5th January, 2005

PICTURE: Matjaz Slanic (iStockphoto.com) "Men are vital to the family and family members should be vocalising their passionate love and high respect for dad over and over. "The Bible places 'dad' as the centre of the household for love, care, protection, provision and direction. We need to make sure we do too. "Encouraging better communication with fathers may be one key way of helping to address what is a national tragedy. It’s time we started talking."

Rev Dr MARK TRONSON

Australia has the second highest male suicide rate in the western world and the highest under 25 male youth suicide in the western world.

Although an uncomfortable subject, it's a national issue and heart-breaking to grieving family members who are often left utterly bewildered.

Let me first take up a theological reflection on this subject.

The idea of “dominion” over all living things as revealed in Genesis 1 and Psalm 8: 6-8 and similar passages in the Bible includes much about life and our respect for life. The idea behind these passages is that we have been given responsibility for all life.

This responsibility entails good management of resources, such as improving farm technology for better and improved production and issues such as disease prevention among plants and animals.

It also includes responsibility for ourselves. It follows, therefore, that to take one’s own life is not an act of God-given dominion.

The idea of responsibility for self raises questions relating to the underlying issues that creates a situation where someone would willingly take their own life.

Sometimes a comment is made in the public arena that hints at the sorts of things these issues may include.

Former Australian cricket captain Greg Chappell's recent revelations that his decision to instruct brother Trevor to bowl that infamous underarm delivery in 1984 was nothing to do with the game was such a generic hint.

Chappell said that "the hidden issues" within his heart - associated with what he saw as the utterly frustrating machinations of cricket politics - was the underlying cause for that decision.

His revelations give a hint to the sorts of frustrations Australian men face and seem to be a key in understanding male suicides.

The real factors associated with male suicide relate to 'hidden issues' that no one else may realise, but which are key issues in that man's heart.

This is the very point that Greg Chappell's comments highlighted. The underarm decision was not about winning the cricket match at all.

For anyone, a single specific issue can flare up in our own mind's eye which may have little relevance to loved ones, little relevance to work associates, and little relevance to even the closest of mates, but may be important to us.

So many times I've heard loved ones say they had no idea what was behind such a self-destructive act.

It was more than likely an issue which, within that man's heart, had paramount importance to him.

The heartache is that no one had any inkling of what that unsurpassable problem was. It was bound up in the unspoken.

Ministers inevitably come across male suicide in their pastoral duties.

Two recent examples in my ministry. The first was a middle-aged father. His only child, then a son of 16 years of age, was a close mate of my own son's. The father was found in the tool shed.

The reasoning of possibilities is endless, but it might have been a situation where the father felt he had failed as a father to his son due to his excessive drinking. Yet his son loved his father dearly and in his son's eyes, they had the most wonderful times together.

Neither seemed to communicate this heart felt love.

A second example involved a father of five who was found down the backyard hanging from a large tree. Dad disappeared for a bit and when he didn't return, one of kids went looking.

They loved their father dearly but the family centered on the children and mum and although everyone thought the world of dad, no-one said so. It seemed as though dad was worthless.

We are in a world of the unknown and the unspoken.

In many situations men feel as though they are left out of the family equation. My prayer is that men realise they are more than as what Steve Martin describes in the movie Parenthood when he says: "Men's lives are ‘have toos’.”

Men are vital to the family and family members should be vocalising their passionate love and high respect for dad over and over.

The Bible places "dad" as the centre of the household for love, care, protection, provision and direction. We need to make sure we do too.

Encouraging better communication with fathers may be one key way of helping to address what is a national tragedy. It’s time we started talking.

The Distinguished Rev Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister, the chairman of Well-Being Australia and the Australian Cricket Chaplain for 22 years. In August 2004 Mark was awarded the “I & II Timothy Australian Episcopos Citation: Bishop of Christian Leadership” for distinguished Christian leadership.