When a young Duke University professor and prosperity gospel scholar was struck with a terminal illness, she found herself in a world where there are far more questions than answers and the answers she used to have, didn’t make any sense anymore.
Kate Bowler is a Canadian who grew up in a Mennonite community in Winnipeg. Her parents also worked in academia and she married her high school sweetheart Toban Penner. Together they have a young son Zach, who was a toddler when Kate was diagnosed.
What I appreciate about Bowler is her raw vulnerability paired with an unstoppable sense of humour. She is hilariously funny, smart and knowledgeable, warm, respectful, and compassionate. She is brave and fearless when she talks about how scared she is. Life is beautiful and hard. Many of us live with the illusion that we have control over our lives.
I loved her recent interview with Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury on her podcast Everything Happens where she talks frankly with people about suffering. That sounds super sad, but somehow she makes it fun. She quietly and thoughtfully brings out the real and best in people. For a link to that episode, click here.
Bowler is a Christian, but I think that a person of any faith could enjoy these books, or even anyone who wonders about how bad things happen to good people. Her story and perspective are compelling.
Pay very close attention to the sub-titles of her books, some of which are listed below. That’s where the magic is!
No Cure for Being Human: And Other Truths I Need to Hear
Kate Bowler was thirty-five when she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. Before she got sick, she believed that life was a series of unlimited choices. She’d accepted the very American idea that life was an endless horizon of possibilities. With dry wit and unflinching honesty, she grapples with her diagnosis, her faith, her ambition, and her love for her family as she tries to come to terms with her limitations in a culture that says anything is possible.
Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved
Working as a professor at Duke Divinity School, Bowler specialises 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. She was thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loved life with her newborn son. Then she was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.
The prospect of her own mortality forced Kate to realise that she had been tacitly subscribing to the prosperity gospel, living with the conviction that she could 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 was very sick, and no amount of positive thinking would shrink her tumours. What does it mean to die, she wondered, in a society that insists everything happens for a reason?
Good Enough: 40 Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection
(Still reading)
A compassionate, intelligent, and wry series of Christian daily reflections on learning to live with imperfection in a culture of self-help that promotes endless progress. Written gently and with humour, Good Enough is permission for all those who need to hear that there are some things you can fix—and some things you can’t. And it’s okay that life isn’t always better or best.
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