Tag Archives: Temptation

Judas and the Wages of Envy

Devils, Passion of Christ, , , ,

The first full moon in Spring brings with it two things, both of which are equally predictable.  First there is Easter, celebrated on the Sunday immediately following that first full moon.  Secondly, there is the somewhat predictable “scholar” who will bring forth some long lost “proof” that Christianity is a hoax.  Usually it is by the “rediscovery” of some “lost” gospel.  Never mind that it was lost because the Church Fathers already knew about it and deemed it a fraud.  Easter 2006 was no different in this regard.  National Geographic released an English translation of the Gospel of Judas just in time for the Pascal feast.  This “gospel” paints Jesus and Judas as somehow in cahoots.  But it also has a particular appeal because it appears to answer an age-old question of why Judas did what he did. 

We must admit that it is more than mere curiosity that places this question before us.  Even if Christ ultimately claims the victory, it does not sit well with us that Judas was the collateral damage.  Nor are we comfortable with the fact that many of the Church Fathers place Judas in hell because, as Our Lord said, “woe to him by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.  It would have been better for him to never have been born” (Mt 26:24).  Nor should it.  Even if Judas is alone in hell, the losing of a single soul is the greatest of all tragedies.  But Sacred Scripture and the Church’s liturgical calendar place the question before us this week and so we must resist the temptation, like the heretics of the first Christian centuries, to “psychologize” Judas and try to explain it away as if he was a victim caught up in the tsunami of the Redemption. 

“Watch Out Lord”

We must first admit that neither Scripture nor Tradition gives us a clear answer as to why Judas did what he did.  And the lack of clarity is for a good reason.  Any one of us can be Judas—selling Jesus for something else.  This must be lesson number one or else we cannot even begin to unpack what might be hidden away in what we have been told.  We are each presented with the temptation of the thirty pieces of silver daily, although usually we settle for a whole lot less. We all sell Christ out in small (and big) ways every day.  As St. Philip Neri said every day of his life, “watch out Lord, lest Philip betray you today.”

The point is that we must all see in Judas our capacity to do likewise.  If a man who spent three years with God in the Flesh could do it, then anyone can.  It is only grace that preserves us from the temptations we would otherwise easily succumb.  And this is why when Our Lord warned the Apostles that one of them would betray Him, each of them feared it might be him.  They knew that they didn’t really want to, but they also knew that they were capable of anything given the right set of circumstances.  This is what it means to recognize that you are a sinner—not that you have done a bunch of bad stuff, but to know that at any point you are capable of falling off the wagon.  “Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor 10:12).

Judas and the Role of the Devil

Likewise, we must also understand that the Gospel narratives are calling us to go beyond Judas’ personal motivation and to see in this great betrayal the hoof marks of the great enemy of man’s soul, Satan.  This is not to absolve Judas of responsibility but to acknowledge the role he played.  St. John tells us that “the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him” (Jn 13:2).  The devil had tempted Judas to betray Our Lord and Judas had made up his mind to do so.  As St. Thomas says in his commentary on this verse, Satan “enters into a person’s heart when one totally gives himself to following his suggestions and offers no resistance at all. Thus Satan first put the plan to deceive Christ into Judas, and then he entered into to possess him more completely and to lead him to accomplish the evil.”  In short we cannot rule out demonic possession in the carrying out of the betrayal.  Even if this is the case, Judas was a most willing participant and not merely a puppet in the hands of the devil.  Judas was willing, but may have lacked the “courage” to carry it out.  Once he consented to the devil’s suggestion, however, he ceded his personal freedom over to him.

This too can be spiritually instructive for us.  Judas shows us that we should not yield to temptations of the mind, even if we “would never actually do it.”  To consent to a temptation is to put ourselves under the power of the Evil One.  Very often we will entertain thoughts of revenge, even though we know deep down we are incapable of carrying it out.  This is very dangerous because when the source of the temptation is the devil, he is only too happy to help give us the strength to carry out our wildest fantasies.  If nothing else Judas teaches us that.

All that being said, I believe we can begin to uncover some of Judas’ personal motivation.  We must first eliminate what appears to be the obvious answer—greed.  Thirty pieces of silver was the price paid for the death of a slave and was not very much.  It would have been far less than Judas was likely making embezzling as keeper of the Apostolic money bag.  He was walking away from a pretty good racket.  That coupled with the fact that, because he inherited his father’s name, Iscariot, he was probably already wealthy, makes it unlikely that greed was the motivating factor.

Biblical Typology and the Judas/Judah Connection

Instead we can look at the Patriarch Joseph as a type of Christ.  For he too was sold for pieces of silver by his brother Judah.  And why did he do this?  For the same reason that Judas would betray Christ—envy.  Envy is the devil’s forte.  It was envy that motivated him to go after mankind when he fell.  And in his role as the Accuser, it is envy that he is constantly seeking to incite in us.  Envy always presents itself by way of accusation making it about what it’s not really about.  It is an attempt to tear down another person simply because they are stealing from your greatness.  Judas was not the thief, Christ was—”why was this not sold for 300 days wages?”.  The devil was not in Judas, it was Our Lord who was the devil. 

So, it was Judas’ envy of Our Lord in His absolute freedom, especially his freedom from a desire for riches, that led Judas ultimately to consent to turning him over.  And in this way, the story of Judas should be particularly instructive for us.  We live in a culture that has been particularly designed to incite envy.  When someone does something great, we scan their social media history to find a way to tear them down.  Supposed class/race/gender/sexual identity warfare is all about envy by demonizing the other.  Envy is the most difficult for us to see because we are living in it.  And that is why we must never forget what happened to Judas and the wages of envy.       

Lead Us Not into Temptation?

