Kate’s a Christian herself, but she’s always found the teachings of the prosperity gospel antithetical to her own open-hearted, empathic, and accepting form of Christianity. If you have stage four colon cancer, the thinking goes, then it’s your fault. If you’re poor, or sad, or sick, the thinking goes, your faith must be lacking. If God rewards those who have faith in Him, then those who suffer must have brought it upon themselves. This sounds simple enough, but scratch the surface of this superficially uplifting ideology and you’ll find a more sinister subtext. The prosperity gospel teaches that if you serve God faithfully, you’ll reap the rewards: health, wealth, and happiness. They’re all Christian best-sellers, and they’re mostly written by those who preach the prosperity gospel. But if we take a look at the books she’s pulled from the shelves, it all starts to come into focus. The reason she’s causing a scene in the hospital gift shop isn’t so immediately apparent. Despite her young age and her – until now – good health, Kate is living on borrowed time. And even that word, survival, is a bit of a misnomer of the fourteen percent who do “survive,” most only live another two years. The survival rate for this scenario is hardly promising, at 14 percent. Her colon is riddled with tumors that have spread to her liver. And it’s a particularly horrible form of cancer: Kate has stage four colon cancer. After suffering through months of unexplained abdominal pain, nausea, and dramatic weight loss, Kate has at long last been diagnosed – with cancer. The reason Kate is in the hospital is written clearly on her chart. So why is Kate Bowler standing in the gift shop of a North Carolina hospital, wearing a baggy cotton hospital gown and trailing her IV drip behind her, surrounded by a pile of books she has plucked from the shop’s shelves? And why is she, in no uncertain terms, telling the nonplussed teenage shop assistant that these books are inappropriate – no, outright offensive – reading material for a hospital gift shop? Think tasteful potted plants, greeting cards with euphemistic messages about “recovery,” and books of the uplifting, spiritual variety. why pain doesn’t need to be framed as a learning experience.Īs a rule, hospital gift shops are stocked with scrupulously inoffensive wares.the reason you should consider not making a bucket list and.what the prosperity gospel and Peloton have in common.Critical as she was of the concept of “best life,” Kate was now faced with an urgent question: How could she best spend the life she had left? But she’d never imagined it might feel so finite, so soon. Kate always knew her time on earth was finite. She was happily married to her childhood sweetheart, mother to a much-loved toddler, Zach, and enjoying professional success in a competitive field.Īnd then Kate was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. Ironically enough, at the age of thirty-five Kate really was living her best life. Kate Bowler knew better than most that there’s no quick fix to the pain and messiness that comes from the simple fact of being human.Īs a professor, she’d written books critiquing self-help gurus and evangelicals who insisted you could pray your way to your “best life.” In fact, she was absolutely certain the contemporary concept of “living your best life” was toxic and shallow.
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