Final Appearances and Ascension

193:4.1It was in the first part of the Mas­ter’s farewell mes­sage to his apos­tles that he al­luded to the loss of Ju­das and held up the tragic fate of their traitorous fel­low worker as a solemn warn­ing against the dan­gers of so­cial and fra­ter­nal iso­la­tion. It may be help­ful to be­liev­ers, in this and in fu­ture ages, briefly to re­view the causes of Ju­das’s down­fall in the light of the Mas­ter’s re­marks and in view of the ac­cu­mu­lated en­light­en­ment of suc­ceed­ing cen­turies.

193:4.2As we look back upon this tragedy, we con­ceive that Ju­das went wrong, pri­mar­ily, be­cause he was very markedly an iso­lated per­son­al­ity, a per­son­al­ity shut in and away from or­di­nary so­cial con­tacts. He per­sis­tently re­fused to con­fide in, or freely frat­er­nize with, his fel­low apos­tles. But his be­ing an iso­lated type of per­son­al­ity would not, in and of it­self, have wrought such mis­chief for Ju­das had it not been that he also failed to in­crease in love and grow in spir­i­tual grace. And then, as if to make a bad mat­ter worse, he per­sis­tently har­bored grudges and fos­tered such psy­cho­logic en­e­mies as re­venge and the gen­er­al­ized crav­ing to “get even” with some­body for all his dis­ap­point­ments.

193:4.3This un­for­tu­nate com­bi­na­tion of in­di­vid­ual pe­cu­liar­i­ties and men­tal ten­den­cies con­spired to de­stroy a well-in­ten­tioned man who failed to sub­due these evils by love, faith, and trust. That Ju­das need not have gone wrong is well proved by the cases of Thomas and Na­than­iel, both of whom were cursed with this same sort of sus­pi­cion and overde­vel­op­ment of the in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic ten­dency. Even An­drew and Mat­thew had many lean­ings in this di­rec­tion; but all these men grew to love Je­sus and their fel­low apos­tles more, and not less, as time passed. They grew in grace and in a knowl­edge of the truth. They be­came in­creas­ingly more trust­ful of their breth­ren and slowly de­vel­oped the abil­ity to con­fide in their fel­lows. Ju­das per­sis­tently re­fused to con­fide in his breth­ren. When he was im­pelled, by the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of his emo­tional con­flicts, to seek re­lief in self-ex­pres­sion, he in­vari­ably sought the ad­vice and re­ceived the un­wise con­so­la­tion of his un­spir­i­tual rel­a­tives or those chance ac­quain­tances who were ei­ther in­dif­fer­ent, or ac­tu­ally hos­tile, to the wel­fare and prog­ress of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the heav­enly king­dom, of which he was one of the twelve con­se­crated am­bas­sadors on earth.

193:4.4Ju­das met de­feat in his bat­tles of the earth strug­gle be­cause of the fol­low­ing fac­tors of per­sonal ten­den­cies and char­ac­ter weak­ness:

193:4.51. 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.

193:4.62. 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.

193:4.73. 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.

193:4.84. He was given to hold­ing grudges; he was al­ways en­ter­tain­ing the idea of re­venge.

193:4.95. He did not like to face facts frankly; he was dis­hon­est in his at­ti­tude to­ward life sit­u­a­tions.

193:4.106. 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.

193:4.117. 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.

193:4.12As a re­sult of his per­sis­tent iso­la­tion of per­son­al­ity, his griefs mul­ti­plied, his sor­rows in­creased, his anx­i­eties aug­mented, and his de­spair deep­ened al­most be­yond en­durance.

193:4.13While 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.

193:4.14These, 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.