Not everything happens for a reason…some things just, happens
I just finished reading Kate Bowler’s 2nd book titled “Everything Happens for a reason. The story is based on the true life story of the writer, the discovery that she has stage 4 Colon cancer, and learning to live with the knowledge that she is dying.
Prior to writing this book, Kate Bowler, in her office as a history of Christianity professor at Duke University in the United States, had been studying the prosperity gospel, a branch of Christianity that centres on hope: on the consistent stance that all will be well in the end despite signals in the environment to the contrary. This book contrasts the view of constantly hoping everything will be better. Somethings will just be.
On a personal level, I think this book is really about society’s definition of success and failure. We glorify success storylines (that incorporates fame, fortune, trophy spouses and perfect children) and make their experience seem like the natural trajectory and expectation of doing ‘the right things’. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes bad things happen to good people and vice versa. As the Bible says, the wind blowest where it listeth.
More often than not, we have little control or influence over events in our lives and because of that we have to remain indifferent to societal’s definition of success or failure. Rather, take each moment as moments, none inherently better than the other. For our sanity, we have to take it as it is. Yes strive for better days, but accept sometimes that the better days we crave might never come. And being able to take each moment as what they are, we might be freed to walk in our shoes (be it suffering or success) and know in the end, we did the best we could.
But in suggesting that maybe there isn’t a reason behind everything, doesn’t that bring as existential philosophy to our sense of self and motivation? Not necessarily. Rather it brings to question the basis upon which we define ourselves. Culled from the book is an interesting perspective on how the Mennonites view on suffering.
The best and worst parts of Mennonite culture stem from the fact that it is an exclusive club.
Every Mennonite family is the bearer of a sad history kept in living memory. They make time to tell the kids about the first Canadian winters endured by their great-grandparents and proudly display a massive coffee table version of a book called Martyrs Mirror from the 1600s, which catalogs the grisly deaths of their ancestors.
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.
I love their goal—unanimity. They will live and die together.
Maybe life is better lived, shared. Maybe even as we celebrate our successes, suffering should be shared also. Because it’s in our ability to share in both that stronger bonds are built, families and communities are forged and we become who we are: people
Not everything happens for a reason, somethings just happen. Our role as humans is to find ways to deal with events, with eyes focused on that primal instinct: the survival of the human race.
