I know I’ve talked about it a lot, but when you spend more than 4-6 hours a day in rehearsal for the same play, it’s hard to get it out of your head. The Last Days of Judas Iscariot has been a life-changing play for me, not just in the sense that I’m learning more and more about my chosen career path, but in the sense that it has really made me examine what it means to be religious, faithful, or even spiritual.

In the same way that Johnny Got His Gun made me rethink freedom and justice, Judas has made me rethink what Heaven and Hell could be – and what God should be.

I’m not a religious person. I was not raised religious, I don’t identify with a  religious background, and I do not go to church. I’ve always sort of identified with my mom’s philosophy: she does not explicitly believe in God or heaven, but is open to the possibility of their existence. She tries to be a good person, not to get to heaven, but because it is the right thing to do, and if there’s a heaven, that would be just fine with her. I never really considered it before reading and watching Judas. Faith does not play any kind of role in my life, other than faith in myself and my abilities, faith in the goodness of humankind, and faith in the future of this country and this world.

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot asks questions, but does not provide answers. It questions why we perceive God to be anything, rather than simply believe in and accept his presence as a being who loves us unconditionally. It questions whether Hell is truly a location, or merely a place of our own making – a concept we believe in simply because it would be too difficult not to: how else would be define good and bad? In Judas, it is ironically Satan who tells the whole truth. Of all the witnesses called and all the stories told, it is the Prince of Lies who tells the truth. He says, “hell is merely the absence of God.” And later, he points out that along with the “free-will muscle,” we were also designed to self-correct, but “self-correction” falls somewhere between a “colonoscopy and a firing squad on most peoples’ holiday wish lists.” He does not compete with God, God competes with himself: Satan has no need to tempt us, because we can do evil all by ourselves.

So to me, this begs the question: how do we know? Is the solution to simply lay back and let God take all responsibility for our lives and for our actions? Or is it to simply be the best we can be with the knowledge that in the end, we are the ones who ultimately determine where we will end up – in the 9th circle of Hell, or in the “lap of the Lord.” And what happens if we are wrong? If I believe in a Christian god, what happens if when I die I find Amon-ra or Zeus waiting to greet me? What if it is Allah and 72 virgins? What can I do but be the best person I can be and believe that if a just god or gods sits in Heaven, I too will make it there?

I can’t “follow the rules.” I don’t believe that homosexuals are perverts or that the Earth was created in 7 days. But I can accept that IF there is a god, and IF s/he loves me, they will know that I did what I could to be kind to myself and my fellow man – that I lived the best life I could and that I tried my hardest at everything I did.

Because in the end, it is up to me to decide where I’ll be when I die.