Dangers of being without Friendship and Fellowship !

The title above was what I wrote to start a closed discussion among Urantia Book Readers in the Truthbook website. Living in self centred isolation is something which all of us should avoid. So I thought that this topic could be brought in the public domain in my blog here.

Let me reproduce what I wrote then with minor adaptation to present it here:

In Paper 193, the Urantia Book tells us about the details of interactions Jesus had with many groups before his ascension. This paper also discusses the causes of the fall of Judas.

In the Christian conventional belief, Judas was a 'Satanic' representative who did the 'greatest sin' of betraying Jesus and the betrayal was commonly believed as his act of causing the arrest of Jesus and his subsequent crucifixion.

The Urantia Book, however, explains this betrayal in another manner altogether. The authors explains the reasons of Judas downfall as below:

Judas met defeat in his battles of the earth struggle because of the following factors of personal tendencies and character weakness:

1. He was an isolated type of human being. He was highly individualistic and chose to grow into a    confirmed "shut-in" and unsociable sort of person.

2. As a child, life had been made too easy for him. He bitterly resented thwarting. He always expected to win; he was a very poor loser.

3. He never acquired a philosophic technique for meeting disappointment. Instead of accepting disappointments as a regular and commonplace feature of human existence, he unfailingly resorted to the practice of blaming someone in particular, or his associates as a group, for all his personal difficulties and disappointments.

4. He was given to holding grudges; he was always entertaining the idea of revenge.

5. He did not like to face facts frankly; he was dishonest in his attitude toward life situations.

6. He disliked to discuss his personal problems with his immediate associates; he refused to talk over his difficulties with his real friends and those who truly loved him. In all the years of their association he never once went to the Master with a purely personal problem. 

 7. He never learned that the real rewards for noble living are, after all, spiritual prizes, which are not always distributed during this one short life in the flesh.

As a result of his persistent isolation of personality, his griefs multiplied, his sorrows increased, his anxieties augmented, and his despair deepened almost beyond endurance.

While this self-centered and ultraindividualistic apostle had many psychic, emotional, and spiritual troubles, his main difficulties were: In personality, he was isolated. In mind, he was suspicious and vengeful. In temperament, he was surly and vindictive. Emotionally, he was loveless and unforgiving. Socially, he was unconfiding and almost wholly self-contained. In spirit, he became arrogant and selfishly ambitious. In life, he ignored those who loved him, and in death, he was friendless.

These, then, are the factors of mind and influences of evil which, taken altogether, explain why a well-meaning and otherwise onetime sincere believer in Jesus, even after several years of intimate association with his transforming personality, forsook his fellows, repudiated a sacred cause, renounced his holy calling, and betrayed his divine Master.(Jesus)

Even today many people are not out of such a danger of 'ultra-individualistic' isolation. Many believers are in such a mindset. Lack of true friendship and fellowship made even Judas-a companion and apostle of Jesus- to slip away from salvation and God's mercy.

I feel that in today's world we need to think of the dangers associated in leading a life without friendship and fellowship. The affluence and facilities that they happen to enjoy in life may create a situation wherein they tend to develop an ultra-individualistic mindset. That eventually cause them to be too egoistic and self centred isolating them from their fellowmen.

And such an isolation eventually might lead to contempt, desparation and self destruction!

[Adapted from truthbook discussions by the author]