Speaker 1: Pushkin. The next day, when I was just very casually
Speaker 1: in my office, just like prepping for a lecture, when
Speaker 1: I got a phone call in my office that I
Speaker 1: had stage four cancer and then I was going to
Speaker 1: have to walk from my office to the hospital to
Speaker 1: check myself in for an emergency procedure and who knows what,
Speaker 1: Like just it felt. I don't think I'll ever experience
Speaker 1: time moving quite so slowly, because it was the horror
Speaker 1: of it. It was like the my life is whatever,
Speaker 1: this is, it's it's I could feel it go, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's all it's all gone now. That's Cape Bowler,
Speaker 1: a professor of Christianity at Duke's Divinity School, describing the
Speaker 1: moment she found out she had stage four colon cancer
Speaker 1: at age thirty five. Kate was shocked not only by
Speaker 1: the diagnosis, but by her reaction to it and what
Speaker 1: it revealed to her about her faith. I spent years
Speaker 1: studying people who believe that they deserve what they get,
Speaker 1: and I never once imagine myself to be that kind
Speaker 1: of person, because you know, I'm part of this faith
Speaker 1: tradition which would never use the word deserve. And then
Speaker 1: when I could hear myself saying, but aren't I kind
Speaker 1: of a good person? It was like that bit was
Speaker 1: so deeply humbling. That felt like like I like the
Speaker 1: shirt got turned inside out and I could just see
Speaker 1: all the seams of everything and I realized, like, oh, things,
Speaker 1: things come apart. On today's episode, a religious scholar re
Speaker 1: examines her own faith as she reckons with a cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 1: I'm Maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans,
Speaker 1: a show about who we are and who we become
Speaker 1: in the face of a big change. Kate Bohler grew
Speaker 1: up in a Christian family of Mennonites and Manitoba, Canada.
Speaker 1: She's always had a strong Christian faith, which for her
Speaker 1: has included the belief that everything happens for a reason.
Speaker 1: But as a religious scholar, Kate studied a different branch
Speaker 1: of Christianity called the Prosperity Gospel, known for its megachurches
Speaker 1: and televangelist preachers like Jim and Tammy, Faye Baker, and
Speaker 1: Joel Osteen. The Prosperity Gospel preaches that if you pray
Speaker 1: hard enough and your faith in God is strong, you
Speaker 1: deserve health, wealth, and happiness and will be rewarded with
Speaker 1: those things during your life here on earth. Kate never
Speaker 1: believed in this idea of people deserving things, or so
Speaker 1: she thought, until her cancer diagnosis revealed to her that
Speaker 1: she had been buying into her own kind of prosperity
Speaker 1: gospel all along. And this realization surprised Kate and led
Speaker 1: her to re examine not only this belief, but also
Speaker 1: some of her more foundational beliefs, like whether everything really
Speaker 1: does happen for a reason. Kate and I started off
Speaker 1: our conversation by talking about the prosperity Gospel, which had
Speaker 1: been the focus of her scholarly research for over a decade,
Speaker 1: to set up beliefs about the power of the mind
Speaker 1: to change your life, that if you have the right
Speaker 1: kind of positive words and the right kind of mental attitude,
Speaker 1: that you can bring health and wealth and overall happiness
Speaker 1: like during your life here on earth. And that's always
Speaker 1: the kind of like caveat, because you know, Christianity typically
Speaker 1: has a kind of asterix beside it that says, yes,
Speaker 1: God is good, Yes God is loving, Yes God wants
Speaker 1: wholeness and love for you. But you may not to
Speaker 1: see all of your hopes come to fruition that all
Speaker 1: good things then get kind of deferred to an afterlife.
Speaker 1: But the prosperity Gospel has what we call an overrealized
Speaker 1: sense that all things will happen now for us who believe.
