Luke 22:1-6

Now the feast of unleavened bread, which is called the Passover, drew near. The chief priests and the scribes sought how they might put him to death, for they feared the people. Satan entered into Judas, who was surnamed Iscariot, who was numbered with the twelve. He went away, and talked with the chief priests and captains about how he might deliver him to them. They were glad, and agreed to give him money. He consented, and sought an opportunity to deliver him to them in the absence of the multitude.

It is interesting to me that so many people refuse to recognize the existence of any conspiracy. The Bible clearly tells us that they exist. It takes a discerning mind to recognize that it isn’t the conspiracy that is the problem but the “theories” that some hold. As we read here, conspiracies are hatched and executed in secret so it is very difficult to know the truth about them. For this reason, we have to be very critical about the “theory” part of “conspiracy theories.” Although some may be true, we need to be very careful to analyze the evidence critically before we assume they are. Some conspiracy theorists are far more sensitive to criticism than they should be. It is always wise to be critical about what people say when we consider all of the lies that also exist in our world, but to just be critical and never weigh the evidence for any theory sets a person up to walk right into another 911 or worse.

In this case, we read that Judas gave up on this Teacher and decided to turn Him in to the religious leaders. It is interesting that money was involved, but the way this was written caused me to pause and think about it for a while. We do know from what was written in other places that Judas had been taking money out of the treasury for the poor, but it is interesting that it says here that “he consented” to the deal. This made me wonder if God is intending to tell us that Judas had religious reasons for handing Jesus over to them as well.

In my life I have witnessed that many of the worst crimes have been done in the name of false religion. I include 911, as well as many other genocidal attacks that have been made against people. Atheism, Unitarianism, Environmentalism, Evolutionism and Socialism, are kinds of religion as well. People don’t need money to be motivated to kill another person. They just need to have their deepest lusts threatened, and there is no question that Jesus challenged the lusts of every man because all men had evil desires in themselves. Some try to say that the problem is religion itself. The issue I have with this is that they fail to recognize the hypocrisy in that statement. By stating that all existing religions are bad, you merely start up a new one of your own making. When you fall in love with your own religion, then the persecution starts against others. Rather than having a few religions, we get large numbers of individual ones. Truth should be the issue for all of us. Which religion is the true one? Judas made His decision.

Proverbs 21:16

The man who wanders out of the way of understanding
shall rest in the assembly of the dead.