Uzlah, and the strangers

Two ideas get borrowed to make withdrawal look like devotion, and they are worth handling directly.

Uzlah, deliberate withdrawal, is a real category in the tradition and scholars have written about it carefully. In those discussions it is limited, purposeful and chosen. It is not a word for having nobody, and if you reached for it after being hurt rather than before, it is worth being honest with yourself about which one you are doing. What is and is not recommended, and for whom, is a scholar's question and not ours.

The other is the narration about the religion beginning as something strange. It gets used to make friendlessness sound like correctness. We are not quoting it here, because we have not settled its exact reference, and in any case the reading is about the condition of the religion rather than an instruction to have no one.