A Biblical Exploration of Mental Health: Judas

 by Tom Fairman

Christmas is a wonderful time of year for so many reasons, but can be a truly difficult time for so many when so many issues that are bubbling under the surface come to a head. The week before one particular Christmas we received some terrible news. One of our friends had taken their lives. It was completely out of the blue. His heavily pregnant wife and their two children had gone to visit their family and he was due to join them at a later date. A photo taken that morning showed a happy, fit, able young man, his bikes in the background which were his pride and joy. 

His funeral was so well attended that there was only standing room available, so many people touched by his life and brought together by his death. When sharing with other people about suicide, it seems almost everyone has a similar story or has known someone that this has happened too. It is a humbling event to hear about such a tragic end to someone's life and there is a powerful and distressing privilege in grieving with another in this moment. 

Suicide by its very nature is a solitary event. Regardless of the reasons, it is a tragic end to someone's life and it is where we find Judas after Jesus' crucifixion. Judas was an apostle of Jesus', chosen as one of the His twelve closest followers (Luke 6:16). He went with Jesus as He taught across the country, clashed with religious elders, miraculously healed the sick, feed thousands of people on two loaves and five fish and impossibly raised Lazarus from the dead. Judas left his whole life behind to share intimately with Jesus; morning meals, fishing afternoons on the sea of Galilee, laughing at shared stories. Yet the last we hear in the Gospels of Judas is of him hanging from a tree alone in a field, after trying to return the money he had obtained by betraying Jesus with a kiss (Matthew 27:3-5).

This ending is one you would not wish on those you hate. To reach a point where suicide feels like the only option from the position of being present and close to Jesus through His best moments on earth seems completely incomprehensible. This is how we all feel when we hear the words we never want to hear about a loved one or one close to us. How could this happen? I don't understand. The shock is so big and so sudden that it brings us to our knees and knocks the wind out of our sails. To stop us from falling apart, we then form the next question; Why did this happen? 

As humans we have an in built need to make sense of situations, to make a coherent story out of the chaos, to create a narrative that explains away any contradictions or paradoxes. For the remaining Apostles, it was the paradox that their friend and companion who had spent the last three years ministering with them could betray their Rabbi, their hope, their Messiah and then hang himself. The effects of this struggle can be read in the Gospels where Judas' character is under attack from the very beginning (Luke 6:16). He is described as looking after the common purse and helping himself to it, to having a surface concern for the poor (John 12:6) and of it being better that he was never born at all, words attributed to Jesus himself (Matthew 26:24). 

Judas presents a problem for Christianity as well. Was Judas pre-destined to suffer in this way, to always be the one to betray Jesus? If so, why did Jesus choose him to be his disciple in the first place? Was it fair to set Judas up to fail? Surely an all loving God would not do that, using a human to serve a purpose without any regard for the person themselves. Therefore Christianity needed to believe Judas had a choice and to ensure Judas was truly regarded in the correct way. If Judas had no choice as to whether to betray Jesus or not, he had a choice of how to respond. 

This means his choice of committing suicide needed to be seen through a lens of someone who was destined to suffer for his crimes, someone who needed to be punished. The act of suicide itself then had to carry with it punishment that could not be attributed to the act of betrayal. The church therefore defines suicide as a gravely wrong moral act, or a mortal sin which requires repentance. In the case of suicide, it is therefore impossible for this to be given and so the act takes on an even deeper disgrace. This can be seen in religious art work where Judas is portrayed as not having a halo, indicating his perceived final destination.

All of this is incredibly unhelpful and damaging for those of us trying to deal with suicidal thoughts or the effects of suicide. The Church has its reasons for teaching in this way, but the extra grief and pressure that puts onto already over burdened shoulders whilst not lifting a finger to help seems to bring its own amount of shame. To offer an alternative interpretation is not to contradict the church, but to allow an expression for the hurt that is present in those final moments of Judas' life. 

For Judas, there is no cheer leader, writing his version of events, explaining his reasons. It is possible during those years that Judas loved Jesus and longed to see the Kingdom of God on earth. He may have had a different idea of how this Kingdom would come about or look in the end. He may have lost sight of the blessings he was witnessing, the beauty that was manifesting around him, the love that was being lavished upon him. Eventually Judas could not see Jesus in the answer to the hopes he carried and decided he needed to get Jesus out of the picture.

How must Jesus have felt to see one of His closest friends descending to the place where he would betray Him. It must have cut so deep. Possibly Jesus had faith in Judas' right up until the end. Was the giving of the bread dipped in the dish a last attempt of Jesus' to reach out to Judas and save him? There was still goodness in Judas' right at the end. His repentance might have come in the form of returning the silver to the high priests, who refused it as blood money and turned him out (Matthew 27:6-9). His repentance might have come as he returned to his friends to say sorry and seek refuge in the darkest moment of Jesus' trial, but he would have been turned away by those who would later write his goodness out of history itself. His shame then led him to the field and take the rope and find the tree that would accompany him in this solitary, yet sacred moment of death.

We do not know what happened to Judas post-death, nor should we try to figure it out. The sacred footsteps leading up to that moment would be filled with intent, confusion and shame, but also with a loving friend in Jesus crying at his side. Sorrow and regret fills the air and is transported across the great divide to those left behind. Therefore Judas offers us a truly sad insight into suicide, into the loneliness and rejection that must lead there, and yet the hope that an act of grave consequence may be greyer than we automatically assume.