Superstitious Christianity

By Hannah Boland, John Sharpe, Kathryn Broughton and Steven Clancy

Don't be fooled by the title. Australian author Hannah Boland is a faithful servant of Jesus. But having lost a second near full-term baby in 2013, Hannah was forced to face the deep, often unanswered questions of the Christian faith and to peel away the layers of fluff or "superstition" to see what really lies at the heart of her faith, and to discover anew what it means to know God. To help her do this, Hannah engaged the help of three of her most trusted Godly mentors, and asked them to respond in whatever way they chose with only one condition: they were not allowed to give answers based solely on rhetoric or learned theology, but rather from their own personal walk with God whilst drawing upon the fruit of their respective areas of ministry, professional formation and life experience. The result is a challenging book which may very well change the way you think about God, Jesus and the Bible, regardless of whether or not you share the faith of Christianity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hannah Boland
• Release date: Mar 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9780987578754

Hannah Boland

Hannah Boland is known throughout Australia for her refreshingly clean and honest stand-up comedy. Whatmany don’t not know is that her journey to the stage stems from a history steeped in grief and loss of the most terrible kind.Long before her foray onto the stage, she shared some of that journey in this book. Little did she know that the first edition of 47 Hours with a Prince would be the pre-cursor to several additional books and a career as a stand-up comic.Hannah and her family currently reside in a small, semirural town in New South Wales. Hannah travels nationally as both a comedian and a speaker. She believes that laughter is one of the greatest gifts God has ever given us, and her heartfelt desire is to encourage people at all stages and stations in life through humour.For more information about Hannah and her ministry visitwww.hannahboland.com.au/churcheswww.47hourswithaprince.com.au

Book preview

Introduction Part I

In this book, there will be no beating around the bush. Actually, that’s the only thing I can tell you for sure about what this book will be. In the majority of cases where a literary work is carefully nurtured, massaged, and crafted into existence, the introduction is written after the bulk of writing is complete so that in hindsight of journeying through the piece’s themes, the author may pull together a summary of what the reader may expect to find therein. It often serves to provide a kind of guarantee that in spite of a title or theme invoking tension or even panic in prospective readers (such as Jesus the Fool), they will finish the piece with a sense of reassurance, their questions will be answered, and they can return to their world having enjoyed an experience and if they are fortunate enough, with an insight or revelation previously undiscovered.

I can offer you no such assurance. I do so to draw you into my world at present—an uncomfortable world full of uncertainty and questions. I want you to journey with me as I seek wisdom and comfort, and to do so, you must begin with me where I am. You may not end your journey in the same place I do. I have no preconceived notion about what answers I may or may not find or how my search for these answers may impact in your situation.

Nevertheless, let me bring you into my world. As I sit here and write, I am in my lounge room on a cool yet sunny autumn afternoon with glorious sunlight streaming through full-length windows. I am sitting in a comfy leather armchair that is part of a large lounge suite given to us by an extraordinarily generous family member when my husband and I first established our own home. In fact, as I look around this very room and also consider the major pieces throughout our home, most of the furnishings have been given to us—a tremendous provision.

Three years ago, Michael and I began to look for a new home to live in when the Lord clearly showed Michael that we were to invite my mother and father to come and live with us. We needed a bigger house, and there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the house we are now in was very much the home God had prepared for us in advance. I won’t go into the details of this awesome journey, but there have been only a handful of times in my life where I have both known at the time and afterwards as I looked back that the hand of the Lord was undoubtedly at work. This was one such time.

This house, in the natural sense, is well beyond our means. It is a beautiful, roomy, modern home with everything we could need and much more. In fact, I am a little worried every time people walk into our home that they think me hypocritical. There have been many times in recent years when we have had to decline attending events, give little or no money to fundraisers, and ask for financial assistance because domestic funds have been tight. But to look at our home and its furnishings, it would seem our frugalness for such things is unwarranted. What people often have no occasion to realize is the enormous way in which the Lord has provided for and blessed us in a way that does not make sense on paper. I can personally attest to the fact that the Lord is generous. The Lord provides.

