In her early career, Bowler had accomplished some of her life’s major goals. She earned a PhD and wrote the first religious history of the prosperity gospel movement. She got a teaching position at a prestigious divinity school (Duke). She was married and started a family with her partner. Then she received a diagnosis of stage IV colon cancer. Obviously, this rocked her life. Soon enrolling in a clinical trial, she responded to chemotherapy, but lives a precarious existence of uncertainty whether cancer will take over again. This book, a religious memoir of sorts, describes how she found meaning amidst not knowing if her life will soon end.
With Bowler being a scholar of the movement, the prosperity gospel features prominently in her story. This is the belief that God wants you to live a prosperous life and features high-profile players in American religion (especially megachurches). Though hoping for prosperity and blessing seems innocuous enough at first glance, often adherents blame those who suffer or “lose” battles for their struggles. Bowler even describes a funeral where people blame the deceased for dying. In theological terms, this is described as an “over-realized eschatology,” or wanting a bit too much of heaven to happen too soon.
Bowler describes how she started with a similar understanding of suffering and how she eventually moved to a more nuanced view, if it can be described as a coherent philosophy at all. She now accepts suffering as a part of life, but she is more concerned with getting the most out of each moment instead of philosophizing about why bad things happen. I suffer from chronic illness, too, that has dramatically affected my life and career, and I’ve experienced a similar prioritization of the “urgency of now.”
I would like to hear more gratitude from Bowler, however. She is rightly put off at her struggles, but still possesses a lot of privilege in her position. Her employer and family are supportive. She has a rare form of advanced cancer that can be treated. She has access to means and insurance that can buttress expenses. I don’t like putting guilt on people – and appreciate Bowler’s list in appendices of things not to say and to say to those in similar positions. However, gratitude for each day is always a good response to difficulties. In my professional field of biomedical science, learning, with gratitude, from our biggest failures can spur our biggest successes. This does not make failure or struggle “worth it” inherently, but it sure helps us compassionately love others.
This book is a modern wrestling with the problem of human suffering from a theological and prosperity gospel perspective. Its author writes about her own experiences and provides a window into a mother’s Christian experience. It’s not too theological in that it doesn’t seek to convey a specific point of doctrine. Rather, she seeks to relate her story so that any reader can empathize and so learn. Obviously, cancer continues to be a central impediment to health and well-being in this modern world, and she seems to have gained a deeper respect for modern medicine from her experience. This book can inspire those who, like me, suffer from chronic illness and ongoing medical uncertainty. In the midst of suffering, life itself is our ultimate gift.
Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved
By Kate Bowler
Copyright (c) 2019
Random House
ISBN13 9780399592089
Page Count: 184
Genre: Autobiography/Memoir, Religion
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