Grace in Strange Disguise

Grace in Strange Disguise, Christine Dillon

Imagine your dad is a pastor. Not just any pastor, but a mega-church pastor who has his own radio show and whose church is all about victory with Jesus. In fact it's called Victory, and his message is that we can have anything we want with Jesus, and any illness just requires more faith or the repentance of sin. Life is all about blessings and the gifts that we get when we are with God.

You are 28, love your work as a physiotherapist and are engaged to the youth pastor. You are living the Australian Christian dream and suddenly your whole world falls apart when you are diagnosed with breast cancer.

This is the world of Esther McDonald and the premise of Christine Dillon's book Grace in Strange Disguise. I was recently given this book and what a wonderful gift it was.

Through an encounter with a cleaning lady at the hospital, Esther is challenged to think about why she expects to be healed. Does God actually promise it? What follows is her decision to read the bible for herself and the astounding truths she discovers there, and how much they vary from the triumphant, world based, blessing rich, but actually empty promises preached by her father.

I have never been in a church with such misguided teaching as this, nor with such patently controlling leadership; but I suspect they certainly exist. Even so I found it hard to believe that that dad's and the fiancé's belief systems would cause them to be so clueless and lacking in compassion. In fact, I thought it was a shame that Dillon had both the key males in Esther's life react in basically the same way. However, they were the only characters that seemed stretched. The cleaning lady (Joy), her good friend Gina, her dominated and docile mother, the staff in the hospital, and the other patients she meets along the way all do an admirable job of representing the vast cross sections of beliefs and non-beliefs in Australia.

Throughout the book, Dillon models a storytelling method of sharing the gospel and the accounts from the bible. As such this book has various potential audiences:

1. Anyone who is interested in reading something from a biblical worldview, including one that is able to critique false views of the bible.
2. Any Christian who wants to get some ideas on how storytelling the bible could work in conversations.

It's an engaging story. Throughout I kept wondering what various characters would do, how would they react to the changes in Esther's life and her desire to talk about it. I was encouraged by her faith and her growing ability to express it. There are Christian fiction books out there that have a cringe element to them. This isn't one of them, the truths that Esther comes to believe are of the reformed evangelical faith. This is a book that explains my faith in a way that expresses it much better than I often manage to. It was an encouragement to me.

It's entirely appropriate for young teens, and so I was very happy to let Miss 12 read it as well. She loved it and was fully engrossed for a few days.  Husband and Mr 14 also read it, they enjoyed it and found it made them think.

It seems Dillon is planning at least two more books in this series. I eagerly await them.