God's Love, God's Will, Mercy, Suffering, Virtue, , , , ,

In his personal memoirs, the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung described how he finally broke from Christianity because of Jesus’ apparently inconsistent portrait of God as simultaneously “love and goodness” and “tempter and destroyer.”  It is reasonable to think that Jung might not be alone in his conclusion, especially considering that each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer we ask that God “lead us not into temptation.”  The implication is that He has the power to either tempt us or lead us away from it.  Whether we recognize it or not, there is a certain mistrust of God that cannot be totally put away until we deal with what seems like a messy contradiction.  Putting temptation within the proper framework will not only help us to address the intellectual difficulty surrounding the issue of temptation, but, more importantly, help us to see why they are a constituent element in our quest for holiness.

What God Desires

In constructing the frame, we must first start with a proper understanding of what God wants for each one of us.  God is not content with merely bestowing the divine life upon us.  He does not merely want to give us grace so we can go to heaven and be with Him.  No, if you can imagine it, He wants so much more.  He is not looking for test subjects for some cosmic social experiment, but sons and daughters who can stand on their own two feet and run towards Him.  He wants His glory to shine from every pore of our being but He also wants to bestow upon us the dignity of having worked for it.  Eternal life is a free gift, but He won’t cheapen it by asking for nothing in return.

Rather than getting bogged down in an explication of the mystery of man’s free will and God’s grace, we will accept as a given that they are cooperative powers.  When God plants the seed of eternal life (i.e. sanctifying grace) in our souls, He also implants the supernatural virtue of charity.  Now each of our natural virtues as well as the two theological virtues of faith and hope has charity as its center of gravity.  As the virtues increase, our capacity to harness the Supreme Goodness that is God’s life increase with it.  It is, to borrow a principle from St. Thomas, grace perfecting nature.

Grace and Nature

It seems that a digression is in order regarding this important Thomistic principle because it is relevant to a proper understanding of all that I just said.  Often it is paraphrased as “grace builds upon nature.”  This is more than just “saying the same thing.”  If you tell me “grace builds upon nature” I think, “I just need to try harder to be good” and God will give me grace.  It is as if I can achieve a certain amount of natural goodness and then God will give me grace.  In other words it is my hard work that comes first then grace.  Grace becomes essentially a superfluous add-on.  This is just a subtle form of the old heresy called (semi-)Pelagianism which denied original sin and taught that holiness was ours for the taking.

What I have proposed is not “becoming the best version of yourself”, that is a good natural life, but instead a path to an abundant supernatural life.  It is grace that comes first.  No amount of work on our part can change that.  Without the initial installment (ordinarily through Baptism) or a re-installment (through Sacramental Confession), we can never get there no matter how good we are.  Heaven is not the natural result of a good life, it is the supernatural consequence of a holy life.  All holy people are good people, but not all good people are holy.  It is grace at the beginning and then grace all the way through.  Grace perfects nature, not builds upon it.

What we are talking about then is our cooperation with grace through a growth in the virtues and how this is achieved.  The classic definition of a virtue as the firm and habitual dispositions toward the good needs to be examined.  We instinctively get the habitual part, understanding that it requires more than solitary acts that look like virtue to actually be virtuous.  We mistakenly think then to grow in virtue we just need to keep repeating the act.  For an increase in virtue however the first part, that is the firmness, is what needs to be emphasized.  It is only an act done with greater vehemence that wins the increase in virtue.

Temptation from its Proper Perspective

Only when we grasp God’s desire for our personal perfection and what that perfection consists in, we can look at temptation in a proper light.  Temptation is not so much a push to do something bad, but an opportunity to love and do what is good all the more.  It is an indispensable means for a growth in virtue.  Lacking any resistance, we are content with feeble acts of virtue because they “get the job done.”  Virtue is often compared to a muscle with a “use it or lose it” mentality.  But God is calling us to be spiritual bodybuilders, becoming huge in our holiness.  Muscle grows with an increase in resistance and so it is with virtue.  It might not be the only way to increase the intensity of our virtuous acts, but it is the most effective.  “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” is not just a mission statement from Jesus, Life Coach, but a command from the one Who always equips us to fulfill it.

Addressing Jung’s objection that I opened with will also help us to see how best to make use of temptations.  It is not God who tempts but instead He is the one Who allows temptations to occur for our own good.  If there is no opportunity for growth then He will not allow it.  This truth is so important to hold onto, especially in the midst of strong temptations.  What you shouldn’t hold onto is the hackneyed Christian maxim that “God does not give you more than you can handle.”  This is not only not true, but also counterproductive.  God absolutely gives us more than we can handle, but He never abandons us, spotting us in our spiritual workouts.  But like a good spotter, He only gives us enough help for us to keep the bar moving and does not pull it off of us.  Even in being overcome, we still have the opportunity to grow.  No saint was devoid of humility, a virtue that only grows with more intense acceptance of humiliations.

Before closing I should mention one thing that may not be clear from what I have said.  It seems that if God has allowed a temptation to occur for my good, then I must simply face it head on.  Fleeing from them means that I will have missed the opportunity for growth.  Fleeing in the face of temptation, especially those of the flesh, is one of the ways in which we grow in virtue.  The rapidity and vehemence in which we avoid what would be evil is exactly what causes our growth.

We can see why it is that God then never frees us from temptation wholly.  As Sirach says, “when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trial” (Sir 2:1).  “To be human,” Aquinas says, “is to be tempted, but to consent is to be devlish.”  We do not pray to be freed from temptation in the Lord’s Prayer, but instead that we may not be led into temptation, that is, to consent to it.    Unfortunately, Jung was wrong.  Temptations come from a loving Father, Who wants nothing more than our perfection.