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

“Fairness is one of the most compelling claims of the American dream, vision of success propelled by hard work, determination, and maybe the occasional pair of bootstraps. Wherever I have lived in North America, I’ve been sold a story about an unlimited horizon and the personal characteristics that are required to waltz toward it. It is the language of entitlement. 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 keep my share. In a world of fair, nothing clung to can ever slip away.”

Bowler describes the belief that, with honest hard work, one can achieve whatever one desires. She attributes this to North America without denoting whether she is referring to the US or to Canada as well. She suggests that the prosperity gospel is a natural offshoot of the long-held American belief that one can achieve one’s dreams through diligent, single-minded pursuit of one’s goals. Her critique of this belief can be gleaned through phrases like “sold a story.”

“‘I’m going to need for you to burn this,’ I say, finally, gesturing exasperatedly to my dress. ‘I can’t see it again. That life is over.’ I am oscillating between hysteria and an executioner’s humor. ‘I’m just the luckiest girl in the world,’ I say with mock enthusiasm... […]’

‘I just don’t,’ I keep saying, ‘I just don’t know what to do.’”

When the gastrointestinal symptoms she has suffered with for months reveal themselves to be Stage IV colon cancer, Bowler is stunned. Her response indicates that she was not prepared for this eventuality, and she struggles to make sense of what is happening. She reaches out to friends and family, drawing strength from her relationships while not describing immersion in prayer or religious action. This may depict where her true faith lies.

“In the spiritual world in which healing is a divine right, illness is a symptom of unconfessed sin—a symptom of a lack of forgiveness, unfaithfulness, unexamined attitudes, or careless words. A suffering believer is a puzzle to be solved. What had caused this to happen?”

Here, Bowler describes her experience with a prior mysterious illness that resulted in her showing up with her arms in slings at prosperity gospel worship meetings. This made her a target for healing. Bowler states that, according to adherents of the prosperity gospel, those who are ill are to be blamed for their suffering, as “illness is a symptom of unconfessed sin.”

In discussing her illness, Bowler tells of medical doctors who possessed a similar attitude of certainty to prosperity gospel adherents and repeatedly misdiagnosed her. She equates their attitudes with an equally deficient theology. While trying to have her colon cancer diagnosed properly, she encounters this attitude from doctors again.

“What would it mean for Christians to give up that little piece of the American Dream that says, ‘You are limitless’? Everything is not possible. The mighty Kingdom of God is not yet here. What if rich did not have to mean wealthy, and the whole did not have to mean healed? What if being people of ‘the gospel’ meant that we are simply people with good news? God is here. We are loved. It is enough.”

Bowler criticizes the prosperity gospel, which she implies is a perversion of the actual message and theology of Christianity. Bowler suggests that American society’s need for favor, abundance, and answered wishes prevents prosperity gospel adherents from recognizing the intended message of the Christian faith: that the love of God dwells among human beings. Bowler envisions a loving God one can invoke and experience without the promise of favor or abundance.

“And so my friend called in all those closest and dearest to gather around the boy’s coffin before burial and pray. They prayed all night, all day, and then the next, forgetting to eat or sleep, buoyed by a confidence that he would be resurrected.

‘We just couldn’t believe that God wouldn’t resurrect him,’ he told me, shaking his head in exhaustion. ‘We couldn’t believe it. We were so certain it couldn’t be the end.’”

In Chapter 3, “Magic Tricks,” Bowler examines the end result of buying into the prosperity gospel, concluding the chapter with this illustration. She implies that by believing in a divine intent to lavish abundance on a chosen set, the believer is put in the position of disbelieving the natural processes of life—such as this example of a group of friends who are unwilling to believe God would not resurrect a young member of their group. She compares this mindset to a superstitious belief in magic.

“I had never noticed how much prosperity churches talk about waiting until I began this long season of maternal deferment. I had never noticed how many women were pushing strollers and jostling babies with smooshy cheeks until I had to regularly stand up and sing a Sunday favorite by Juanita Bynum: ‘I don’t mind waiting’ […] the prosperity gospel usually makes believers into farmers with ‘seed faith’ sown in the ground, sitting in church, waiting for the rain and the harvest.”

In describing how prosperity gospel churches deal with the unanswered prayers of believers, Bowler describes the time she and her husband struggled to become pregnant. Immersed in a small prosperity church, the author followed the rubric of expressing happiness for those whose important petitions to God seemed answered, toward whom she actually felt some resentment. When she became pregnant after quietly speaking aloud her desire for “a baby” during a prosperity service, Bowler finds herself filled with mixed emotions, wondering if the prayer had any impact on the pregnancy.