Speaker 1: So it's a really it's an incredibly confident set of
Speaker 1: beliefs that says that you don't need to suffer, you
Speaker 1: don't even need to be lucky, because there will always
Speaker 1: be a way for you to figure out how to
Speaker 1: land on your feet. And what do you think drew
Speaker 1: you to that septic matter? I was really looking around
Speaker 1: for kind of an idea to fall in love with,
Speaker 1: and I didn't think though that I would mostly just
Speaker 1: pick something because it made me unbelievably angry. But I
Speaker 1: was a huge rage fast when I had my first
Speaker 1: encounter with the prosperity Gospel. I thought, who did this
Speaker 1: to us? Why are Canadians? Because I grew up in Canada,
Speaker 1: and I was like, why are Canadians into this? And
Speaker 1: I was honestly kind of a about it. I was condescending,
Speaker 1: treating it kind of a like a car accident that
Speaker 1: I needed to really uncover and explore. It would take
Speaker 1: me a number of years even just to kind of
Speaker 1: settle into a sense that it was like not just
Speaker 1: a heresy, like a set of incorrect beliefs, but like
Speaker 1: a worldview that I wanted to understand. So some of
Speaker 1: your your curiosity or interest in diving into this was
Speaker 1: around really just calling bullshit on it. Is that is
Speaker 1: that actually was okay? So you end up writing this
Speaker 1: book ironically called Blessed, which which chronicles the entire history
Speaker 1: of the Prosperity Gospel. It seems like Kate Bowler's life
Speaker 1: is also feeling pretty blessed, right. The lots of things
Speaker 1: are falling into place. You get your dream job at
Speaker 1: Duke's Divinity School, and after years of infertility, you and
Speaker 1: your husband Toven, have this beautiful baby boy named Zach.
Speaker 1: Right yea, And yeah, first, I still resonate with those
Speaker 1: moments in life where you're like, and got it and
Speaker 1: you almost want to, like you want to catch it
Speaker 1: in your hands and put it into a bottle like
Speaker 1: no one can ever touch it. Yeah, You're like, I
Speaker 1: stuck the landing like there was Yeah, you can feel
Speaker 1: yourself just hit it. And I I couldn't believe. I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe that it all lined up like I was
Speaker 1: just I had this gorgeous university job after having you know,
Speaker 1: grown up a shadow of you know, it always looked
Speaker 1: like the university manitobe was like constantly financing Stalinist architecture.
Speaker 1: Like when my parents on a campus, they were like,
Speaker 1: if you ever leave this place, I will murder you.
Speaker 1: Like I felt so lucky to be in this gorgeous
Speaker 1: place and finally have this smushy little you know baby
Speaker 1: that smells like cookies all the time. And I really thought,
Speaker 1: then this this is my life, Like I could see
Speaker 1: it stretch out. I was gonna write all these books.
Speaker 1: I was gonna have an office with like gargoyle bookends,
Speaker 1: which I had a lot of strong feelings about, Like
Speaker 1: I was gonna have all these grateful graduate students, Like
Speaker 1: this was the site of my life. And I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to be as arrogant as that sounds, but like
Speaker 1: I was like really locked into this beautiful dream and
Speaker 1: it like felt so good to me. I guess I
Speaker 1: for so long I had been paying into this imagined
Speaker 1: future and I all of it, all the like grind
Speaker 1: of it the and now you just have to write
Speaker 1: six hundred words and they'd better be footnoted properly. Like
Speaker 1: all the deferring felt like I was like this accountant
Speaker 1: and I was just gonna. I was having this. I
Speaker 1: would like add it all up, and then I would
Speaker 1: hit this moment and like congratulations me, Like all a
Speaker 1: great math. Right, you go to the store, you give
Speaker 1: them your voucher, and you're like, okay, here it is.
Speaker 1: I'm raticularly, yeah, yeah, I'm put in I put in
Speaker 1: all that work. Yeah. Well, I'm wondering if you can
Speaker 1: take me back to what it was like at age
Speaker 1: thirty five when your life just turns completely upside down.
Speaker 1: I started getting really severe stomach pains and I immediately
Speaker 1: went to my doctor and I said, this seems really
Speaker 1: kind of very out of proportion. And then she said, well,
Speaker 1: you know you're young. I don't think it's that much,
Speaker 1: but let me let me prefer you to the specialist.
