IT IS an understatement to say that Judas gets a bad press. He is so much the archetypal villain that Christianity positively enjoys spewing vitriol upon him. John’s account of Judas concentrates the vitriol by adding financial dishonesty to treachery.
But some Christians feel unease about the way in which the Gospels portray him. There is a difference between making an error of judgement — perhaps lashing out because of disappointed hopes — and contriving the suffering of another with “malice aforethought”. Calumny is not our only option. We can imagine Judas differently. I think of the generosity expressed in a prayer of Jane Austen, “to consider our fellow-creatures with kindness, and to judge of all they say and do with that charity which we would desire from them ourselves”.
Some writers, eschewing judgementalism, search for realistic moral complexity in the story of Judas. I find Nikos Kazantzakis’s take — that Jesus entrusted Judas with the vital job of betraying him, because he knew no one else could carry it through —especially compassionate. It has no authority, though, when set beside the Gospels.
A question was put to me recently in the context of a discussion about removing memorials to people whose morality does not meet modern standards: “Would you want to be remembered for the worst thing you ever did?” Was that Judas-kiss, in the end, the only thing that counted?
There are occasions in the course of every human life when we feel deceived by false friendships, and betrayed by people who should have known better. Our view of their worth is broken. Our confidence in our own ability to judge and trust is shattered. One way to make spiritual sense of this Gospel, then, is to see it as a mirror of our own experiences of being let down.
Judas appears in the Gospels as a deceiver who used the closeness of his friendship to betray Jesus. But he is not the only betrayer. He did it with a kiss, once. Peter did it with bluster, three times. Both of them were sorry, once it was too late — like domestic abusers promising amendment after slaking their thirst for violence on someone who cannot or will not retaliate.
Peter got a second chance, repented, and became the rock on which Christ’s Church was built. Judas’s shame and horror at the worst thing that he had ever done was so great that he gave himself no “time for amendment of life”, but, instead, took his own life.
In one respect, we are all Judas. We betray where we should love, and make ourselves contemptible in the process. So, is the answer a truculent defensiveness? No. Do any of us want to be remembered for the worst thing we ever did? I am sure Judas did not. Once Jesus was dead, Judas threw away the money that he must once have coveted. It disgusted him. He disgusted himself.
Self-disgust is not a healthy state of mind. Judas killed himself because he had defined himself for ever by his worst moment, and could not live with the consequences. That final, self-destructive act shows why we ought not to condemn him, or regard ourselves as somehow better. The very fact that ending his life seemed like the right answer proves that he had not been able to grasp the nature of God’s all-forgiving love in Christ. That surely deserves pity, not condemnation.
If we can pity Peter, as we see ourselves in him, we can pity Judas, too. We must not become a “chorus of the self-righteous”, thanking God that we are not like Judas, or like the woman caught in adultery (John 8.1-11), or like that smug Pharisee (Luke 18.9-14).
If we find moments of likeness to Christ in our enduring of the wrongs that others do us, we can also admit that we have moments of likeness to Judas. Jane Austen wrote for one of her characters, Mr Collins (a truly repulsive clergyman), his own self-righteous chorus: “You ought certainly to forgive them, as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing.” But she also responded, through another character’s reaction, with her opinion of such self-righteousness: “That is his notion of Christian forgiveness!”
Christ’s Passion is what makes possible our access to God’s all-forgiving love, if not in this world, then we hope — for Judas — in the next.
