The narrative around Judas Iscariot usually makes him out to just be the bad guy. The traitor that was always bad, and whom no one can understand why Jesus called him to follow Him except because He needed someone to betray Him.
Really? Is that really how people work? Are some people just mustache twirling villains? And would Jesus really recruit one of these to be His Apostle? His emissary representing Him? Or was there more going on with Judas? As human beings, we like our heroes and villains to be clear cut good and clear cut evil. We like our Saurons, our Emperor Palpatines, our Megatrons, our Lucifers, our Cobra Commanders, and our Skeletors. Why? Because then we have no reason to feel guilty wanting them defeated, destroyed, or dead. We have no reason to feel any compassion for them, and our hatred seems justified. We’re “glad” they all go to hell, and they deserve to be there. Vessels created for destruction in order to make the hero or heroes look better.
We translate this worldview all too often to real people. We see someone commit a murder, commit a terrorist act, or commit the unthinkable, and they are perceived as evil, without any redemptive qualities. We have no compassion for where they’ve been, or what drove them to commit this heinous act. We don’t have to because they’re the villain, right? We can cheer when they burn in hell, and will gladly show them the door.
I’ve worked with too many kids with criminal, sometimes murderous pasts to believe this to be true of real people. There’s always a reason why they do what they do. There’s always some mental illness. There’s always some neglect, some traumatic history, some abuse of the emotional, mental, physical, or sexual kind. There’s always something that triggered an extreme fear and survival response that made them believe they had to do what they did to protect themselves or what they were attached to in some way. In other words, they reacted how most human beings might react if they had grown up under the same circumstances, experienced the same things, or had the same mental illness. We deny this vociferously, but we didn’t have the “privilege” of seeing their lives through their eyes.
We always imagine or represent Judas Iscariot as an older man, or at least around Jesus’ own age. What if he wasn’t? What if he was the youngest disciple? What if he was just some kid who was neglected and abused by his own dad and had to grow up on the streets? What if he had a mental illness like bipolar or personality disorder? What if he had Reactive Attachment Disorder because of his own father and Jesus of course became as close to him as a father figure? And what if Jesus called him to be His Apostle because He knew that, in spite of what would happen, the kid needed someone to believe in him? To love him on his terms? To not just abandon him when he screwed up, like he did with the moneybox? To always receive him back no matter how he pushed away or flew off the handle?
Jesus called Judas Iscariot knowing, knowing that he would betray Him, and He didn’t care about that. All He cared about was loving Judas and giving him the tools to heal and be like Him. Judas screwed up. Of course he did. He flew off the handle and sold Jesus out after Jesus publicly rebuked him over the spikenard. Of course he did. Satan entered him when he went to the high priests. Honestly, our flesh and malfunctioning minds can be our own worst satans, and this happens every time we embrace this rather than the Spirit of Christ. To say that Judas was worse than any of us, that he was the ultimately evil black hat is to totally reject what Jesus Himself taught and did.
Finally, Judas, after the fact, repented. He regretted what he had done when he saw what had happened. He came back to his senses, and was in such anguish that he tried to return the money and set Jesus free. The religious leaders refused his penance. The religious leaders refused his absolution for their own deranged purposes. The religious leaders pushed this already hurting and disturbed young man over the edge to suicide, something Jesus fought against for as long as he was with Him.
Let me ask you this, if Jesus could forgive the thief on the cross, why couldn’t God forgive this clearly repentant young man, this called Apostle, when even Jesus said that “Every sin and blasphemy committed against the Son of Man will be forgiven.” Judas didn’t stop believing in Jesus, he just got angry at him and went out of his senses because of it. When he came back, he realized what he had done, and tried to turn it around. As in Ezekiel, that is all God asks of anyone, that the wicked man turns away from his wickedness to do what is right. In the end, Judas didn’t set himself against Jesus at all. In his fear, anguish, and mental instability, being afraid of the other Apostles and rejected by the high priests, he just didn’t know where to turn or to whom to run.
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