Speaker 1: And I got bounced around between specialists with an increasing
Speaker 1: sense of panic, like I was chugging peptobismal. I was
Speaker 1: doubled over with pain, and I had such an intense
Speaker 1: grin and Barrett, it never really occurred to me that
Speaker 1: I could like press the emergency button, you know, that
Speaker 1: I was allowed to lose it because I was so
Speaker 1: good at trying. So when I finally was supposed to
Speaker 1: get a surgery for what they thought was like a
Speaker 1: faulty gall bladder and then they said, well, the tests
Speaker 1: don't show quite enough to warrant that kind of surgery,
Speaker 1: I just fucking lost it. I just I couldn't handle
Speaker 1: the boredom on the surgeon's face and the panic that
Speaker 1: I was experiencing that no one was it was it
Speaker 1: was half a year in that no one was going
Speaker 1: to take me seriously, and so I I just yelled
Speaker 1: in a very on Canadian way, and I was like,
Speaker 1: You're going to give me a scan and I'm not leaving,
Speaker 1: Like I'm just not leaving until you figure out something
Speaker 1: else for me. And and I really thought it was
Speaker 1: just going to be like an inconvenience. So the next day,
Speaker 1: when I was just very casually in my office, just
Speaker 1: like prepping for a lecture, when I got a phone
Speaker 1: call in my office that I had stage four cancer
Speaker 1: and then I was going to have to walk from
Speaker 1: my office to the hospital to check myself in for
Speaker 1: an emergency procedure and who knows what, Like just it
Speaker 1: felt I don't think I'll ever experience time moving quite
Speaker 1: so slowly because it was the horror of it. It
Speaker 1: was like the my life is whatever, this is, it's
Speaker 1: it's I could feel it go, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: all it's all gone now. I uh, I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that life can turn so quickly and that like whatever
Speaker 1: plans you have like don't count. So all I said was, um,
Speaker 1: but I have a son. Like I was arguing with her,
Speaker 1: you know, because she sounded so bored. And when I
Speaker 1: met her after the surgery to just check on some staples,
Speaker 1: she said, Uh, how are you? And I said, um, actually,
Speaker 1: it's been really hard, and she said, well, the sooner
Speaker 1: you get used to the idea of dying, the better.
Speaker 1: And that was the That was the strange brutality of
Speaker 1: this like threshold moment, that like there was a before
Speaker 1: and an after in my life and that I was
Speaker 1: going to have to figure out how to live in
Speaker 1: the after. But I just genuinely didn't know how Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm trying to trying to understand in that moment
Speaker 1: how long it took for the news to really penetrate,
Speaker 1: because when you have that kind of whiplash, like yeah,
Speaker 1: what was that? I mean it felt honestly, it felt
Speaker 1: immediate to me. It felt like it was my job
Speaker 1: to learn to let go as fast as I could.
Speaker 1: But I didn't know what I was letting go of.
Speaker 1: Like the first thing you have to let go of
Speaker 1: is your body. Like I walk into the hospital, I
Speaker 1: get admitted, I have to take off my dress, and
Speaker 1: it was the dress that I loved to lecture in,
Speaker 1: and I remember looking at it and thinking, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'll ever get to wear this again. And
Speaker 1: and you put on a gown and they will shave
Speaker 1: you and paint you, and you'll feel though the heaviness
Speaker 1: of your limbs when they strap you down, and you'll
Speaker 1: be awake for so much of it that you have
Speaker 1: to tell yourself like it is my job to let go,
Speaker 1: but not if it makes any sense. Like I couldn't
Speaker 1: picture not going home. When do I get to go home.
Speaker 1: I couldn't picture not being able to pick up my
Speaker 1: son because I was going to wake up with all
Speaker 1: these incisions. And then when I woke up there was
Speaker 1: I just remember how sad everyone was. And then a
Speaker 1: night when I was by myself and I realized it
Speaker 1: was the first time I'd been alone with a doctor
Speaker 1: where I could just ask questions. And so that's when
Speaker 1: I said, m hey, like not to bug you or anything,
Speaker 1: but like nobody's told me if I'm going to live,
Speaker 1: and to be honest, I don't totally understand like where
Speaker 1: all the cancer was or went. He was like, well,
Speaker 1: I can only tell you by recounting the statistical average
Speaker 1: of someone with your diagnosis. And he said, well that
Speaker 1: like survival amounts to fourteen a fourteen percent chance of survival,
Speaker 1: and that survival in the two years. Um, So I
Speaker 1: want to I want to dig into what your first
Speaker 1: reaction to this news was in terms of like zooming
Speaker 1: out at the thirty thout ye, because I've read that
Speaker 1: you you know, you were like that I'm I'm like special,
Speaker 1: and like, don't I had a kind of a good person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's yeah, that's so funny. That's great because there was
Speaker 1: like a weird double reaction. Holy crap, of course it's
Speaker 1: me and this other version that was like the middle
Speaker 1: class hustler that was like, hadn't I worked really hard?
Speaker 1: Aren't I kind of a like a reasonably nice, decent
Speaker 1: person who And then I wanted so much to say,
Speaker 1: like deserve like who deserves to have this beautiful life?
