This piece really captures the weight of personal betrayal and the human struggle to find meaning in our failures. I loved the way it parallels Judas’ betrayal with our own missteps—reminding us that not every failure is redemptive, yet reflecting on them is part of growth. The honesty here, the acknowledgment of shame and the act of letting go, feels deeply true to the human experience.
One second note. Satan, the adversary, is described in Deuteronomy chapter 15, as “the wicked thought”, which I render as the sociopathic mentality of power structures develop developed outside of Torah, what the theologians would call a Gentile.
In other words, Satan isn’t an external force, it’s the entropic force already existing inside of us, tempting us, luring us, seducing us away from the covenant and toward wealth and power and fame and ego.
This is what Yehoshua squared off against in the Judean wilderness, after his Qumran initiation was complete (Luke 4): not an external, pitchfork-wielding “Devil”, but “the wicked thought” tempting him away.
What does Yehoshua say to each temptation? A quotation of Deuteronomy. It’s not a coincidence. It’s the proving ground that demonstrates he was authorized, the Messiah, to bear the name, YHWH, and to initiate the emancipation project prescribed in the Torah, called the Yovel (Jubilee).
Satan is steady possessing us, brother. That’s the problem! It’s like an addiction, as you seem to understand. We don’t stop being addicted to ha-Satan, we fight it every day: in ourselves, our families, our communities, and so on.
We can cultivate that scarcity mentality, that entropic, sociopathic thought process and mental framework, or we can choose to align and a tune ourselves to the Covenant.
So good. Also, it’s a very honest and vulnerable post. This is testimony. It is confession. In this you aren’t just grasping for absolution, you are claiming it with honesty and sincerity. That is perhaps the most radical thing we have all been able to learn from Yehoshua: it’s already there, at your fingertips, your access to restoration, like the Commonwealth itself, is always close enough to touch.
To quote from our shared teacher in and of history, “Go, and do not contribute any more harms.”
This is hauntingly well-written — the slush-and-salt parking lot, the bottle as “my everything entire,” the way relapse becomes not just failure but betrayal. That landed hard.
I also appreciated the honesty of the move you name near the end: how we reach for patterns across time, scripture, story — anything that might hold our humiliation and make it mean something. That feels deeply human, and deeply familiar.
On the Judas / Gospel layer: I found myself both intrigued and cautious. The idea that communities “narrativize trauma” can be illuminating, but it can also become a solvent that dissolves anything we don’t know how to hold. Sometimes the line between interpretation and invention is thinner than we think, and I’m not sure we can cross it without more than intuition.
Still — the piece doesn’t feel like a history lecture. It feels like confession. And the ending (pouring it down the drain) is the kind of quiet agency that doesn’t need to be triumphant to be real.
Thank you for writing this with such clarity and restraint.
When I betrayed I was barely aware of it, a kind of semi-consciousness, devoured by other feelings. Even knowing, blankly and technically, that I did a very wrong thing, I never felt it. Sorry in my head, guilty in my mind, but, within, untouched by that guilt to this day. It has never affected my sleep or haunted my thoughts, even though an innocent person suffered. I wish they hadn't been harmed, but I am not tormented by it. This makes me sound like a terrible person, and within the context of the event, I must be. Maybe there's some psychological barrier that stops me from feeling the impact appropriately. But I don't feel very much at all. Re Judas, I can kind of see it, this sense that Jesus is going to go under anyway, there's no point joining him. And if you are going to betray, at least do it purposefully, for benefit, rather than out of cowardice, yes, I can get how that sort of Satan might get inside one's head, and then, when all's done and the reality is shown, despair sets in at the unfixable crime. Except it is fixable, and apparently God's design. So is Judas a tool of the divine? Does he damn himself for nothing? A really thought provoking post, thank you for it.
