Louie and Good Friday

In Season 1 Episode 11 of Louie, Louis C.K. tells the story of his fictionalized self's boyhood encounter with Good Friday. A nun at his Catholic school, frustrated with her failure to convey the enormity of the Crucifixion, invites a medical doctor to describe in meticulous and gruesome detail the body's response to the "brutal punishment" inflicted by the Romans on the lowest of criminals.

The climax of the doctor's account occurs when he hands young Louie a spike and mallet and orders him to drive the nail through a classmate's hand. The boy, of course, won't do it.

"What's the matter?" asks the (wonderfully creepy) doctor. "You can't do it? Well then why did you do it to him?"

The doctor's accusation echoes through the near-empty church as points to the giant Crucifix at front of the Church. "You drove in his nails with your sins, the Son of God, and you let him die."

Young Louie and his classmates are appropriately scandalized. Stricken with grief, Louie later returns to the Church where he topples the Crucifix, pulls the nails from Jesus' hands and feet, removes the crown of thorns from his head, ands cradles Jesus' body while repeating, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

The screen fades to black and the following two scenes show two very different reactions to Louie's action.

We cut first to a conversation between the nun and Louie's mother. The nun is unhappy about Louie's "vandalism" but promises to forgo "legal action" if he is punished at home.

Next, Louie privately confesses his guilt to his mother, explaining that it was for his sins that Jesus was punished.

"Is that what they're teaching you in there?" asks his mother incredulously. "It's not true. You had nothing to do with that man being hurt. I mean, you were nowhere near the place."

Louie protests. "But I'm bad and I sin."

"You're not bad. Listen to me, you're a good kid. You make mistakes, you do bad things sometimes, but you are a good person."

"But what about Jesus?"

"Jesus was a really, really nice guy who live a long time ago and he told everybody to love each other, and boy did he get his for that."

Louie is confused by his mother's insistence that he attend church despite her unbelief.  "Why do you make me come here?" he asks.

"I don't know," she replies. "I thought it was selfish. Just because I don't have religion, not to give it to you...I mean, it's a big deal, religion. You might want it someday. But if I had known it was going to stress you out this much I never would have done it."

"So there's no God?"

"All I know is that you have to be good to people whether there is or there isn't. You have to take that on yourself. Nobody's going to watch if you're good but yourself. It's all on you."

"Wow."

A pause. "Hey, you want to get some donuts?"

Both reactions, the nun's and the mother's, deserve criticism. The nun's failure is more glaring given her position as a spiritual teacher. Indeed, she reveals that her own understanding of the crucifixion is as bad as her students. What other response did she hope to induce but this kind of bold, whole-hearted contrition? It is the nun's sacred duty to direct Louie away from guilt and toward repentance. She must finish the Easter story by telling Louie the part about grace and forgiveness. Instead, she squashes Louie's soul. She uses the Gospel to control rather than liberate.

The nun treats Louie as a hopelessly wicked person. But the mother's message is hardly any better. She tells Louie that his righteousness is his own responsibility. "It's all on you," she tells him.

But of course Louie is not a good person. Louis C.K. sets the tone for the series in the pilot episode with the following stand-up routine.

"My life is really evil. There are people who are starving in the world and I drive an Infiniti. That's really evil. There are people who just starve to death. That's all they ever did. There are people who are born, and they go "Oh, I'm hungry", and then they die. And that's all they ever got to do. And meanwhile I'm in my car having a great time and I sleep like a baby. It's totally my fault because I could trade my Infiniti for a really good car, like a nice Ford Focus with no miles on it, and I'd get back like $20,000. And I could save hundreds of people from dying from starvation with that money. And every day I don't do it. Every day I make them die with my car."

Of course, the true Good Friday message explodes both these extremes. Louie is not a hopeless sinner, but neither is he responsible for `saving' himself. On Good Friday we celebrate this reality, that `righteousness' is not something we earn through merit (for who amongst us could qualify) but someone we receive as a gift, a gift purchased by another at great price.

Alleluia.