s father held the sock sadly in both hands, and his mother looked like she was about to cry. Tobias decided to try one last thing.
‘Mum!’ he said, sounding as hurt as possible. ‘Please, I’m scared!’
She let out a pained sound and tried to move forward, but Tobias’s father grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back. And then the two men shoved Tobias headfirst into the van, the doors closed and he was left in darkness.
The engine roared to life. As the van pulled away, Tobias could just hear the muffled sobs of his mother, and then, nothing.
END OF PART ONE
Will Tobias sink or swim at his new school? And will he keep doing evil? Find out in next week’s episode! Thanks for listening, and remember that you can support me by leaving a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And tell your friends and family about the show! Why not? Bye!