This piece really captures the weight of personal betrayal and the human struggle to find meaning in our failures. I loved the way it parallels Judas’ betrayal with our own missteps—reminding us that not every failure is redemptive, yet reflecting on them is part of growth. The honesty here, the acknowledgment of shame and the act of letting go, feels deeply true to the human experience.
Thanks!
One second note. Satan, the adversary, is described in Deuteronomy chapter 15, as “the wicked thought”, which I render as the sociopathic mentality of power structures develop developed outside of Torah, what the theologians would call a Gentile.
In other words, Satan isn’t an external force, it’s the entropic force already existing inside of us, tempting us, luring us, seducing us away from the covenant and toward wealth and power and fame and ego.
This is what Yehoshua squared off against in the Judean wilderness, after his Qumran initiation was complete (Luke 4): not an external, pitchfork-wielding “Devil”, but “the wicked thought” tempting him away.
What does Yehoshua say to each temptation? A quotation of Deuteronomy. It’s not a coincidence. It’s the proving ground that demonstrates he was authorized, the Messiah, to bear the name, YHWH, and to initiate the emancipation project prescribed in the Torah, called the Yovel (Jubilee).
Satan is steady possessing us, brother. That’s the problem! It’s like an addiction, as you seem to understand. We don’t stop being addicted to ha-Satan, we fight it every day: in ourselves, our families, our communities, and so on.
We can cultivate that scarcity mentality, that entropic, sociopathic thought process and mental framework, or we can choose to align and a tune ourselves to the Covenant.
This is interesting.
So good. Also, it’s a very honest and vulnerable post. This is testimony. It is confession. In this you aren’t just grasping for absolution, you are claiming it with honesty and sincerity. That is perhaps the most radical thing we have all been able to learn from Yehoshua: it’s already there, at your fingertips, your access to restoration, like the Commonwealth itself, is always close enough to touch.
To quote from our shared teacher in and of history, “Go, and do not contribute any more harms.”
Thanks!
This is hauntingly well-written — the slush-and-salt parking lot, the bottle as “my everything entire,” the way relapse becomes not just failure but betrayal. That landed hard.
I also appreciated the honesty of the move you name near the end: how we reach for patterns across time, scripture, story — anything that might hold our humiliation and make it mean something. That feels deeply human, and deeply familiar.
On the Judas / Gospel layer: I found myself both intrigued and cautious. The idea that communities “narrativize trauma” can be illuminating, but it can also become a solvent that dissolves anything we don’t know how to hold. Sometimes the line between interpretation and invention is thinner than we think, and I’m not sure we can cross it without more than intuition.
Still — the piece doesn’t feel like a history lecture. It feels like confession. And the ending (pouring it down the drain) is the kind of quiet agency that doesn’t need to be triumphant to be real.
Thank you for writing this with such clarity and restraint.
Thanks! Well said.
<3
A beautiful piece. Haunting. I’ll think differently about Judas. And I will hold that image of the half empty bottle, the smell of juniper.
Thank you, Brad.
When I betrayed I was barely aware of it, a kind of semi-consciousness, devoured by other feelings. Even knowing, blankly and technically, that I did a very wrong thing, I never felt it. Sorry in my head, guilty in my mind, but, within, untouched by that guilt to this day. It has never affected my sleep or haunted my thoughts, even though an innocent person suffered. I wish they hadn't been harmed, but I am not tormented by it. This makes me sound like a terrible person, and within the context of the event, I must be. Maybe there's some psychological barrier that stops me from feeling the impact appropriately. But I don't feel very much at all. Re Judas, I can kind of see it, this sense that Jesus is going to go under anyway, there's no point joining him. And if you are going to betray, at least do it purposefully, for benefit, rather than out of cowardice, yes, I can get how that sort of Satan might get inside one's head, and then, when all's done and the reality is shown, despair sets in at the unfixable crime. Except it is fixable, and apparently God's design. So is Judas a tool of the divine? Does he damn himself for nothing? A really thought provoking post, thank you for it.
Thank you 🙏