Speaker 1: And hadn't I earned it somehow? And then I was
Speaker 1: back to that like the math, like I made everything
Speaker 1: add up and now and now you're telling me that,
Speaker 1: like I like, I'm going to be the one that
Speaker 1: doesn't make it. I felt really outwaged. And it's just
Speaker 1: so funny, because you know, I'm part of this faith
Speaker 1: tradition which would never use the word deserve. I'm not
Speaker 1: even American. And I realized, like I had such a
Speaker 1: deeply American belief that my individual effort, my hustle and
Speaker 1: hard work, my sort of inherent deservedness in finding that
Speaker 1: relationship between hard work and success, that I didn't even
Speaker 1: leave room for the possibility that you can do all
Speaker 1: the right things and and that and that, and that
Speaker 1: you can be deeply unlucky. And I spent years studying
Speaker 1: people who believe that they deserve what they get, and
Speaker 1: I never once imagine myself to be that kind of person.
Speaker 1: And then when I could hear myself saying, but aren't
Speaker 1: I kind of a good person? Like do you do
Speaker 1: you see this personality in motion? I am working hard?
Speaker 1: I just like it was it was like that that
Speaker 1: bit was so deeply humbling that felt like like I
Speaker 1: like the shirt got turned inside out and I could
Speaker 1: just see all the seams of everything, and I realized, like, oh, things,
Speaker 1: things come apart. Say more about that. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: I'm one of the strangest parts about being lucky. I
Speaker 1: suppose not knowing that you're lucky, believing that every one
Speaker 1: of your actions are supposed to add up to more
Speaker 1: and more and more is that um is that you
Speaker 1: begin to feel like you've earned your life, deserved your life,
Speaker 1: that you don't even need luck, like you bulldoze a path.
Speaker 1: And over the years I have steadily built up a
Speaker 1: belief system that said that I am the solution to
Speaker 1: every problem. I'm the center that holds, I'm the thing
Speaker 1: that acts. I will make my own destiny, and and
Speaker 1: that if I can't, then you know, in this culture
Speaker 1: that always says, you know, there's there's no setbacks, there's
Speaker 1: just set ups. You know, people are always like closing doors,
Speaker 1: opening windows, that all of these kind of cultural cliches
Speaker 1: and aphorisms are there too. Explain to me that pain
Speaker 1: was just like a like a tripping hazard or a lesson,
Speaker 1: and that it was my job to learn the lesson
Speaker 1: in order to overcome, but that there was never a
Speaker 1: version in which I was going to lose or else.
Speaker 1: If you lose, then you're a loser, if you fail
Speaker 1: to make that dream come true, like you really only
Speaker 1: have yourself to blame, and that feeling set in really quickly.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with a slight change of plans.
Speaker 1: I'm talking with Kate Bohler, a religious scholar at Duke University.
Speaker 1: She was thirty five years old when doctors told Kate
Speaker 1: she had staged four colon cancer and that her chance
Speaker 1: of survival was just fourteen percent. But then doctors told
Speaker 1: Kate she may or may not qualify for some novel
Speaker 1: immunotherapies that could significantly increase her chance of survival. They said,
Speaker 1: I might be part of the ninety percent of people
Speaker 1: who just received chemotherapy and with a diagnosis like mine
Speaker 1: would likely die within six months, or part of a
Speaker 1: seven percent whose cancer would multiply unabated and there would
Speaker 1: be no point in doing treatment anyway, Or that I
Speaker 1: might be part of a three percent chance whose particular
Speaker 1: condition would open me up to being able to try
Speaker 1: some of these novel immunotherapies that were being tested. So I,
Speaker 1: just because I am in the humanities, I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: so I could probably die, I could absolutely die, or
Speaker 1: I could have magic cancer. And he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much, so awesome great. So when I got like
Speaker 1: a phone call a couple of weeks later that just said,
Speaker 1: turns out you have the magic cancer, I was so.
