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

by Kate Bowler

The promise of heaven to me is this: someday I will get a new set of lungs and I will swim away. But first I will drown.

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.

When I was little, my dad would read stories from Greek mythology, and I loved one most of all—that prideful king Sisyphus, who was doomed to roll a boulder up an impossibly steep hill only to have it roll down again. He would discover for all eternity that not every burden can be shouldered. Yes, I would think, learning nothing. But at least he kept trying.

St. Teresa of Avila once said: “We can only learn to know ourselves and do what we can—namely, surrender our will and fulfill God’s will in us.” For Christians not of the prosperity persuasion, surrender is a virtue; the writings of the saints are full of commands to “let go” and to submit yourself to what seems to be the will of the Almighty. All of American culture and pop psychology scream against that. Never give up on your dreams! Just keep knocking, that door is about to open! Think positively! Self-improvement guaranteed!! The entire motivational-speaking industry rests on the assumption that you can have what you want, you can be what you want. Just do it.

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 procession.

This is the problem, I suppose, with formulas. They are generic. But there is nothing generic about a human life.

Each day has been a collection of trivial details—little intimacies and jokes and screw-ups and realizations. My problems can’t be solved by those formulas—those clichés—when my life was never generic to begin with. God may be universal, but I am not.

“Everyone is trying to Easter the crap out of my Lent,” I say to my friends through gritted teeth and tears.

If I were to invent a sin to describe what that was—for how I lived—I would not say it was simply that I didn’t stop to smell the roses. It was the sin of arrogance, of becoming impervious to life itself. I failed to love what was present and decided to love what was possible instead. I must learn to live in ordinary time, but I don’t know how.

“Don’t skip to the end,” he said, gently. “Don’t skip to the end.”