Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved

Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler has been on my to-read list, and then it became the book for one of my book clubs! So I got it on audiobook from Libby. The book description says, "Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval. At thirty-five, everything in her life seems to point toward “blessing.” She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son. Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. The prospect of her own mortality forces Kate to realize that she has been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she can control the shape of her life with 'a surge of determination.' Even as this type of Christianity celebrates the American can-do spirit, it implies that if you 'can’t do' and succumb to illness or misfortune, you are a failure. Kate is very sick, and no amount of positive thinking will shrink her tumors. What does it mean to die, she wonders, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty only to discover that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before."

This was a little bit of a different read than I expected. I think I was expecting more life lessons and how she came about a new understanding of things when it was more of a memoir about her experiences. I think I would have preferred the former. I think the audiobook version wasn't the best choice for me either because the reader (who I think was the author) came across really negative and complaining. I'm all about being bitter during trying times, so I didn't mind that mindset, but I guess the tone just got kind of grating.  I am not a believer in the "prosperity gospel," so a lot of the things she had to come to terms with, I already believe, but I do think this will lead to some interesting discussion during book club.

Rating: * (1/3 = It was okay)