further observations on "The Miracle Job," with reference to "The 12-Step Job"
I originally wrote this as an e-mail to scarletts_awry, and she told me I should clean it up and post it here.
I was thinking about that scene in "The Miracle Job" with the "You're a Catholic and you're going to fake a miracle" conversation. The other thing that jumps out at me is something else that Hardison says: that Nate went from seminary school to being an insurance cop to being a con artist/thief. Implied is that this is an interesting/odd career trajectory, but...maybe it's not really. Because with each shift in career focus (as it were...) Nate has both moved further outside of laws and strictures, and deeper into a place in which he can judge people and in which his word is the law, at least in his own eyes.
Being a priest is a very structured life, and one in which Nate would have constantly had to answer to other people's authority and be under their scrutiny. From what both he and Sterling have said about their insurance investigations, he operated there under much more autonomy, and we know that he did things like commit theft and evade airport security. Now he's in a place where he doesn't have to answer to anyone except himself.
Furthermore (and I think this is even more important), if he had become a priest, he would have been in the position of hearing people's confessions, but he wouldn't have been able to do anything about them, because the job of a priest is not to exact justice or to judge anyone, it's to forgive them and absolve them of their sins.
The most he could have done in extreme cases would be to encourage the person to do the right thing (as he does with the assistant in this episode), but mostly he would be confined to telling them to say a couple of decades of the rosary and then performing the Act of Confession, which would then absolve the person of their sins without them actually having to do anything to make it right or to be brought to justice.
And Nate can't abide that. Nate's not big on forgiveness.
So he drops out of seminary school and he becomes an insurance investigator, and suddenly he can do something about people who are breaking the law. It's no longer his job to absolve or to forgive; it's his job to judge and to bring people to justice. He gets to take an active role in punishing people for their sins, and at the same time he has much greater autonomy. No one is watching so closely, and if some of his activities skirt ethical boundaries, my sense is that the company he worked for would have pretty much turned a blind eye as long as he was getting good results. (Which, clearly, he was.)
Then the insurance company screws him over by allowing his son to die, and he goes even further outside the law. He's not going to answer to even that nominal authority any longer. Instead, he's going to create a situation where he is the ultimate authority and the ultimate judge (and jury, and executioner).
At the same time, I think the other reason that Nate seems to have a special hate on for Confession (viz. his glee over breaking the seal of Confession) is that he's not big on having his sins exposed, or on being honest about himself. So Confession is a double whammy: it never allowed him to judge people the way he wanted to, and at the same time it forced him to expose himself, to lay himself bare, when he was taking the sacrament himself. And that's the other thing that Nate can't abide.
Finally, I wonder how much of all of this -- from having this deep need to sit in judgment and to take action based on that judgment, to having such a deep fear of honesty about himself -- stems from growing up with alcoholics/addicts. I think that probably played a big part in his initial decision to join the priesthood, much as it later meant that he didn't finish seminary school and that he became an insurance investigator. And a con man and a thief.
And maybe on some level he's always been a con man.
And still, through all of this, Nate continues to believe in God, and he gets angrier and angrier about that fact. Because God never gives him what he wants. God never rewards his faith. God doesn't judge the people who deserve to be judged.
I want to write a post about "The First David Job" soon, but I'm still not coherent on the subject. (Lunchtime conversation with scarletts_awry notwithstanding, since that consisted in large part of us "Oh my God"-ing at each other for a half-hour.)
I was thinking about that scene in "The Miracle Job" with the "You're a Catholic and you're going to fake a miracle" conversation. The other thing that jumps out at me is something else that Hardison says: that Nate went from seminary school to being an insurance cop to being a con artist/thief. Implied is that this is an interesting/odd career trajectory, but...maybe it's not really. Because with each shift in career focus (as it were...) Nate has both moved further outside of laws and strictures, and deeper into a place in which he can judge people and in which his word is the law, at least in his own eyes.
Being a priest is a very structured life, and one in which Nate would have constantly had to answer to other people's authority and be under their scrutiny. From what both he and Sterling have said about their insurance investigations, he operated there under much more autonomy, and we know that he did things like commit theft and evade airport security. Now he's in a place where he doesn't have to answer to anyone except himself.
Furthermore (and I think this is even more important), if he had become a priest, he would have been in the position of hearing people's confessions, but he wouldn't have been able to do anything about them, because the job of a priest is not to exact justice or to judge anyone, it's to forgive them and absolve them of their sins.
The most he could have done in extreme cases would be to encourage the person to do the right thing (as he does with the assistant in this episode), but mostly he would be confined to telling them to say a couple of decades of the rosary and then performing the Act of Confession, which would then absolve the person of their sins without them actually having to do anything to make it right or to be brought to justice.
And Nate can't abide that. Nate's not big on forgiveness.
So he drops out of seminary school and he becomes an insurance investigator, and suddenly he can do something about people who are breaking the law. It's no longer his job to absolve or to forgive; it's his job to judge and to bring people to justice. He gets to take an active role in punishing people for their sins, and at the same time he has much greater autonomy. No one is watching so closely, and if some of his activities skirt ethical boundaries, my sense is that the company he worked for would have pretty much turned a blind eye as long as he was getting good results. (Which, clearly, he was.)
Then the insurance company screws him over by allowing his son to die, and he goes even further outside the law. He's not going to answer to even that nominal authority any longer. Instead, he's going to create a situation where he is the ultimate authority and the ultimate judge (and jury, and executioner).
At the same time, I think the other reason that Nate seems to have a special hate on for Confession (viz. his glee over breaking the seal of Confession) is that he's not big on having his sins exposed, or on being honest about himself. So Confession is a double whammy: it never allowed him to judge people the way he wanted to, and at the same time it forced him to expose himself, to lay himself bare, when he was taking the sacrament himself. And that's the other thing that Nate can't abide.
Finally, I wonder how much of all of this -- from having this deep need to sit in judgment and to take action based on that judgment, to having such a deep fear of honesty about himself -- stems from growing up with alcoholics/addicts. I think that probably played a big part in his initial decision to join the priesthood, much as it later meant that he didn't finish seminary school and that he became an insurance investigator. And a con man and a thief.
And maybe on some level he's always been a con man.
And still, through all of this, Nate continues to believe in God, and he gets angrier and angrier about that fact. Because God never gives him what he wants. God never rewards his faith. God doesn't judge the people who deserve to be judged.
I want to write a post about "The First David Job" soon, but I'm still not coherent on the subject. (Lunchtime conversation with scarletts_awry notwithstanding, since that consisted in large part of us "Oh my God"-ing at each other for a half-hour.)