Today marks the day in Holy Week where Judas agreed to rat out Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. I’ve always had a bit of sympathy for Judas in the sense that, if not for him, the passion would have never occurred. He is remembered in history as “evil”, a betrayer of God, greedy, rotten, and to put it bluntly, a crummy friend. That act of evil HAD to happen. If not for Judas, there would be no resurrection. If not for Judas, Jesus could have been remembered on a similar level to Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and John the Baptist. There was even a person who was in the area Jesus lived right before his time only known as “the Egyptian” who performed miracles, but he didn’t do the one thing that set Jesus apart: none of these others rose from the dead. It is the pillar the Christian faith is built on. So, in a way, shouldn’t we thank Judas? Especially if he had no choice in the matter due to destiny?
If something is meant to happen, and needs to happen, and Jesus KNEW it was going to happen, it begs the question: did Judas have free will? Or was his fate predetermined for him by the creator, and thus, would an eternal punishment in Hell be fair?
These are questions I’ve struggled with through the years, and I’ll share where I’m at in finding contentment in that journey. Remember, if you continue to work to grow in your faith and always keep learning and digging for answers when these types of thoughts come to you, your mind might change. So, where you are mentally on a topic like this today, might not be where you are on it years from now. I think the greatest thing we can do for ourselves as followers of Jesus is to always keep learning, because through learning we grow spiritually and can better help others understand our faith, possibly leading them on a new path.
So, anyway, back to Judas and free will:
Here is the dumbed down, Amy Pointer version of Free Will. I speak for no one, except for myself here, so don’t go after entire faith systems if you don’t like what I’m about to say. lol
God is all knowing. God is all powerful. God is the Alpha and the Omega. The beginning and the end. God…is.
When you are born, God knows every single decision you could possibly make for any possible outcome. God literally created EVERYTHING, right? So, the idea that we ‘dumb’ God down to human abilities or concepts a human brain can comprehend doesn’t make sense to me.
There is a theory that currently, there are an infinite number of you’s doing an infinite number of things in an infinite number of worlds. Every small decision you make, from the turn of your head to the choice of car you buy spawns a new world, where that you moves on from there. In those realities, each decision ALSO spawns a new world.
This goes on, well, infinitely.
God works like that theory. He knows every potential choice you will make and the outcome. He knew that there was potential for Judas to make that choice, and he knew it would happen, because he can see all time.
Think of time not in the sense that we humans look at it. Time is a human construct to help us keep track of things. But “time” isn’t a tangible thing. It isn’t linear. This is why prayer for yourself in the past can work. You can pray for past you, just like you can pray for future you. You can pray for those in purgatory, because time doesn’t exist there, either.
Because of all of this, God just “knows”. He knows the potentials, and he knows the outcomes. That doesn’t remove the free will it took for Judas to make that choice. Perhaps when we think of destiny, we shouldn’t think of something that is “meant to be” and think of it as something that just “is”. Your destiny is determined by you, and your choices, no less than Adam and Eve choosing to disobey and seek knowledge of good and evil, no less than Judas choosing to betray his friend who was sent to save the world, and no more than Peter choosing to deny knowing Jesus three times.
We are all just one choice away from being a Judas. Don’t discredit his humanity by taking away his choice. He didn’t HAVE to do it, but he did. He wasn’t a predestined robot with a purpose. He wasn’t a secret agent taking whispers from the Lord at the Last Supper with a special mission. (I’m looking at you, Gnostic gospels.) To view it this way takes away from that fact that he was a human man, just like us, and it creates a narrative that makes us look at it and say, “Well, I’d never do that.”
Yes, you could. Some of you would. Some of you have. Because, at the end of the day, we are all no greater or worse than the rock he built his church on, Peter; or the one who betrayed him, Judas. We are all Thomas, doubting. We are all Paul, persecuting and condemning, then converting.
And the one thing we have that binds us all together in this human journey is choice.
Choose wisely.
“What are you willing to give me
if I hand him over to you?”
Nicheless Wonder 