Our counselor has gone mad again

“What is wrong is wrong even if the right people are doing it, and what is right is right even if the wrong people are doing it.”

It is not his bombastic rhetoric or the usually uncontrolled oratorical fireworks that cast George Christensen Lutterodt as an unusual relationship counsellor. He has chosen to say all the wrong things about the normal things we deem right, preferring to sidestep ordinary behaviour and familiar patterns to venture into a world of absolute absurdity. He calls everything by its raw name, and would reinvent a name for it if there wasn’t any.

Trump, Macron and love

The other day, he called the French First Lady a devil for marrying a man at her daughter’s age, describing their union as an error. He blames the President’s preference for his former teacher on bad parenting and a broken home. He worries about the future of a man who has decided not to have children. President Emmanuel Macron (39), the youngest President in French political history, is married to Brigitte Trogneux (64), whom he had loved when she taught him in high school.

Marriage, according to the eccentric counsellor, is not democracy or an economic partnership. Marriage, he says, is theocracy. He is against women leadership and expects men to provide for their women. In Counsellor Lutterodt’s strange world, it is wrong for a woman to support in paying the bills in the house; it is the man’s job. What should women use their money for? Well, the counsellor wants them to spend it on themselves. A man who expects his wife to support the home is not ready for marriage.

In his elements, he has also called President Trump’s wife a bad girl for marrying a man 25 years her senior. By some strange arithmetic, the counsellor has pegged the maximum legal age difference between a man and a woman at seven (7) years. He sets the minimum age difference at three (3) years. A woman must necessarily be younger than her husband because Adam was older than Eve. He also says God recognises cheating in marriage because cheating is part of marriage.

Strange proclamations

How can we solve a problem like Counsellor Lutterodt? The other day, he asked: If you have not been married before, what do you know about life? Everybody must marry, he forcefully establishes. Children should not be given any rights. ‘Child rights’ is an unfortunate error. A parent is useless if they allow their child to play with their mobile phone. Children should not even be given the choice to say what they want to eat.

Has our counsellor gone mad again? We shall not agree with actress, Lydia Forson’s, harsh description of the man of God, even though like Lydia, we have difficulty in following his thought processes and his strange proclamations. His latest advice to single young women who follow married men is to treat the men well. God will return the favour by giving them good husbands when it is their time to marry.

Here in this column, we took issue with Counsellor Lutterodt’s marriage and relationship tissues when he asserted that men bring value to women when they pay their bride price. Some of our most respected men of God have said the same thing in their pulpits, but they did not receive any flak or insults from the public. Is it how the counsellor says it or he is the wrong person to say it?

Broken values and fast life

Even the French people find the marriage of their new president quite strange. Lutterodt warns that some Ghanaian women may feel encouraged to marry boys young enough to be their sons. The allures and canal attractions of our world are enticing and sometimes plainly stupid. There is too much freedom around us because we have approved for ourselves convenient ways of doing things–to suit our modern whims and fast lifestyles. How did a thirteen-year-old boy learn about masturbation?

The lad had been watching pornographic photos on his parent’s cellphone when he was seven (7) and perfected the act through practice. That is what freedom of choice does to our children. Our kids say all the wrong things because they have television in their bedrooms and the internet on their smartphone. They would have learnt how to shoot before they saw a gun. They know how divorce works at an early age. Family is breaking down because our values have long broken down.

We are used to quickie marriages and snappy divorces because we don’t believe in the sanctity of the institution of marriage. The people who join our hour hands in marriage do not care much about their own fidelity. These days, they are even allowed to marry two husbands in a same sex union. A surrogate mum will be paid to produce kids for people who never wanted children. That is the tragedy of choice.

Mashed yam and Galamsey

We are tied to the apron strings of technology and we act like robots. You can get a wife the same way you buy fish on the internet. There is plenty of fish in the sea (www.plentyoffish.com- the name of a dating website), and people have become fishes indeed, ready to hop into a net with or without a bait. Just fill in your initial details on a dating page; the computer will do the rest. You may divorce the same way: dump her into the sea and have a cup of coffee.

Maybe Counsellor Lutterodt is right about a few things. For all the innumerable business options available to entrepreneurs, why would anybody set up an organisation that specialises in teaching married people how to cheat on their partners? Check out www.ashleymadison.com. Their strategic mandate is to spice up marriages by promoting guilty pleasures. Life is short, have an affair.

Would we have better marriages if we followed Counsellor Lutterodt’s insane prescriptions? Maybe yes. If a man cannot afford a decent accommodation and buy himself good breakfast and dinner, why must he marry? And for those of us who are married, is it not true that our wives wish we paid all the bills so they could spend their salaries on more shoes and handbags?

Finally, our counsellor gives us a clue on how to end galamsey. He prescribes mashed yam mixed with red oil; schnapps and the carcass of a dog. Illegal miners will flee.