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

Kate Bowler, a professor at Duke Divinity school specializing in the prosperity gospel, was living a "blessed" life: At thirty-five, she had a great job, a loving husband, and a new baby. Then she is diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer. Forced to reckon with her mortality, she faces the limits of the prosperity gospel and the can-do spirit it celebrates. Is illness a moral failure? What does it mean to die in a society that insists everything happens for a reason? Kate is stripped of this certainty and discovers that without it, life is hard but beautiful in a way it never has been before. Book jacket.