Support for Man Overboard in the Bible

This week Lousa and I had lunch with Warwick and Alison Marsh. The spiritual energy in their home is immense. The Marsh family have travelled the world playing their rock music and bringing people the Good News of the Bible. They are musical missionaries. They also run the Fatherhood Foundation. A lot of people I know would call them and a lot of people they know "God botherers". But the simple love that shines in their faces confounds such stereotype. Besides, like Christ, they broke bread with sinners - Louisa and I. Unlike the some of their bretheren, they are not prone to be judgemental. "Judge not lest ye be judged," saith the Lord. Unlike some of their most devout bretheren, they manage to love each other and have a successful marriage. Unlike some believers, they're not always looking for someone to blame for problems. In fact, although some passages in Man Overboard make Warwick uneasy (and would make others of his bretheren condemn the book outright), he sees the good in it and even finds passages in the "greatest book of all" that support my thesis.
My main point is that men are responsible for the failure of their relationships because they fail to lead. They fail to love their wives with sufficient fervor that their wives feel secure and cared for and cherished. Men fail to honour their wedding vows. There are many reasons for this failure - and men are not to be blamed for it. But it is their responsibility to take the initiative and heal their partners' hearts and, in so doing, heal their own hearts.

The greatest thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother such that she feels loved everyday. Many men do not have the guts to do this, and want to fall back on outdated ideas of 'a man's place', patriarchal concepts that were formed in heroic times when only the muscle of a man protected and provided for his family. That world has passed, but unfortunately the ideas it gave rise to live on. We see the failure I speak of in Genesis. Adam was the first man and fail he did on behalf of us all. God said: don't eat the fruit from that tree. Now Adam was the boss when God wasn't around, right? Eve was made from his rib to be his helper. Yet what does the boss do? He doesn't admonish Eve for eating the fruit and call an emergency meeting with God to discuss options for dealing with this transgression. No, he simply follows the helper's lead and eats the fatal fruit. And to make matters worse, when God says "Have you been eating that fruit I warned you about?" Adam doesn't take it like a man. He blames his helper. Where was Adam while the snake was talking to his wife? Was he available to his wife, there being with her, present to her and guiding her? No, he's off somewhere like most males in relationships, emotionally unavailable and often physically unavailable, too.

A woman will not go off to look for love outside the relationship if she finds it at home. I am aware that this may offend a lot of male 'victims', but brothers, get over it! You put the burr under the saddle, you made the bed, you stuffed up. Hating her for wanting to be loved is a cowardly denial of your responsibility to love and cherish - it's Adam blaming Eve when it happened on his watch. Blaming the modern woman for wanting too much is the sign of a weak man who acknowledges he hasn't got what it takes to truly love a woman. It is the instinct of a little boy, not a grown man. Marriage is the process by which we grow up and learn to love and be loved. It's not some Disneyland of the Heart, not some eternal Christmas Day. It can be, but there's a long journey ahead to get there... Thanks to Adam.

But the good news is there are thinGs you can do today to start the process of unlocking your heart to let the love out.


THE FULL TEXT OF 'MAN OVERBOARD' IS AVAILABLE IN THE FIRST POST OF THIS BLOG