Bowler uses a metaphor, where something is compared to something else without using “like” or “as.” Here, she compares being a believer to being a farmer. The believer’s hopes and dreams are planted seeds, which the believer waits on to bloom.

“It felt like something had pushed the reset button and my life had only begun. I should have asked for a birth certificate for myself.

What followed was a blissful year. That is the most annoying thing in the world to say, in a world full of mothers who struggle with breastfeeding, high fevers, long days, and late nights. But I can only try to redeem myself by saying that I was completely caught off guard by my outrageous happiness.”

Bowler recounts her experience after struggling first to get pregnant, then to deliver her son Zach. The happiness she experienced was life-changing. She phrases her joy apologetically—after all, she has just related how painful it was for her to hear the rejoicing of others when she couldn’t get pregnant. She compares the difference in attitude between prosperity gospel adherents and those who understand how grateful they should be because so often things simply never work out as desired.

“The way the doctors are delicately picking up and handling the words ‘Stage Four’ suggests that I am a spaghetti bowl of cancer. And oddly, this reality has filled me with love. Love for my son. Love for my friends and family. Love for my husband, sitting beside me, squeezing my hands […]”

Bowler uses an image and another metaphor, comparing her diagnosis to being "a spaghetti bowl of cancer.” The delicate attitude of the doctors, along with other factors, such as the immediacy of her surgery, make Bowler believe that she is not only terminally ill but has a short time to live. Counterintuitively, she doesn’t express rage but love. Additionally, she doesn’t demand that God remove the illness, the typical prosperity gospel response.

“Every Mennonite family is the bearer of a sad history kept in living memory. […] Perhaps that is the most oddly comforting thing about joining the Mennonite club: they insist that suffering never be done alone. People tell stories about ‘our’ suffering, ‘our’ town, ‘our’ community. […]”

When describing difficult emotional times or receiving bad news, Bowler often breaks away from discussions of prosperity beliefs and practices to contrast them with the Mennonites she became familiar with during her youth. She sees an emotional sustenance and spiritual depth among the Mennonites that she does not find among prosperity gospel adherents.

Here, Bowler talks about the power and comfort of collective suffering. The Mennonite community embraces the pronoun “our” to describe suffering in their community, showing how individuals do not have to endure alone.

“[…] he believed in God’s abundant provision with his whole heart. But he died in middle age surrounded by people—well-meaning people—clawing for the meaning of his death. Even the bulletin had to include a separate section to address the question on everyone’s minds: Why? Did he lack faith? Did he fail to live out his own teachings? In a theological universe in which everything you do comes back to you like a boomerang—for good or for ill—those who die young become hypocrites or failures. Those loved and lost are just that, those who have lost the test of faith.”

Bowler describes attending the funeral of a middle-aged prosperity gospel preacher. The man’s death creates a theological crisis for parishioners—

why would a faithful man die so young? In describing the theological perspective of prosperity believers, Bowler makes them sound like those who believe in karmic retribution: The worthy live well and the unworthy suffer and die young.

“To believers in the prosperity gospel, surrender sounds like defeat. They write books with titles like Deal With It! to remind readers that there is nothing so difficult that God cannot accomplish it, and that you, sir or ma’am, had better get cracking. There are no setbacks, just setups. There are no trials, just tests of character. Tragedies are simply opportunities to claim a bigger, better miracle.”

In the weeks following her surgery, nothing suggests to Bowler that she will live out the year, let alone survive colon cancer. Finding herself in a new theological place, she embraces surrendering to the reality of her impending death and accepting the love of those around her. She contrasts this with the prosperity gospel perspective that her condition is a divine test that she will pass by praying, deepening her faith, and purifying her heart. Bowler implies that she finds this unrealistic and unhelpful.

“Control is a drug, and we are all hooked, whether or not we believe in the prosperity gospel’s assurance that we can master the future with our words and attitudes. I can barely admit to myself that I have almost no choice but to surrender, but neither can those around me. I can hear it in my sister-in-law’s voice as she tells me to keep fighting. I can see it in my academic friends, who do what researchers do and google the hell out of my problem. […] Buried in all their concern is the unspoken question: do I have any control?”

