Judas and Us

While his actions would lead us to draw him as clearly an evil guy, of whom evil is intended and expected, I think we are wrong in jumping to that conclusion.

He was a man called by God.

And he fell. Far.

The thing is, we want the world to be black and white. We want Judas to be the bad guy so we can get on with our lives and not wrestle with the fact that we too have opportunities to be just as guilty of sin as he was. Wouldn’t it be easier to just see Judas as a terrible person and hold on to this one great sin and let it define him? And yet we ask God to not let us be defined by ours.

Forgive us, we ask.

Let’s make it work.

I’m really sorry this time.

And we repent, again.

Are we so far from someone like Judas, who might have had a wife, children, a house, might have started hearing the rumblings and gossiping going on about how the Chief Priests and scribes were getting tired of Jesus making them look bad?

Judas thus, hedged his bets. “I’ll keep this up with the guys, but I can’t go into exile if they end up killing him. I have a family to think about.”

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Which brings up yet another point that I’ve never heard people talk about. If anyone got scared of the Chief Priests, Scribes, and Sanhedrin, why? What had they done before? Who had they made disappear before that gave weight to the threats of their anger and bitterness? It’s quite a step mentally to choose to kill. I’m not interested in exploring this here and now as much as leaving it as a rhetorical thought to chew on.

However, the thought above does leave us with the reality that Judas was able to access them and make his interests known. There was opportunity- which would mean, if there were previous incidents, you could get an audience with them if you had vital information. Did he betray Jesus so that he could have a hand in what would happen to him? To keep his family safe? To try and do the thing that other disciples wouldn’t so that they would be safe? Was there any redeeming quality in the negotiations between Judas and council of religious leaders?