A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: You know when something bad happens in life and people around you don't really know what to say to make it feel better? And some of them think the trick to fixing it is to tell you that there must be some lesson you're supposed to learn from the bad thing, or that your suffering is okay because it's all part of some grand universal plan?
We all know those people and they mean well, but when your world falls apart, the last thing you want to hear is that it's all supposed to be that way. This is the gospel of Kate Bowler. Kate is a New York Times bestselling author, a professor at the Divinity School at Duke University, and host of the podcast, Everything Happens.
I first met Kate in 2018 when I interviewed her for her memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved. The book is about dealing with a stage four cancer diagnosis when she was about 35 years old. She writes about all the not so helpful things people said and did to try and help her get through it. Kate refers to those sentiments as "toxic positivity," which happens because there is too much pressure in American culture to find the silver lining in things that just suck.
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: What do you wish you could let go of?
Kate Bowler: Something I write about all the time, because I'm always really struggling with it, is that cultural insistence that we always have to be getting better.
I'd love to give up the idea that in every area of my life I'm supposed to, you know, come the new year, always have this new year's moment. But I always end up looking at my life like it's some kind of quadrant with, you know, progress and mostly dramatic and sudden failures.
And so I just, I am always accidentally measuring, measuring, measuring, measuring, measuring. And I think we're supposed to get worse at some things because we're not paying any attention to it and we found something better to focus on. I wish for everyone that they didn't wake up and think about how much they weigh in the morning. I mean, just what a waste of time.
Martin: So now I go one step deeper and ask you to share if you would be willing to, one thing besides getting on the scale. What's a thing that you find yourself measuring yourself with or against that you want to release?
Bowler: There's a way of measuring a day that I've been trying desperately to stop doing, and I can't seem to do it. But when I wake up in the day, I know exactly how many hours it takes me to do some of the most important things that I want to do. Like, I know exactly how long writing should take me for a certain number of words. And that served me really well when I had cancer. I was like, "Okay, this is the amount of time I have. This is the amount of energy I have. How do I spend my life?" But the metaphor of spending is really corrosive.
So then I find it much more difficult to actually focus on some of the really lovely things that I actually need in my life that are not very measurable. Like, I don't read not-useful things very often because I'm always trying to put in the time it takes to make the thing I want to make.
The only way I have, I think, a lot of growth in that area is friends. I will waste my life with my friends all day long. But when it comes to me, I would love to have more just like uncounted, completely-wasted, doesn't-matter time. And I'm so judgy with myself. I have only hopeful feelings that other people will waste their time, but I find it almost impossible for me to waste my time. I got sick, and now I'm an efficiency monster, and I can't undo it.
Question 2: Have your feelings about God changed over time?
Bowler: I used to think of Christianity as an answer factory. And I always loved those books that were like, "Do you have questions? The Bible has answers." I was like, "Oh, how satisfying!" And it was probably my favorite thing about my parents becoming Christians a little bit later in life is they were so smart and they really thought of their faith [as] an extension of their curiosity.
So I thought, "Man, this is just the right place for questions — but also answers and most importantly answers!" I think when I got sick, and my life was coming apart, and I couldn't come up with a single reason why it would be me and not somebody else, or conversely, why I would be special enough at all, I started calling my answer-factory version like another prosperity gospel. Like — that idea that you think your life should be happy, healthy, wealthy, and that God's always going to create a more-ness, even if the more-ness is the kind of an emotional or intellectual satisfaction.
And instead, sometimes what you mostly just get is love and mystery. So love and mystery have gotten me farther, I think, down the road than certainty did. But I do miss certainty. It was a lot more fun and I was better at trivial pursuit.
Martin: Wait, certainty feels reassuring, but it actually doesn't sound that fun.
Bowler: (laughs) Totally. Also, like, are there great mysterious questions of the universe? Would they be good questions if someone had already answered them? "Did you know the problem of evil has been solved?"
Martin: For people who do not subscribe to a religion or spiritual tradition or don't believe in a higher power, how do you explain why the mystery gives you security? How does not having the answer to things make you feel better?
Bowler: Well, I would say security is pretty low on the list of things that faith will give you. I mean, you think about any analogy for love, like you love somebody — it's the most unsafe thing in the world. I mean, you love, you love, and you love, and you love, and there'll never be enough. And you're loving in the face of knowing that you will always, in every version, lose them or they will lose you.
So there's nothing safe about love. And I think that's just as true about God as it is about other people. We can have a great experience of the adventure of feeling made for love and released out into a dangerous world with the purpose of loving others. But none of it, I think, will feel secure.
And I really understand why people want to turn to faith as a source of comfort, sure. But safety, security... No, we're stuck with the same questions as everybody else. So I feel deeply loved by God and also deeply confused by most of what happens on this Earth — and that seems probably like sanity.
Question 3: Do you think there's any part of us that lives on after we die?
Bowler: Yes, 100%. Absolutely.
Martin: Which part?
Bowler: The eyeballs, mostly. (laughs) They're the last to decompose. If you're ever interested in having a favorite poet mortician, I have one. His name is Thomas Lynch. By day, mortician. By night, very good poet. And he's a lot of fun to talk about this question about what remains.
There's all this stuff-ness of our bodies, but there's this, like, incredible durability to how we think about the soul. And really it's even in just how we remember people. Like what made them this and not that? Like what odd specificity made that person's laugh and made that wicked part of their sense of humor shine or pissed you off like nobody else?
And I just think there's this delicious distilled absurdity. This tragicomedy that is us. And I think that pressed into the rare diamond that is our soul that gets to live forever.
Martin: Have you had close people die? And how do you feel them? How do you sense that soul?
Bowler: Constant hauntings. Constant hauntings. (laughs) No, I really don't believe in hauntings.
Yes, I've had close people die. My belief in heaven is that the truth of us is carried forward in love. And we get to talk to them whenever we want to. We can feel their love shine on us.
Martin: How much does your son know about your diagnosis and do you talk to him about death? And what that looks like and what happens after people die? What would happen after you died?
Bowler: My son Zach is like the bullseye of my heart. He's the core of the core. And I think I was most nervous about anything related to my illness or death or even just other people talking about heaven. Because I really wanted to be super careful about how he understood what we believe as Christians. But also whether he should be scared for me, his mom.
And so I bought these little dolls with like anatomical organs. And I was like, "Right now, I have a mistake in this one." And then we'd take it out and be like, "This is a colon. It is God's food tube." I found that the more concrete and physical and specific I got, all those things would feel a lot easier for him to understand.
Because when I was the sickest he was the littlest. And as he aged, I was significantly better. And so I've always been really careful about how sick he believes that I am at any time. But I've always wanted him to know in every version, like, "This God we love means that when it comes to love, we will never be apart. And also, I don't want to go anywhere in which I can't smell your skin. And feel your ridiculous chubby hand on my face and watch you accidentally lock yourself in handcuffs and walk past my office 200 times while I'm working. Heaven is nothing compared to you."
So yeah, that's always been the hardest. Because I keep having health problems and in every version I have to be the one that decides how scared everyone is. So I've tried to take it really slow.
I'm really resentful of the way most people of faith talk about heaven as a solution to the problem of pain. And we say it to kids and I just think it's wrong. It's not a solution. It's an ultimate story of togetherness and the restoration of the world. It is not a comfort. It is not a comfort to people who are told that it will solve every problem. It won't. Pain isn't solved by love. It's not.
I want him to know this story of faith as one where kind, reasonable, people learn how to love each other better. And also, ultimately, he will always be known and loved by God and by me. So that's usually the best I can do.
Copyright 2025 NPR
