“Imagine if the worst thing you’ve ever done is the only thing you’re remembered for?”
That was the question presented to a packed tent on the first night of Greenbelt 2016 by Rev. Kate Bottley in a talk provocatively titled “Team Judas”. Kate shared with us the journey she went on while filming a documentary for the BBC earlier this year entitled “In the Footsteps of Judas”, discussing the life of the infamous disciple of Jesus that we remember only for the terrible, unforgivable betrayal that leads to Jesus’ crucifixion. A man who spent three years with Jesus, who was probably one of his best friends, that we know only for that one act of betrayal.
Kate’s talk got me thinking about my life, my regrets and mistakes, and how people may remember me when I die. What if people only remembered me for the times when I’ve been selfish, lied, hurt or betrayed those closest to me? In the age of the internet, we are so good at portraying to the world the best version of ourselves. The highlights, the moments where we come off looking the best. We’re able to curate our lives and our legacies, filtering our photos and untagging the moments that we’d rather people didn’t see. Both the legacy of Judas, and the pristine, Instagram versions of ourselves we portray are not the whole story. Each of our lives is made up of successes and failures, joy and pain, gain and loss. To be a whole person is, to be honest about all of this and to admit to our mistakes as much as our achievements.
I’m an incredibly self-conscious person, and I have a massive tendency to internally focus on my mistakes over and above my accomplishments. I’m constantly living my life comparing myself to other people and thinking that deep down I’m not good enough. I find compliments tough to take and spend most of my life feeling not quite good enough. Deep down there’s a fear that other people see me the way I see myself, that if people get to know me, they’ll see my faults, my flaws and my imperfections. It’s this fear that drives me to paint an image of myself on social media that is a lot cooler than I am. To show off the success of my life and to try to be as successful as I can. I hold people at an arms length, hiding my true self because I worry that if they saw my imperfections that will be all they see.
But of course, that isn’t healthy. Every one of us is a cocktail of strengths and weaknesses, and to focus on one over another is to deny an intrinsic part of what makes us human. In her talk, Kate challenged us to see that there was more to Judas than one act of betrayal. That up until the point of the last supper, he was just like any of the other disciples, laughing, joking, and following his Rabbi, Jesus. We’re so quick to judge him, to brandish him with the brush of betrayal, that we fail to see that in every one of us is the potential to do the same. During the last supper, Jesus said to the disciples, “… one of you will betray me…”, and only two people in that room knew who that would be. None of the disciples immediately pointed the finger at Judas; they were clueless as to who the betrayer was. Maybe they knew deep down that it could have been any one of them.
What would happen if we began to see one another as integrated people? If we started seeing ourselves and other people as multi-dimensional beings, each made up of successes, failures, strengths, weaknesses, beauty and pain. If we stopped judging others based on a single act of failure or success? What if we started embracing our whole humanity, rather than hiding behind carefully curated and filtered images on social media? If we didn’t form an opinion of somebody based solely on their gender, sexuality, religious affiliation or race?
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