Bowler summarizes the allure of the prosperity gospel: It offers the promise of being able to control one’s life, which every human being yearns to possess. Those most desirous of control, she reveals, are those in situations like hers who most lack it. She describes how those around her try and figure out how she can overcome her illness, revealing how people strive to gain control over the uncontrollable. As appealing as the promise of control is, Bowler shows it to be illusory and a form of magical thinking.

“When prosperity believers live out their daily struggles with smiles on their faces, sometimes I want to applaud. They confront the impossible and joyfully insist that God make a way. They stubbornly get out of their hospital beds and declare themselves healed, and every now and then, it works.

They are addicted to self-rule, and so am I.”

Bowler recognizes the flawed logical and magical thinking of the prosperity gospel but finds herself wanting the same control of her life that prosperity adherents claim to possess. What the prosperity gospel offers in abundance, Bowler notes, is the hope of a better tomorrow and release from the daunting problems of today. Recognizing the illogic of their beliefs, Bowler regrets that she cannot buy into their faith.

“I have the magic cancer! I have the magic cancer!”

For the first time since her colon cancer diagnosis, Bowler receives legitimate hope. This is stirred by the possibility of inclusion in the study of a new drug regimen and fraught with qualifications, and contrasts with the prosperity gospel’s blind demand for healing. Thus, Bowler draws a distinction between the power of real hope as opposed to the self-deceptive demand for a cure.

“I have a terrible premonition that at the end of this—once every stone is upturned and every drug tried—my family will have nothing left. […] I will be the reason for the tall paper stacks of bills on the desk in the study, the second mortgage on my parents aging home, the slope of their backs as they walk a little more heavily. They will carry my death in their checkbooks, vacations deferred, sleepless nights, and the silence of Sunday morning prayers when there is no daughter left to pray for.”

Bowler feels guilt as she realizes her treatment exceeds her family’s ability to afford it. She finds herself torn between her incredible drive to survive and the realization of what her—probably futile—struggle will cost financially and emotionally. She compensates, as prosperity adherents do, by calling on higher powers. However, instead of calling on God, she contacts two Duke University professors who have connections at Emory University, where the cancer trial will happen.

“A couple of Christmases ago, I saw Carol over one of the pews and reached out to give her a hug, remembering only at the last second that she had recently been diagnosed with cancer. […]

She looked back at me with such calm and said something I had never heard anyone say. ‘I have known Christ in so many good times she said, sincerely and directly. And now I will know him better in his sufferings.’”

Bowler remembers an encounter with an old family friend. Now that she also has cancer, the experience has shifted in memory from being intellectual and theological to personal and spiritual. Bowler is now in the position of deciding whether she will deal with her illness from the prosperity perspective or from the perspective of acceptance and shared suffering like her friend.

“I start to write. In bed, and chemo chairs, and waiting rooms, I try to say something about dying in a world where everything happens for a reason. […] And then, in a flurry, I shoot it off to the New York Times, not thinking too much about whether it’s any good, but sending it because I have been infected by the urgency of death. Then an editor there sees it, and puts it on the front page of the Sunday Review. Millions of people read it. Thousand share it and start writing to me. […]

It feels as though the world has been cracked open, and it bleeds and bleeds. Hundreds of emails, letters, pictures, and videos pour into my inbox and campus mailbox.”

Bowler’s article sent impulsively to The New York Times—a cathartic exercise for her—becomes a lifeline for multitudes of individuals for whom the prosperity gospel simply does not work. She shares many examples of irony, miracles, sadness, and profundity. She pens these words about three years after submitting the article, writing later in the narrative that she still receives at least one letter a day in response.

Bowler personifies the world as a sentient, tactile entity that literally “cracks open.” The “bleed[ing]" of the world comes in the form of correspondence, the emotional outpourings of the people she connected with through her essay.

“I hold Zach up a little higher so he can wave his front in the air, and I try to smile as a few tears trickled down my cheeks. I know where Palm Sunday falls in the story of our God. Jesus is on a donkey trudging into Jerusalem, people waving their arms in the air, tattered coats thrown down before the One who marches toward his death. It is a celebration. It is a funeral possession. Holding Zach in my arms, fifteen days from my next scan, I wish I knew the difference.”

Bowler compares the events of her life to the church calendar and, here, to events in the life of Jesus. The Palm Sunday worship ritual takes on new poignancy for Bowler, who wonders whether she is marching toward a joyous celebration or toward her death, like Jesus. The air of uncertainty she describes pervades the remainder of the narrative. Uncertainty, she implies, is a theological reality, one which the prosperity gospel cannot deal with, apart from saying God has unknown reasons for why some seemingly bad things happen. Bowler implies that this shortchanges both the legitimate message of the Christian faith and those searching for truth.