Since I was thirteen years old, I have struggled with a string of health complaints, most prominently severe tiredness, which was not formally diagnosed until I was twenty-four years old as fibromyalgia. The diagnosis came with no definitive treatment or relief. About the only thing the formal diagnosis gave me was an official title I could write on medical forms under Current Illnesses or Conditions. Every day was a struggle. There were some days when I would sleep until after midday, wake for a few hours, have an afternoon nap, wake in time for dinner, and be in bed by nine p.m., only to do it all again the next day. When I moved interstate at the age of twenty-one, the job I had taken took eighty minutes travel time each way from where I lived. I remember arriving home each day after work and forcing myself to start cooking dinner before I even sat down, for I knew that if I sat in a chair, I would not get up for the rest of the evening. I was so tired and worn out that I spent most of my time at home sleeping, and if I did happen to venture out of the house, trips were cut extremely short.

After my son Harry was born, my energy was at an all-time low. I had a twelve-month-old baby who was very demanding as well as a newborn. The sleepless nights and active days maxed me out. I had hardly anything left over for my husband when he arrived home from work, and I had nothing left to give family or friends outside of this. It was at this time I received prayer for healing. I asked for prayer for something unrelated, and while God answered that prayer also, he further decided to restore my energy, as my prayer warriors had specifically asked. They asked him to give me energy to be the mum I desired to be and that I could run and play with my children and have restoration. I remember it was very late at night when they prayed, and on the journey home and into bed, I felt no different. But I was full of faith. I knew if I was to be healed, it would not be evident to others unless they knew me well, for it was not as if I was having a limb grow back or a hole in my heart healed. I decided to monitor myself over the coming days to see if there was any change.

I didn’t have to wait long. The very next day, I knew I had energy. I got to the end of the day with energy to spare. I was able to carry out my chores at home without the heavy cloak of fatigue weighing me down. When my husband arrived home, I sat and laughed and chatted with him rather than handing the kids over and rushing to bed for a pre-dinner nap. After thirteen years of suffocating exhaustion, praise God, I was healed! I cried for almost a full week in thankfulness and awe. I was finally able to enjoy my children rather than enduring them, and I was unspeakably grateful. The Lord heals!

When I was twenty-nine years old, I fell pregnant with our son, Stephen. At the twenty-week ultrasound scan, we were told that most of his brain was missing due to a condition called alobar holoprosencephaly and we should abort the pregnancy right away. If we continued with the pregnancy, there was no guarantee our son would live to his full-term date, and if he was born alive, he might be alive for only minutes, hours, days, or possibly several years. For however long he lived, he would suffer enormous complications and would never progress beyond the capability of a newborn baby.

This was the worst news parents could hear. There was the prospect of our son living and suffering immensely or of him dying and us losing our son. Neither of these prospects was appealing. In spite of tremendous pressure put on Michael and me to terminate the pregnancy, we chose to honour God with our actions and intentions and to eagerly receive Stephen as his gift because after all, children are a gift from the Lord, and he doesn’t give bad gifts.

Stephen was born alive at thirty-four weeks, and we spent forty-seven precious hours with him before the Lord took him home. He died in our arms, his body overcome with pain and suffering. We were so thankful to God for the gift of Stephen and the privilege of being his parents, even though it came with much heartache. In fact, over the months to follow, I suffered from a deep depression that I almost did not come out of. I felt an absence of God in my life throughout my deepest suffering, but it was made up for when he seemed to re-enter my life in such a dazzling way more than eight months after Stephen passed away that I forgave him for it.

I had just started to hope for a future again and cope with everyday life when we found out we were expecting our daughter, Esther. It was an anxious wait until the twenty-week ultrasound scan, but our worst fears were alleviated when the scan revealed no abnormalities. Her brain was whole and complete, as was the rest of her. She was a perfectly healthy and normal little girl.

