judas' motivation

Why did Judas betray Christ?

• Evil needs no motive
• He hoped to force Jesus to lead a revolt against Rome
• He hoped to spare Judea a futile revolt against Rome
• He didn't realize the Sanhedrin's intent to have Jesus executed
• There was no choice involved; it was the role God had chosen for him
• Because he loved Jesus and wanted him to be remembered at his height
• He needed the money
• The Pharisees or others had been threatening him and the others
• He had decided that Jesus was a false messiah
• He chose to betray Christ in order to see the prophecies fulfilled

Vote

It's actually a serious question. Judas has fascinated me for years, mostly because we know so little about him. Dante puts him in the lowest level of hell, calling him the worst of all sinners, and Christians often depict him as someone who doesn't really fit in with the other Twelve Apostles, someone who doesn't quite belong with Jesus, who is on the outskirts of the group rather than an insider.

That doesn't sit well with me. For one thing, he was eating at the same table as Christ during the final Passover seder, which isn't exactly a seat of dishonor. For a second, one of the messianic psalms bemoans the betrayal, saying, "If it had been an enemy who had done this, or even a stranger, I could have dealt with it. But it was you, a friend of mine." For a third, he was someone who had seen the miracles right from the beginning: the resurrection of Lazarus, the healings, the demons being cast out, the feeding of the five thousand -- heck, he even performed healings and other miracles when Jesus sent the disciples out.

And yet he betrayed Christ anyway. That makes him a compelling figure to me because it means he probably was doing what he thought was the Right Thing, or at least a Good Thing. I see more applications there for me as a believer, when I've duped myself into believing that I was doing was good and right when it was obvious to everyone else that it wasn't. And after all, "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me."

Of course Judas could be forgiven, and so could Hitler, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and even me, but whether any of the others are forgiven of their sins is none of my affair to decide. My own sins, black and horrid as they are, I accept on faith that they are no more in the eyes of God, even though their memory haunts me some times.

From the textual descriptions we have of Judas and the betrayal, it doesn't seem that he reached the point of understanding what Jesus offered. His suicide seems to me an act of supreme despair, where he thought himself too horrible and too hardened in his heart to turn and seek forgiveness.

It's an interesting question, and one we'll never know the answer to until a lot of other things are made clear too, but I don't think it's likely the answer is yes. John the Evangelist writes that Satan entered into Judas and led him to betray Christ, which would indicate his heart wasn't right with God.

Another intriguing character from the Passion, of course, is Pilate. I posted an interesting essay about Pilate at CHRefugee last year, and (not surprisingly) there are old traditions about his salvation as well. In the Ethiopian church, there is even a St. Pilate's Day and an accompanying feast.

And as long as we're talking about the supporting cast, I have a drama I started working on but never finished, about an old priest who is remembering a time when he was younger that he met the messiah, still a child at the time, in the Temple courts. The priest at the time walked away, his pride hurt, and when he returned the next day, realizing who the boy was, found he had gone. That part is based on a song by Mike Card, but the part that's completely mine is what comes next -- the priest is Caiaphas and he's about to go out and make sure the Sanhedrin sentences Christ to death.

It's one of my projects. I really want to finish that.