How we love to deceive.

Our daughter lives a very sad life.

Last night she and her two secondary-age children went to bed at 9.00 pm. Yet this morning they were up, dressed and breakfasted, by 6.45 am.

Why so early? They could, of course, have waited until this evening – but the risk was far too high of overhearing the result. It was even splashed across the front pages of the Daily Star and the Daily Mail!

So, eight hours after the rest of the nation, they finally discovered in watching their recording – with just three minutes to spare – the winner of Celebrity Traitors. (No spoilers here, just in case anyone else is still living in suspense.)

Another daughter, I’ve since learned, tried the same tactic. Sadly, one of her own daughters stumbled on the result through TikTok. Such is the modern world.

As for me – I can honestly say I’ve no interest whatsoever in any form of reality TV. At this point in the blog I’m tempted to assume a position of intellectual superiority, but Christmas is near and I’m hoping for lavish gifts from my family.

Still, it raises a question: why is this reality show so popular, gripping so many of our fellow citizens – even, I’m sorry to report, members of the local clergy? That’s over nine hours of your life never to be reclaimed.

There’s something strangely compelling about watching people we think we know – so-called celebrities, famous for being famous – sitting round a grand table accusing one another of deceit. They smile, they flatter, they form alliances. Then, with a little wink, they whisper in the dark.

It sounds suspiciously like the Diocesan Synod.

It’s meant to be entertainment. But there’s something deadly serious beneath the surface. This morning’s Times even carried a full article about it – apparently the result was leaked early in Canada and New Zealand through a streaming blunder. No doubt heads will roll.

The very word traitor carries centuries of moral weight. It comes from the Latin tradere – to hand over. It’s a word heavy with meaning in the Gospels, especially for Mark, who uses it repeatedly of Jesus’ betrayal. For Jesus himself was handed over. Judas Iscariot, of course, was the one who did the handing – the archetypal traitor – betraying his master with a kiss.

A line from the show, which I gleaned from the web, could easily have been spoken at the Last Supper: “Don’t trust anyone – not even the ones you eat and laugh with.”

In that upper room Jesus knew exactly who would hand him over. As The Message translation puts it: “Then Judas, already turned traitor, said, ‘It isn’t me, is it, Rabbi?’Jesus said, ‘Don’t play games with me, Judas.’”(Matthew 26:25)

Sadly, as the novelist Terry Goodkind observed, “Only those you trust can betray you.”

But it wasn’t just Judas who betrayed Jesus. He was set up by the Sanhedrin through a mixture of deceit and double-dealing, driven by ambition and insecurity. They feared his growing influence, his popularity with the crowds, and above all his challenge to their authority. Behind their show of piety lay a deep anxiety that the fragile balance between Temple and Empire might collapse.

So they schemed in the shadows, plotting with Roman officials while claiming to defend the faith. In their eyes, betrayal became a necessary act of preservation. Yet as history shows, it was their fear – not Jesus’ truth – that undid them.

And this, I suspect, is what fascinates us about The Traitors. It’s not simply who wins or loses, but how far people will go to protect themselves or deceive others. The show plays on our fear of betrayal – and perhaps on our uneasy awareness that we too are capable of it.

There’s little reason to think we would have done better than Judas or Peter. Whenever we duck a question about our faith, or quietly lower our profile to avoid being identified with Christ, we reveal the same impulse. The story of betrayal isn’t ancient history – it’s human nature.

You may remember that in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004), it is the director’s own hand that grips the hammer driving the first nail into Jesus’ wrist. It was his way of saying: I am complicit too. We are all the guilty party. Each of us, in our own way, is a traitor.

Yet the extraordinary truth of the Gospel is that Jesus, knowing this, still calls us “friends.” He meets our failure not with rejection but with forgiveness – just as he restored Peter by the lakeside with that simple, searching question: “Do you love me?”

That is the great reversal of The Traitors. In the Kingdom of God, the betrayed one becomes the forgiving one. The game of suspicion is replaced by the gift of grace. The table of deceit becomes the table of reconciliation.

The Gospel turns the whole premise on its head. The One who was betrayed offers forgiveness even to the betrayer – and invites us not to play the game, but to build a community of trust.

As Jesus himself promises: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  (John 8:32)