We had grown through our loss of Stephen and thought we were not taking the Lord’s grace for granted. We had taken our daughter, Allison, and son, Harry, to the ultrasound appointment with us, and I remember having an argument with the doctor performing the scan when she tried to promise our children this baby was perfectly healthy and therefore was definitely not going to die. I didn’t want her to tell that to our children. She had no way of knowing that. Yet even when I challenged her about this, she remained so eager to reassure my children that the little baby in Mummy’s tummy was not going to die that she ignored my plea and reinforced herself to them.

We knew all through my pregnancy that our baby’s future was in the Lord’s hands, and we trusted him. He knew the journey we had been through. He knew the suffering and longing that was still in our home after the passing of Stephen. I knew he would see me through anything, but I also believed in his goodness and fatherly love to know he would never put us through such suffering again.

Considering this assurance I had within myself, I am not sure why the first emotion to hit me when the doctor informed me Esther had passed away was not disbelief. She had been strangled on the umbilical cord, and I was immediately faced with the prospect of not only informing my husband and children that they had lost another baby and sibling but also the unhappy task of delivering a stillborn baby.

I was crushed, heartbroken, shattered, and overwhelmed. But I was also calm. This is what the Lord had for us. He’d seen us through it before; he would see us through it again. And besides, Esther was with him—a far better prospect for her. I rejoiced with a genuine heart for her life, and I was not angry with God. With a passionate heart, I sang at her funeral, It Is Well with My Soul and Blessed Be Your Name and meant every word. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.

In the months following Esther’s funeral, things have begun to fall apart. I don’t deny God, and I don’t deny the work of Jesus. But the more I’ve tried to reason with myself that God is good and loving and fatherly in spite of what he has done, the more I have found a lot of holes in my own faith. I find that my understanding of who God is and what love is cannot be what I have thought. The two do not reconcile.

I have believed for a long time that as Christians, we fail to understand so much about God in spite of his spirit and in spite of his word. To bring ourselves comfort and assurance, we plug the gaps in our knowledge with ideas and images of God that appease our wants and longings and justify them as being correct because if we are made in God’s image and he has placed within us the desires of our heart, surely our desires point to the soft, cuddly, Santa Claus–type figure we are in the habit of selling to other people. The trouble is, the more suffering God puts me through and the more I see of it in the people I know and the world around me, the more holes I am forced to unplug in my understanding of God. When those holes are unplugged, I find I have very little left over to grasp onto. I find that my Christian faith has been built more on superstition than it has on a factual understanding and knowledge of God and his character. How much have we based upon our intellectual study of his Word and our perception of him, and how much of this fantasy God have we promoted to the multitudes in the name of Jesus?

So I am left with a dilemma. God is preached as being both omnipotent and personal. He presents himself as our father—the only perfect parent. He is working out his plan for history, yet he cares for our needs and loves us. But I don’t see how the two fit together. Until recently, I would have said I was prepared to give God all of me—anything I had, even my own life. Now I realize that is false. I realize there are things he may choose to ask of me that I do not ever feel I could willingly give—only reluctantly give in at best. I feel as though I will never be able to pray, Thy will be done ever again because there are things he brings about that are so contrary to my own will. Would he deny that he placed a fiercely protective motherly trait within me? Of course not. It is this trait that spurs me on each and every day to love my children, care for them, and raise them to know him with reverence and fear. So how can he ask me to override the fiercest of all instincts he has put within me to conform to his will?

At this point there is probably some rhetoric going through your mind. It’s going through my own too. It says that it’s not about us, it’s about God. He is in control. We are only here by his grace. He owes us nothing. Our lives are to glorify him. Yada, yada, yada. We say it all the time, and we believe it most of the time. But how can this God pour out the blessings of homes, healing, and joy so freely on so many but ask us to sacrifice the hardest, most innate things he has put within us for his glory and still be viewed as a personal God who cares for our hurts and worries?

I have not the answer. After Stephen died, I remember a sense of peace that the suffering that is in this world is temporary. I could cope with the idea that justice will not necessarily be served in this lifetime and that the suffering will be terrible. I felt that hope in Jesus Christ and the promise that he will restore all things was enough for me, but now I find it isn’t. I know all of these things are true, but they are not helping me with the pains and struggles I am facing today. If salvation through Jesus was all God has promised and no one anywhere in the world was receiving