There are certain bad guys in the Bible we like to jeer: Pharaoh. Goliath. The Pharisees.
We often treat them as one-dimensional villains, condescendingly shaking our heads at their failings and rolling our eyes at their hard-headedness.
You only had one job, Adam and Eve!
Take a chill pill, Cain!
I can’t believe you keep forgetting all the miraculous things God did to save you, Israelites!
But embracing the virtue of humility enables us to realize that there is a little bit of us in each of them.
Do you ever disobey God by doing something He very clearly prohibited?
Did you ever do something you regretted after letting anger get the best of you?
Have you ever lost sight of the ways God provided for you in the past?
No, me neither…
Because we are fallen creatures, we are more like the bad guys in the Bible than we’d like to admit.
Even Judas.
I often wonder, how could anyone who spent three whole years traveling with Jesus go so wrong? He had a front-row seat to all His speeches, miracles, and healings. He got behind-the-scenes access and one-on-one coaching from the Son of God!
It’s a real head-scratcher.
I guess he was just a bad apple, rotten to the core, right?
Or…maybe he’s not all that different from me.
One of the things I love about the series The Chosen is how it takes the time to consider who the disciples were as people, before they became pious statues used to decorate churches. We can’t know the exact personalities, motivations, and backstories of the people who followed Jesus, but the show does a great job of presenting plausible scenarios based on the historical records, religious customs, and geographical evidence we do have.
It turns Bible characters from cardboard cutouts to real humans, just like you and me.
And their portrayal of Judas opened my eyes to how much more similar to him I may be than I realized.
Again, we can’t read Judas’ mind, but if he believed that Jesus was the Messiah who had come to overthrow Rome, there’s a good chance he may have been frustrated with the seeming lack of progress. If he was a rational thinker, he may have been perplexed by all the “irrational” things Jesus said and did. In The Chosen, we see Judas trying to force his ideas to make things “better.” We see him becoming distraught by how slow and efficient everything seems. We watch as Judas becomes consumed by thoughts of what he believes “should” be happening. Perhaps Judas’ betrayal was born out of a misguided attempt to force Jesus’s hand to start the dang revolution already.
In watching the character’s development play out in the show, I had an uncomfortable “oh shoot” moment as I realized I’m more like that dastardly Judas than I care to admit.
Am I ever critical of how God seems to be handling things?
Do I ever lose patience with God and take matters into my own hands?
Have I ever made a mess of things when relying on my own power to make things “better?”
How often do I consider that God might be playing a different game than I am?
Hmm…this is getting awkward…
But that’s what Lent is all about, Charlie Brown. It’s a time to remember that God is God and we are not.
It’s an opportunity to acknowledge our shortcomings and that maybe we aren’t as smart and virtuous and heroic as we think we are.
What a gift to be given this season of Lent!
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