Pride
Read this one to the end.
Part One
Wanted: an attractive woman who will tell me to f-ck off.
You may be thinking, “Easy.”
You’d be wrong. It turns out, getting an attractive woman to tell you to f-ck off requires first finding one who possesses the uncommon courage to look you square in the eyes and speak the deplorable words.
It also requires you to define your terms. Like, for example, “attractive,” “f-ck,” and “off.”
By attractive, we mean anyone whose eyes, smile, physique, or any wondrous permutation of charms “tickles your twig,” as the sages might say. By “f-ck” and “off” together, we mean, “depart from me, worker of my discomfort and disgust. I never knew you.”
The challenge should be self-evident: These are not easy words for even the bravest person to speak openly, whether male or female, Jew or Greek, attractive or plain. On the contrary, such words are a divine pronouncement and irreversible invocation. They crush the man who hears them, but only because of their raw power to level strongholds and break chains.
“The truth will set you free.”
It is good for a woman to tell a man to f-ck off because in doing so, she speaks the truth that sets him free. She also extricates herself from an otherwise underwhelming entanglement. A classic “win-win” for her and a solid “lose-win” for the aspiring suitor.
As the book of Proverbs famously says, “A woman who tells you to f-ck off is from the Lord.” And, “Who can find a woman who will tell me to f-ck off? For her price is far above rubies.”
Perhaps you’re concerned that uttering such words means “burning a bridge.” I hate to tell you this, but that bridge is already on fire. The man determined to cross it must do so while wearing flaming shoes; any man who has ever taken the first step knows this is a universal law. As ordained by the ancients, he brings with him the tools of his own demise and bears the risk of the crossing.
The choice is not whether the bridge will burn, but whether it will go up in the glorious white flash of atomic detonation, or if the flames will grow by degrees until the unsuspecting courter, still clutching a fagot1 of roses, burns alive slowly like a Reformation martyr when he would’ve much preferred sudden yet blissful obliteration.
Most of the time, it is the woman who holds the detonator. This is right and proper. But in my not-so-many forays across the fiery bridge, I have yet to encounter a woman willing to use it. Granted, I’m not exactly working with a large sample size.
Still, like a Spartan surveying the Persian hordes, I can only pray there is one out there who will grant me the death I think I deserve.
But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m praying for a miracle.
Part Two
Now, assuming I have alienated my readers and all women everywhere, I would like to explain myself to the few of you who have remained. The explanation is a question, one that may seem out of left field.
What is the difference between saying to someone, “f-ck off,” and “I never knew you: depart from me...” (Matt. 7:23, KJV)?
Quantitatively, there is no difference. The outcome is identical.
Qualitatively, though, one is an impassioned curse spoken by a fallen and often fickle human being; the other, the dispassionate eschatological pronouncement of a divine and perfect God intrinsically incapable of sin.
Yet we have a problem. This same God, intrinsically incapable of sin, is also incapable of self-rejection. One might wonder, then, how such a God can say to someone who bears His image, “Depart from me,” when He knows full well that such a thing is physically and logically impossible.
I mean, He may as well say the other thing.
“Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?” (Psalm 139:7, KJV).
An image divided against itself is nonbeing.
If humanity is made in God’s image, and that image is ontologically grounded in God’s being, then rejection of the image-bearer would entail self-rejection on God’s part.
That seems incoherent; God cannot deny Himself. (Not to be confused with Jesus’ self-denial on the cross, where “self” in that context is human rebellion.)
If every human bears the image, though tarnished, then the divine “No” cannot be final annihilation—it must be a purifying exile that ultimately restores, reconciles, or redeems.
Perhaps that is the real miracle, one that persists despite my nihilistic prayers.
The predicaments of the man on the burning bridge and the human standing before a just God at the last judgment are jarringly similar. But there is one key difference.
The man before the woman, feeling the sting of gathering flames, hopes for a quick and painless death, a balm for wounded pride.
The human before God knows there is no such thing.
The British and original definition of “fagot” is “a bundle; bunch.” And yes, I’m having fun with yet another deplorable word.