Everything Happens for a Reason...And Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler

I was happy to see that Kate Bowler would be at the Faith & Writing Festival this year because, not only had I read her book, Everything Happens for a Reason...And Other Lies I've Loved, but I also listened to her podcast, "Everything Happens." Both were excellent!

Kate wrote a book -- I think it was her doctorate -- on the prosperity gospel. I had not heard that term before, although I was certainly familiar with the concept. The person I associate with the prosperity gospel is Joel Osteen -- believing that if you believe in God the right way, and say and do the right things, then you will prosper. On the flip side, if bad things happen, something you did must be wrong, and God is sending those bad things because of it.

Kate met with many leaders of the prosperity gospel as part of her research. She also grew up in a church and family within the prosperity gospel community.

The book tells the story of how Kate was at a wonderful time in her life, at the age of 35, when everything seemed right -- she had married her childhood sweetheart, she just got the perfect job (a professor of Divinity at Duke), and she and her husband had a newborn son that they had waited and prayed for. Then she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

One of the most vulnerable, and memorable, things she said was that she had not thought that she herself believed in the prosperity gospel, but she realized when this devastating thing happened to her that she did have a form of a prosperity gospel. It had to do with fairness. Kate wondered if there was something American about it -- that we American's feel the world should be fair, that we should get what we deserve. When she was given the horrible news that she would likely die soon, it seemed so unfair!

Wherever I have been in North America, I have been sold a story about an unlimited horizon and the personal characteristics that are required to waltz toward it. It is the language of entitlements. It is the careful math of deserving, meted out as painstakingly as my sister and I used to inventory and trade our Halloween candy. In this world, I deserve what I get. I earn my keep and I keep my share. In a world of fair, nothing clung to can ever slip away. 

I remember my brother Dan talking about how he felt when his son was born with birth defects. First he was angry with God and he asked, "Why me?" He certainly had not done anything to deserve having anything but good happen to him, and, of course, neither had his wife. Dan said, though, that after a while he started thinking, "Why not me?" Why would it make sense for this to have happened to someone else? That's something that I've thought back to many times. It's so true, isn't it?

And look at the quote above, "It is the language of entitlements." We hear that about millennials, don't we? They are so entitled. Yet it's true, isn't it? It is our tendency to think life should be fair, and that means we are entitled, too.

Kate's dark humor made the book a joy to read in spite of its heavy subject.

I became certain that when I died some beautiful moron would tell my husband that "God needed an angel," because God is sadistic like that.

Why? God, are you here? What does this suffering mean?

At first those questions had enormous weight and urgency. I could hear Him. I could almost make out an answer. But then it was drowned out by what I've now heard a thousand times, "Everything happens for a reason" or "God is writing a better story." Apparently God is also busy going around closing doors and opening windows. He can't get enough of that.

Isn't the word "apparently" funny sometimes?

As you can tell by the fact that Kate Bowler came to the Faith & Writing Festival at Calvin in April, she has not died from colon cancer. She participated in a clinical trial of a drug and it seems to have been effective. She still has Stage IV cancer but this drug now makes it a chronic condition rather than a death sentence. She lives 3 months at a time -- getting tested every 3 months. It's hard for me to imagine.

I highly, highly recommend this book. It's a pretty quick read. It ends with a list of things not to say, and things to say when you are talking to people in situations like hers. It's practical and funny and deep and sacred and joy-giving and loving all at once.