46 Shame and Tragedy: Judas Iscariot and You

Intro: Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis: Carpe Diem!, where by God’s grace, you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth right now, in these days, all grounded in a Catholic worldview.   We are going beyond mere resilience, to rising up to the challenges in our lives and becoming even healthier in the natural and the spiritual realms.  I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and I am here with you, to be your host and guide.  This podcast is part of Souls and Hearts, our online outreach at soulsandhearts.com, which is all about shoring up our natural foundation for the Catholic spiritual life, all about overcoming psychological obstacles to being loved and to loving God and neighbor -- it short, this podcast is all about relationships -- it's all about becoming much more relational in our lives and in our faith. This is episode 46, released on December 14, 2020and it is titled: Shame and Tragedy: Judas Iscariot and Youit is the tenth episode in our series on shame.  Thank you for being here with me. Last episode we discussed how shame can lead to idolatry.  Now we are going to look at an example of how shame did lead to idolatry the rejection of the true God for a false godthe story of Judas, whose life ended in tragedy, the tragedy of abandoning and betraying Jesus Christ, true God and true manReally excited about this episode Really going to look inside of Judas' mind, heart, body and soul today Really focus on understanding what happened in his life, why did he act the way he did. Why did he do it?  I don't accept the typical explanations for Judas' behavior because they seem too simplistic, they don't resonate at all with me.  In our fallen world, in our fallen human condition, all of us have elements of what Judas struggled with.  I believe that there is the potential in you to repeat what Judas did.  Fallen world, fallen natures.  There but for the grace of God go I.  Origin unknown, often attributed to John Bradford, Evangelical preacher of the 16th century.  We can learn from Judas' tragic end.  We are continuing to really immerse ourselves in the spiritual dimensions of shame. How shame on the natural level can impact us in spiritual ways Grace builds on nature -- disorder in the natural realm undermines the spiritual life.  I like to teach through familiar stories, weaving stories together.  Especially through Scripture, really getting into the Word of God.Deeper understand of the people in the Bible stories, to see them in three dimension, bringing them to lifeScripture is a gift from God to us -- a precious gift a way that God reveals himself to us And a way that God reveals you to you.  If you look carefully, you can see aspects of yourself, parts of yourself in the people of Scripture You can connect with their experience, and I am here to help you with that. Stories help to illustrate the concepts we are learning and connect with them.  Stories give us tangible examples so that we can really grip on to what we are trying to understand.  Judas was an important, powerful, evocative and mysterious figure to me growing up from when I was 5 I remember being about 5 years old and insisting to my mother that Good Friday should really be called "Bad Friday" because of how Jesus died.  Deeply impressed by the story of the passion and death of Jesus.  5 and 6 year old think in black and white -- clear, simple categoriesAnd I thought Judas was very, very naughty to betray Jesus and tell Jewish priests how to catch him so they could nail him to the cross.  That was very naughty.  And Judas was a thief, too.  He stole things.  That was important to me.  Let me tell you a story about my history as a thief.  I was not a very good thief.  But I was a thief at one time.  Stealing was not tolerated in my family. When I was five we were on our road trip back from the Christmas visit with grandma and grandpa, and we stopped at a gas station.  Inside the store, there was a Christmas tree decorated with striped candy sticks. Not just red and white, this one had all the colors of the rainbow. Oooh, pretty.  Oooh, tasty.  Shiny, too.  Pretty, tasty, shiny.  I took one.  I'm not sure I was even really aware I was stealing.  Sucking on it in the car, making it sharp and pointy.  Where did you get that?  No pretense.  Mom and Dad -- that's not right,  Dad makes a U-turn on the two lane highway, and  drove me back about 10 miles to the gas station and I had to go in and tell the manager what I had done.  I surrendered the half-eaten pointed little striped candy stick.  I was mortified.  Manager was very gracious, made it no big deal.  I experienced real shame at the time.  And I vowed to reform and not steal ever again.    From my parents' reaction, I learned that stealing was very, very bad.  It was a rule not to steal, even a commandment -- Thou shalt not steal, and that included taking candy canes off of Christmas trees inside gas stations.  A part of me really learned that to be good, you have to know the rules and follow the rules and Judas was not following the rules about not killing Jesus and not stealing money.  Could Judas be any worse?  Judas was very, very naughty.  Fast forward two years.  When I was about 7, a man named Tim Rice came into my life.  He told me a riveting story, portraying Judas in a very different way than just being very, very naughty.  He told me about Judas' feelings and thoughts and worries and how distressed Judas had been and how Judas had done some bad things, but Judas was very human.  I listened to the story that Tim Rice told me -- I wanted to hear it over and over again.  Judas was so different than I had thought.  He was more than just a stealer who betrayed Jesus. Who was Tim Rice? -- wrote the lyrics for the Rock Opera Jesus Christ Superstar.  Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote the lyrics.  Blast from the past-- anybody going back to the 1970s with me now?Mom and Dad had the vinyl -- the two volume set and though I didn't have TV growing up, we did have a nice stereo and I was allowed to play records the turntable.  Looking back on that it seemed a little ridiculous to let a seven year old play records on this really, really nice audio equipment, but there it was And I, at seven years old, eight years, nine years  old -- all the way until my sophomore years of college, I really gripped on to this musical JC Superstar was so emotionally evocative for me.  Emotions just welled up in me in so many ways that never really happened at Mass or in religion class.  Tim Rice really was telling me the most compelling story of Jesus and Judas and the Apos...