Every religion has created its god or gods in its own image. The genius of Judaism – carried forward into Christianity – was that it incorporated human moral intuition into its imagined god: thus justice and fairness were first imagined of Jehovah, and eventually meekness, humility, mercy and forgiveness of God the Father.

But when we create gods in our own image, the motive is inevitably self-congratulation, that is, self-separation and distinction. It is necessarily classificatory and therefore judgmental: what Nietzsche called the will to power, but which is rather the fear of freedom.

All human religions are therefore centered on separation. Their gods exist to execute the separation – or at the least to ennoble and reify it, to cast the separation itself as fixed and eternal.

And yet one of you is a devil.

The true meaning here is that God is not our creation. His ways are not our ways; His thoughts are not our thoughts.

Judas was neither a tool to be used for divine purposes nor a freedom to be thwarted for divine purposes. He was one of the twelve, like them in every respect that matters to God. That which we call devilish in men is meaningless to God; He does not know it; does not even see it.

The traits and characters, the personalities, the biographies of God’s children simply define their spiritual realities – and that is all there is to that. One fish is different from another fish – and that is all there is to that. Those created in God’s image cannot be separated from each other in any spiritual sense. They are simply real, and sui generis.

And yet one of you is a devil.

Do not look to me to be a resolution of your perplexity. I am not a problem solver, nor is your world a problem, nor you yourselves. I am the bread of life. Food doesn’t provide a solution to hunger. It is what reality uses to grow.