by Geoff Holland

A Saturday men’s breakfast during the weekend launch of the Year of the Outback for Baptists on 16-17 February was sold out with all 70 spaces gone.

The church had advertised it as an opportunity to hear Tim Costello and to bring friends and workmates to hear him. It was in a motel dining room which had a menu board listing the deserts of the day, fitting for a place like Alice Springs.

Charles Butcher, a local surgeon, said he had heard Tim interviewed by Philip Adams and wanted to hear what he had to say and to ask him some questions.

Ed Kingston, ABMS worker from Ali Curung, had come down for the weekend as had Ivan and Verl Jordan from Yuendumu.

‘Mind the gap’

Tim Costello said that in the London underground railways every time the train doors open a voice warns “Mind the gap” between the carriage and the platform.

He said these words, “Mind the gap” reminded him that there were at least three dimensions to our lives and there is sometimes a gap between them which can cause us to stumble and fall flat on our faces.

“Publically I try to be a rational, decisive leader, and with that public persona I have many acquaintances who know me a little bit. I have to keep irritations and emotions under control.

“There’s a second part of me which is my personal life. In this I have friends who travel with me and I ¹m very grateful for them.

“But there is a third side of me, and you, and that is my private life. In this I have three confidants I’ve met with each Friday morning for breakfast for 12 years.

“They know what really is going on in my life: whether I’m doing well in my marriage or not, whether the things I do and say in my public life actually resonate with what I’m doing inside me. They know if I’m living the truth or if there is a growing gap between my public and person personas and this private life.

“The tragic thing about a lot of men, inside and outside the church, is how few have any confidants. It’s been said that asking a man how he feels is as threatening as asking a woman how much she weighs.

“We men feel more comfortable talking about personal things to each other when we are driving in a car or watching sport, when we don’t have to look at each other,” said Tim. “We are hesitant to expose our emotional life.

“Women do much better at this. Maybe we men are too fearful or insecure, thinking no-one would be interested enough in us, or we can’t trust them enough.

“The people who appear to have it all together often only look like they’ve got it all together. We can’t believe it when some marriages fail.

“Our jobs are being tendered out. The 40-hour week has disappeared because we have to perform and our bosses are expecting far more from us. Even though we have performed well, we’re afraid we’ll hear a voice say, ‘Goodbye. You are the weakest link’.

“Previous generations had a clear division of labor between men and women. But the days of being the hunter-provider while the women prepared the food and cared for the children are gone. Many women earn as much, if not more, than their husbands, so in the back of male minds is the nagging fear that they really don’t need us.”

Nagging fear

“It’s all changing and it’s a time of anxiety where the gaps between our three personas can open very widely.

“But it’s also a time when, if we are open to the spiritual resources we need to grow, it’s a time of great opportunity, to know ourselves better than our fathers may have if we share with confidants what’s really going on.

“Why is the suicide rate for men seven times higher than for women?” asked Tim. “A lot of it has to do with this deep, brittle, fragile fear inside blokes.

“We’re living in a world where the need for confidants is even more important. Jesus had a huge circle of acquaintances, but only 12 friends and three confidants: James, John and Peter,” said Tim.

The nation too

Tim said that there were gaps between our public face as a nation and what we actually were doing. “The gap between what we say we are, egalitarian, and what we do when under stress is widening. Maybe our deep fears haven’t been talked out and named as a nation.”

As an example he used the racism which is evident in the way we have been treating the asylum seekers and the way in which wartime PM, John Curtin, asked the USA president for help, but specified that no black American troops should come.

“The few that did come in 1942 were sent to rural areas, not cities where their presence could incite racial sensibilities,” said Tim.

“4000 boat people arriving in the last 18 months, given the huge refugee crisis which has exploded all around the world, is a tiny number compared to the thousands and thousands pouring into Europe and America.

“In the late 1970s we were taking 25,000- ­30,000 people, yet for the last five years we’ve been taking just 12,000 refugees. We ¹re saying now that taking in boat people stops others coming; as if 12,000 can’t be changed. Why?

“Yet fear and lack of emotional generosity has seen us go into a form of hysteria. Are we going to own that we scapegoated vulnerable, terrified people?” he asked.

“Being a believer in Jesus means saying that there is one who was the Son of God with no gap between the way He lived and loved and His public acceptance of people who were loathed in society  ­ prostitutes and tax collectors who were hated much more than my brother is today. Jesus speaks of love, even for enemies, and He lives it.

“There are parts of yourself you’re not proud of, that need to be confessed to God, that you can have forgiven, that can then be embraced. That part of yourself can be projected onto others who also have to be loved and embraced. Abraham Lincoln said, ‘If I make my enemy my friend, have I not destroyed my enemy?’ “

The grace of Jesus

Tim said the marvellous thing about the Christian life is God’s grace. “God loves you. Fullstop. Not if you can do this or that. God loves you. There’s nothing you can do to make God love you more and there’s nothing you can do to make God love you less. God loves you. That’s grace,” he said.

Geoff Holland – editor of The Victorian Baptist Witness