Cover of Judas
Allow me to say first of all that Judas by Lady Gaga is one of the most annoying songs ever created. Not only is the chorus very whiny, I feel like she is daring you to cross the line. I don’t even know exactly what line I speak about. I’m not Christian but I grew up with Judas being the bad guy. I knew enough to know that without Judas, Jesus would not have been crucified. So to sing a song glorifying him and relentlessly emphasizing love for such a traitor is yes, crossing the line. But was Judas really a traitor? Would Jesus not have been crucified without Judas really? I’m not going to delve into the science or conspiracy of whether indeed he kissed Jesus or not. I am going to assume that he did. So lets go with the story that Judas for whatever reason (I assume 30 pieces of silver), kissed Jesus to identify him to the law. They seized Jesus and crucified him and Judas was a traitor. So I ask. Did Jesus not know that Judas was going to betray him?
Jesus is assumed to be God so surely he knows everything? WHY did he allow himself to be betrayed by Judas? Was it just so he could die for our sins? Wasn’t he quoted as saying to his disciples that one of them was going to betray him? Why didn’t he try to stop him from committing such a grievous crime? I would assume that if someone walked in on me trying to kill my mother, they would try to stop me from doing such. Did it have to be done? Have you ever watched a Big Brother nomination night where each person has to vote for two people in the house to leave. A lot of the time, they have no personal interest in who leaves the house and so they give reasons like ‘someone HAS to go’, because they just have to nominate someone. Was this what just happened to Judas?
Fair enough, he must have been idle on some level to let the devil in, but how else would Jesus have been able to die for our sins? Was it really the devil’s work then? Or was he just a necessary sacrifice? Collateral damage as they call it? The greater good? I do not mean these questions in any blasphemous way. I am not a believer of not questioning things that defy logic because ‘they said so’. I’m sure that someone has perfectly reasonable answers to all these questions. Do the honours. Was Judas really wrong?
Radical Chic Magazine 
Skywalka1
July 8, 2011 at 12:27 pm
this is really good and it really makes u think.
i do believe he was in fact collateral damage, without Judas’s betrayal a lot of good things that happened wouldn’t have.
kid1gidi
July 20, 2011 at 12:51 pm
I agree. But i would like to see it as God having the Master Plan.
Anon
August 2, 2011 at 11:05 pm
Pretty good post, I appreciate how you’ve left the argument/discussion open regarding the different views people may take on this as it is an extremely deep topic; deeper than it may seem at first.
I’m going to try my best to give it a shot without being superfluous but bear with me because as I’ve said already, this topic is deep.
To start it off, one has to consider the definition of a ‘betrayal’. I don’t need to quote any acclaimed dictionaries, but with research one could say that a betrayal denotes that the person being betrayed has a significant level of trust in the offender. Of course there are other presumptions regarding the prerequisites for a betrayal but for the sake of this post, I’ll restrict myself to the aforementioned definition.
There’s now the question of whether Jesus is/was God personified. I don’t believe Jesus was God and the validity of that belief is another topic in itself. The nature and context of this betrayal begs the question regarding how we view God’s omniscience i.e what He knows about us and our actions and how this affects free will. In my view, there are two different sides to it; that God knows the various choices we have and the eventual outcome of any of the choices we choose to make (thereby not knowing the particular choice we will make) OR that God knows the choices we have available and the precise one we will make at the end of the day. If you’re a believer in the latter, then it follows that contextually speaking, Judas’ act of betrayal was already pre-destined, even before he was chosen as one of the twelve disciples and as such, he was merely a tool.
In that light can we really say Judas did anything surprising or wrong? Did he not in essence fulfil his destiny?
What also makes this situation unique and hard to tie to any reasonably supportive analogy is the assertion by some parts of scripture that the person being betrayed (Jesus) already knew beforehand that He was going to be betrayed. In my opinion it changes the dynamic of the situation as Jesus could easily have avoided this situation since he had prior knowledge of it. However, He let it happen and the scriptures were fulfilled.
One also has to take into consideration the various and at times conflicting descriptions given by the different Gospels. The Gospel of John for instance seems to support the aforementioned assertion that Jesus already knew who was going to betray him (John 6:70-71). However, the same Gospel insinuates that Jesus identified Judas at the last supper and that he was urged by Jesus to “act quickly”. (John13:23-27). I still can’t fathom how Judas would have left the room undeterred by any of the other disciples if Jesus had really identified him as John explicitly states.
The Gospel of Mark on the other hand stops short of saying that Judas was identified by Jesus at the last supper.
Moreover, study of the Gospels brings to light many miracles of Jesus and exceptional feats. One of such feats involves Jesus seemingly slipping/vanishing in the midst of a crowd that sought to kill Him (Luke4:28-30). It then begs the question as to the logic behind Judas seeking to betray Jesus knowing full well what His master was capable of doing at his own discretion. Is it possible then that this ‘betrayal’ was a pre-arranged thing? There’s no blasphemy in observing what appears to be the case unless you want to throw logic out of the window.
On the other hand you could say that Judas had been possessed by the devil and so He might have forgotten and ignored that power and miraculous feats of Jesus (miracles declared by John to be a lot more than records show; John21:25). If you’re one of the many people like myself who don’t believe in the power or reality of the devil, then this suggestion has already been thrown out of the window.
Highlighted above is what I would consider an attempt at scratching the surface of the question you posed. But as I’ve hopefully shown, it all comes down to how we interpret the scriptures. It therefore follows that you will get various answers seeing as how the Bible is pretty open to different interpretations. Logic may seem applicable in one instance but in another it may not be the case and so it does make it hard to present a well thought out argument.