“[…] most everyone I meet is dying to make me certain. They want me to know, without a doubt, that there is a hidden logic to this seeming chaos. Even when I was still in the hospital, a neighbor came to the door and told my husband that everything happens for a reason.

‘I’d love to hear it,’ he replied.

‘Pardon?’ she said, startled.

‘The reason my wife is dying,’ he said in that sweet and sour way he has, effectively ending the conversation as the neighbor stammered something and handed him a casserole.”

This conversation illustrates two sides of the theological issue at the heart of the narrative. The neighbor, in saying “everything happens for a reason,” expresses a main tenet of the prosperity gospel, which Bowler describes as circular reasoning. Toban responds with a question for which prosperity adherents have no effective answer: What is the divine reason behind a painful, disruptive occurrence that apparently has no known cause? Bowler points out that saying everything has a reason turns God into an arbitrary, capricious agent of pain, one who inflicts suffering without explanation or obvious justification.

“Lakewood Church, Joel and Victoria Osteen’s megachurch, was the only one with a Good Friday service, and I was, pen and paper in hand, going to be there.

By the umpteenth greeting, ‘Happy Good Friday!’ seemed like the order of the day. This was, I suspected, going to be the hap-happiest Good Friday service I had ever attended.”

As Bowler struggles through her first year after her cancer diagnosis, she makes numerous references to the ecclesial year—in this case, to Good Friday, historically observed by Christians as the day of Jesus’s crucifixion. Bowler points out that prosperity adherents are not typically invested in the church calendar; she describes such congregations as having no investment in Good Friday, traditionally a day of mourning. Bowler notes that the one prosperity church that observed Good Friday ignored that Jesus was crucified, focusing instead upon the resurrection. Bowler implies that the prosperity gospel cannot explain or build upon tragedy, suffering, and injustice.

“Sometimes this ability to live in the moment feels like a gift. My pain feels connected to the pain of others somehow. I notice the look of exhaustion on the young mom’s face at the grocery store and help her with her cart. I stop to talk to the homeless man sitting on the corner. I give money away more freely, less begrudgingly. I can see now how hard people work to keep it together, but the walls that keep their lives from falling apart are brittle.



And I have two months to live. Again.”

Formerly a person who planned her life over years and decades, Bowler’s uncertain health necessitates that she dwell in the present. Her bi-monthly scans dictate whether or not she remains in the experimental treatment protocol, effectively meaning she receives a 60-day promise of life that might be renewed for another two months. This counters the prosperity dictate of waiting for healing; for Bowler, a cure is not possible, and waiting implies dying.

“Plans are made. Plans come apart. New delights or tragedies pop up in their place. And nothing human or divine will map out this life, this life that has always been more painful than I could have imagined. More beautiful than I could have imagined.

‘Right. That’s the secret—don’t skip to the end,’ I remind myself, sheepishly wiping my face on the sleeve of my sweater.”

In the final chapter, Bowler repeats a mantra spoken by her colleague Frank when she was first diagnosed with cancer: "Don’t skip to the end,” that is, do not make assumptions about when or how you will die. She recalls this in a conversation that takes place one year to the day after her diagnosis: “Skipping to the end,” Bowler implies, is a form of seeking certainty, something her faith does not promise. It also implies that one is not living in the present.

Bowler uses short, declarative sentences and repetition to emphasize her point—“Plans are made. Plans come apart.”

“Everything happens for a reason.

The only thing worse than saying this is pretending that you know the reason. I’ve had hundreds of people tell me the reason for my cancer. Because of my sin. Because of my unfaithfulness. Because God is fair. Because God is unfair. Because my aversion to Brussels sprouts. […] When someone is drowning, the only thing worse than failing to throw them a life preserver is handing them a reason.”

Bowler’s first appendix lists things not to say to people facing difficult, painful circumstances. In this instance, she focuses on the platitude from which she draws the title of her book. As she has indicated earlier, when others suggest that they know the reason some painful or tragic thing occurred, it is less that they are trying to comfort the person suffering and more that they are seeking assurance that they do not deserve such misfortune themselves.

Bowler again uses repetition—“Because”—and short, declarative sentences to emphasize her point. She lists potential reasons that people may cite for her cancer, and ends on “aversion to Brussels sprouts” to underscore the absurdity of identifying a cause.