"Silver: Twenty, Thirty Pieces"

Friday, March 21, 2014

More tales from a previous Bible study -- this one on Joseph and his brothers, who were going to kill him but instead sold him into slavery.  I had been working up a theory that perhaps these betrayals, these evil deeds, were necessary for salvation at times.  That God needs -- or at least can use -- the wicked things we do for good.  After all, didn't it end better for everyone -- literally thousands of people -- that Joseph was sold into slavery by his loved ones?

But then -- if Joseph had gone to Egypt to be of use another way, if, say his reputation as a Reader of Dreams and a Seer of Visions had spread to Pharoah's palace and he had been officially sent for to interpret the dream, perhaps bargaining for food to feed his family in Canaan in return for helping out Egypt in its time of need -- if all of that had happened instead, would the Israelites have been enslaved for centuries?

And I thought: God's will will happen.  Sometimes through our misdeeds because we are human and God cannot let those misdeeds get in the way of His plan -- but if we had acted better, would the same result have happened only, well, better?

Then I think of the theory on Judas Iscariot that I just cannot shake.

There's a term used in certain hero stories -- officially of every stripe but used most explicitly in science fiction and fantasy stories where our modern hero stories live -- referred to as Who You Are in the Dark.  It's when the hero faces a choice with no one to see -- heroes so often have to deal with the spotlight, but then the villain or just Life brings them to a moment of true privacy, where they have to choose to do right at great personal cost or wrong, often for personal game, secure in the knowledge that no one will ever have to know.  It won't hurt their fame and reputation, and it won't have to change their lives.

The most common response to this challenge is, "I'll know!" and a defiant refusal to do evil.

The more subtle and complicated and heartbreaking ones are where not only will no one ever know that the hero chose to do good even in the dark, with no one watching, but they will THINK that the hero was the villain.  Jamie Lannister killed Mad King Aerys to save the city, for example.

You can probably see where I'm going with this.  Especially with the way the Last Supper conversation goes, how no one goes after him even after the reveal that goes down halfway through, I sometimes wonder if Judas Iscariot is the ultimate example of willing to be a hero in the dark -- to let history villify his name as the worst of traitors and scum, so that Jesus Christ could save us all.

It would mean he would have been in on the plan or at least trying to force Jesus's hand.  It would be something impressive.

Even if it's not true, the two stories side by side in the readings today illustrate an important truth it can be all too easy to lose sight of especially in our decreasingly private world: there is an important difference between loving good in public and doing good in private.  You are who you are when the world's not looking, every bit as much as when they are.

The important thing is righteousness and virtue and grace -- not the public perception of it.  The importance is our faith, not the appearance of religious observance.