The Judas Factor

Foresight is knowing something is going to happen
Before it actually occurs.
Most anyone can obtain foresight from logical
Means of deduction when they put their minds to
It, we usually have all the information but
No desire to exact a conclusion.

Not all foresight wear this cloak of humanity
Some foresight is simply there.
When you “had the feeling” that would happen,
Dreamt that it had happened, sensed it was to happen.
Some foresight is unseen and unheard,
feeling powerful enough
To be as it is.

God given.

It is inside the disappointing shell of foresight
That I sit tonight. Watching from my knowing
Tower over the incidents that I predicted without
Reason. The buying and selling of trust
In the Judas market of everyday life.

I have always respected Judas, understood him to
Be the one biblical character who could be anyone of us.
The one who made the largest errors
And the fastest judgments in order to obtain the
Sanity of one who protects his interests first.
The beauty of the betrayal of Jesus is
That it was done by one who loved him so
Intimately.
Through that love he managed to betray him
To his death so swiftly.
But would you, upon reading of his betrayal
Turn away so quickly from the court of Judas?
You stood in his corner for so long through so many
Pages of devotion and trust,
Would you turn so easily? Condemn so surely?
How quickly we all become Judas, don’t you think?

The truth is that we are living in a world so filled with
Fear to protect ourselves from everyone else that we find ourselves
In a cycle of love and betrayal, hand in hand.
The more we love you, the more we betray you.
The more you trust us, the deeper the knife in the back will sink.
It is only through that betrayal that those of us
Suffering the wounds, those of us kissed before the eyes of
Our enemies can stop the cycle.

DO as Jesus did.
DO as he believed.

Forgive your betrayer, learn to love them still.
Easier said than done,

Today I will learn to forgive and embrace my betrayer.
Knowing that I once loved Judas, knowing the Jesus always loved Judas.
Sell me out for a few coins of silver and gold
And I kneel down and forgive you your humanity still.

Do not live in anger and hurt.
I will not live in anger and hurt.
‘so tonight that I might see’

that’s all I can say for now,

Trust: The God Complex

Faith is a harsh mistress.
You cannot have her some of the time without taking her along for the
Ride all of the time.
She will not release you to your own devices
Once she has trapped you into hers.
Faith doesn’t let you go, no matter how you try to shake her
And for this reason alone…
We often choose to not get involved at all.
A fear of commitment in the light of being saved.
I am no different, often I am disgustingly the same
As so many other jaded followers of Christ
We want to be there with you, we want to trust in
The word and give in to God..
But we want you to do it first so we can see how it worked out
Because let’s say it doesn’t work out….
Well, we haven’t given in yet so we can back
Out with little to no dirt on our shoes.
No worse for the wear if you don’t count the holes
In the soles… souls?

I’m afraid so. Souls it is.
I struggle with this trust,
This faith.
So blindly we follow and so easily
We are lead.
So it should be easy, so it should be so.
How can it be?
We are raised to be mistrustful of anything that looks
Easy.
We are not to become
‘living room sheep’ to the call of
the Jesus machine.
The word cult springs up more often than
The word belief.
The Bible trapped in the drawer of motels and hotels
Across the United States is used less frequently
Than the phone book by which we try to find
The tangible in the way of escort services,
Bars and clubs in which to dance and drink until
We are left clutching the porcelain God as we make
Promises to never drink that much again.

But we don’t want to admit that we make those
Empty and often cracked promise to God.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t do this again.”
We say that, I say that.
But when the promise is made I am never making it with me,
I am making it with the God I am scared to give all of myself too.
Funny isn’t it?
I become God with my words, but to myself I have never been true
And loyalty, because to God I am faith whore.
Borrowing my belief when I am scared to admit it
And claim it as my own.

Don’t misunderstand me, I do believe.
I am not saying it’s not true or real.. it is as real as my
Own flesh and blood is real
It is the willingness to claim it and walk around with it
Inside myself.
Holding back to watch it work for others
Before I trust it will work for me.
Afraid that total faith makes me crazy.
The pledge to resistance so many of us make
Fails to specifiy what we are resisting and so..
We resist everything.

Trust no one.
Trust me.
I know what I’m talking about.

It’s okay to laugh.
Because that’s funny, it’s what I was taught.
It is the truth that was set into the foundation that
I built myself on top of and I sit on my throne
At the top of this crumbling foundation with
My eyes wide open waiting for the answers
To everyone elses problems to prove to me
That I can take my own to the sacred place
Of God’s trust in me.

Jesus can lead me to water but he cannot make me drink.
And so I sit by the water’s edge with the empty cup in my
Hand waiting for someone to pass by so that I might watch them
Drink from the river of faith and I reach my hand out and
Beg of them
“might you get me a cup of water from the river?”
borrowing their faith because I fear my own.

I grapple with this today because for the first time in 30 years of life
The man at the river said
“no, you must get your own or die of thirst.”

Viva la resistance….
If only now I begin to understand that the resistance
Is not to faith but to doubt.

Step one, admitting I am a problem.