Everyone posts the conversation Jesus and Judas have towards the end of the play, understandably so, but not enough people talk about Butch Honeywell's monologue. Butch talks about his wife and the day he met her, shocked by her beauty. A few days later, shocked by her utter decency, her capacity for quiet support. And then he speaks on the first time he cheated on her, three years into their marriage. How he didn't know why he did it, and he still has no idea. How, after that day, he felt in his bones that she wasn't his anymore, and how that genuinely tore it apart. And instead of confessing to her, he didn't, so sure that she wouldn't love him anymore, so sure that he wouldn't even deserve it if she did. Instead of speaking up the next morning, he only sat at the table and did not eat the breakfast she made them. Punished himself to make up for his transgression and refusing to own up to it. You know where that got him? Drowning himself in more alcohol and women to fill the utter chasm that he tore into himself. The certainty that he'd lost his girl, his little baby dinosaur, who slept like a loudly-snoring angel every night, right by his side. The worst part is, the utter tragedy of it, is that the certainty was counterfeit. He'll never actually know if she could've forgiven him because he never took to chance to find out. Automatically ruling out forgiveness, the possibility of becoming close to her once more, only served to put him resolutely far away from the very thing, the only thing, his soul cried out for. Oh, his body may have cried out for mindless pleasure, but his soul? His soul only ever wanted her. Ladies and gentlemen. This is the story of Judas and Jesus. Christ and his bride: Humanity. I love this allegory of a man cheating on his wife because it invokes the genuine emotional harm our withdrawl does to Christ. In fact, the whole play reminds us of this masterfully. We are not turning away from a faceless, immovable Creator, we are turning away from our Servant, our Shepherd, our Father, our Groom. He would miss us, should any one of us stray away. He loves us so ridiculously much. Possibly more than would be possible for any human. He's the one human being with the power to connect his essence to all of ours. Every last one. When one cries out in agony, so does he. He made sure of that the day that he died.























