There has been this kind of growing trend.

There are certain people trying to kind of rewrite, not rewrite the gospels, not rewrite the story, but rewrite the motivation of Judas. Maybe Judas betrayed Jesus because he thought he was helping Jesus. I'm going to thrust you out, you're going to rain, you're going to dominate. I didn't realize you're going to let them kill you. Or maybe Judas's motivation was that when Jesus said to Judas, whatever you're about to do, do it quickly, Jesus told them

to do this.

Maybe this was God's plan the whole time.

Jesus wanted Judas to betray him.

It's not really betraying.

Wait, did Judas think he was doing a good thing?

Did Jesus tell Judas to do this thing?

Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and this is essentially presents.

When it comes to ascribing other people motivation for their actions, when there's a gap between what someone's done and my understanding of what they've done, our inclination is to suspect them, right, to have suspicion. And there's something so powerful, so good about just even having that language to be able to say, I don't understand what you were doing. I'm going to choose to see your actions through the best possible light. I'm going to fill the gap with trust.

There's something so helpful, right? There's something so healthy. There's something so just gracious

about choosing to do that. Now, obviously, if someone has demonstrated that they can't be

trusted, it would be foolish to trust them. At the same time,

we don't always know a person's motivation. And so why not, why not assume the best? All that being

said, let's talk about Judas. So all that being said, it's a good thing to assume the best.

Let's talk about the person of Judas in the Gospels. Here's what we have to know.

The Bible actually tells us, Judas betrayed Jesus for money. And if we're going to believe the

Bible, if we're going to believe the Gospels, if we're going to believe these accounts of the

life, death, the resurrection of Jesus, three of the Gospels say that Judas did this for money. To step back and say, yeah, but maybe it was because of the gospels say that Judas did this for money.

To step back and say, yeah, but maybe it was because no, the Bible tells us Judas did it for money.

To let that sit there, to let that be there, I already made a video on Wicked, the musical Wicked, about how we rewrite some of these characters

and say, well, maybe their motivation was this or that, the other thing.

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