Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

Written by:
Kate Bowler
Narrated by:
Kate Bowler

Unabridged Audiobook

Ratings
Book
47
Narrator
7
Release Date
February 2018
Duration
4 hours 33 minutes
Summary
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified.”—Lucy Kalanithi

“Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.”—Bill Gates

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE

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.

Frank and funny, dark and wise, Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live.

Praise for Everything Happens for a Reason
 
“I fell hard and fast for Kate Bowler. Her writing is naked, elegant, and gripping—she’s like a Christian Joan Didion. I left Kate’s story feeling more present, more grateful, and a hell of a lot less alone. And what else is art for?”—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Love Warrior and president of Together Rising
Reviews
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Darlene C.

Very thought provoking antidote to terminal positivity.

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Lisa P.

Self indulgent. Im sorry for what she went thru bit she had the luxury of huge support and spoke of it somewhat as a given. Just her tone in general seemed very self important . I know that’s horrible to say given her situation but I’m saying this with compassion for what she went thru.

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Jesse H.

Appreciated the brutal honesty of how a person dying might sometimes actually feel. Perhaps more importantly, the prosperity gospel needed this book to be written. Thank you Kate.

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Anonymous

I heard the author on the Today show and that led me to the book. I did not enjoy her sarcasm and downplaying of people’s good intentions to support her.

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