There's a popular meme floating around on social media that's obviously attempting to
tie into the Easter Holiday.
The meme says: Judas had the best pastor, the best leader, the best teacher, the wisest
(something), the best friend, and he failed...The problem isn't the leadership or the church
you go to.
If your attitude doesn't change or your character transformed, you will always be the same.
Judas, of course, betrayed Jesus with a kiss, and then died horribly
in conflicting accounts in the New Testament.
Matthew 27 says he hanged himself.
Acts says that that he fell headlong into a field and his body burst open, and his bowels fell out.
But back to the meme itself...we are apparently meant to see Judas as someone who studied under
the greatest teacher, was given the greatest example of goodness, the best opportunities, and who failed
because he made bad choices, because he was a person of poor character.
The lesson, then, is a twist on the old idiom, "You can lead a horse to water."
All of the greatest resources and opportunities can't help you if you won't listen and learn
and embrace the goodness in your own life.
The problem is...this meme reveals that those enthusiastically sharing it apparently have
no idea who Judas was, or why.
Judas wasn't some pathetic loser who screwed up a good thing because he was stupid,
or short-sighted, or greedy, or simply decided to make the devil his god.
If you hold to the scriptural account of Jesus' betrayal and crucifixion, Judas was predestined
to do what he did.
Judas was the linchpin of the entire salvation operation.
It was Judas' kiss of betrayal that set into motion the arrest, the crucifixion, the
resurrection of Jesus the Savior, a kiss prophecied and predicted in advance...because
as the cornerstone of God's Salvation Plan, Judas had simply been given
no choice. Or at the very least, God chose not to go and intervene on his behalf.
From the moment of his birth, Judas was a dead man walking, every moment of his life
a precursor to that key moment when he would mark Jesus Christ for torture and execution.
As such, if you're a Christian, you're stuck with a rather difficult reconciliation.
The reconciliation between a Good and Loving God - a just God - and the god who would purposefully bring a human being
into this world so they could betray Jesus Christ, fulfill a dark destiny, and ultimately end up condemned, damned forever.
The social media meme gets Judas totally wrong.
Judas did not betray Jesus because he simply lacked character. Judas never had a shot.
He betrayed Jesus because Yahweh determined it in advance. God needed this to happen.
God set Judas up for failure.
Judas kiss...was God's idea.
And as Christians happily shout, "He is Risen" on the Easter holiday, remember that the resurrection
story - as written in the Bible - was made possible because God designed Judas' traitorous heart in the first place, or at the very least, made no attempt to change it.
Judas was condemned the moment he was born.
What kind of God would even require such a thing?
That's a question that all of Christianity should be asking.