Speaker 1: I was so thrilled because even though even though most
Speaker 1: of the people who were in that cohort wouldn't respond
Speaker 1: to the immunotherapy, I might. I might, And so it
Speaker 1: was like the very first chance that there might be
Speaker 1: like a future for me. Yeah. I want to know
Speaker 1: whether you get this devastating cancer diagnosis and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, this disbelief you've had along, which is you know,
Speaker 1: I'm special, I'm Kate, I'm a good person, I'm nice
Speaker 1: to people, starts to dissipate, but then you get this
Speaker 1: news that you do have the magic cancer, which you
Speaker 1: could imagine could seduce you back into this older way
Speaker 1: of thinking. Yeah, And I think I felt like I
Speaker 1: was sometimes surrounded by that because people wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: because the people who love you are delusional, and they
Speaker 1: start and we all start lying. You know, we're like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's going to be a miracle and God's
Speaker 1: going to find a way or science is going to
Speaker 1: find a way. Like we have all these hyper causalities
Speaker 1: that we then assume that because I am a somehow
Speaker 1: special person and they just mean, you know, because they
Speaker 1: love me, and my death would be unthinkable. My death
Speaker 1: would end a world, right, it's just the way the
Speaker 1: way we love. And so people really wanted to believe
Speaker 1: that I was going to be part of this you
Speaker 1: have to live and I immediately I didn't want to
Speaker 1: do it. I didn't want to do it. And by
Speaker 1: not wanting to do it, what you mean is you
Speaker 1: didn't want to revert back into the old way of
Speaker 1: thinking that, yeah, I am special and I am exceptional,
Speaker 1: and I deserve what I put in, what I've put
Speaker 1: into this life. Yeah, And I felt like I'd learned
Speaker 1: something I didn't want to unlearn. And my like procarity,
Speaker 1: the feeling of like teetering, I just felt like it
Speaker 1: was letting me see other things I hadn't seen before.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I know it sounds like strange,
Speaker 1: at least it is to me, But like I found
Speaker 1: myself saying stuff like I don't want to go back,
Speaker 1: and of course, like I wanted to go back. I
Speaker 1: would have loved to go back to like a healthy,
Speaker 1: delusional person I was before. But like I felt like,
Speaker 1: knowing then that the world can come undone, it like
Speaker 1: opened up in me a capacity to love other people
Speaker 1: in their procarity that I didn't I didn't know before.
Speaker 1: And I felt like the strange, shimmery kind of matrix
Speaker 1: feeling you get when you feel the truth of something,
Speaker 1: And that felt so precious, so fucking precious that like that,
Speaker 1: After that, I was more just trying to find the
Speaker 1: right relationship to hope without return learning to the like
Speaker 1: that I deserve my life. You know, you talk about
Speaker 1: how in that moment there's this there's this tension right
Speaker 1: of you both want to to reoccupy the delusional state
Speaker 1: of mind because what a safe and joyful place to occupy,
Speaker 1: right to. But on the other hand, you do feel
Speaker 1: like confronting the truth or what you believe to be
Speaker 1: the truth, but I believe to be the truth allows
Speaker 1: you to create a kind of empathy for others in
Speaker 1: their pain, in their suffering that you might not have
Speaker 1: been able to I want to know whether there was also,
Speaker 1: in that moment or since then, whether you felt that
Speaker 1: there was also an advantage to you of not rebuying
Speaker 1: that lie. Yeah. Yeah, I mean sometimes I just felt
Speaker 1: like I can't afford to hope right now, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't afford to take on a certainty that I'd
Speaker 1: have to take back. I do notice that people who've
Speaker 1: really been through something are very frequently very careful in
Speaker 1: the way that we both tell a story and then
Speaker 1: as if we don't want to say things that have
Speaker 1: to be unsaid. So ah, yeah, someone once called it
Speaker 1: like um the fellowship of the afflicted. Always thought that
Speaker 1: was such like a lovely way of because you can
Speaker 1: feel that badge of belonging. Sometimes when we're not sloppy
Speaker 1: with our language, we don't hope for things. We don't
Speaker 1: hope for everything we are. Our hopes are like precious
Speaker 1: little gems and we have them we hold on tight,
Speaker 1: but we don't hope for everything. So so it almost
Speaker 1: felt like self protective instinct then in that moment to think, look,
Speaker 1: I if I buy into this again, well, then in
Speaker 1: four weeks if I find out the immunotherapy doesn't work
Speaker 1: and I have to leave Zach. Well, then what what
Speaker 1: what story do I tell myself? Then? Yeah, that so
Speaker 1: it's too flimsy ground, I see, Okay, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I was like I had just started treatment when I
Speaker 1: started trying to understand why I felt like I was
Speaker 1: living such a contradiction that like that I had wanted
Speaker 1: to believe in a world in which I had to
Speaker 1: serve what I get, and yet I was like here,
Speaker 1: stuck with these terrible sixty day intervals of life and
Speaker 1: like and not guaranteed anymore. And so I wrote a
Speaker 1: short piece and a friend who had a friend at
Speaker 1: the New York Times encouraged me to sent it in
Speaker 1: and then it got published, which I was not in
Speaker 1: any way prepared for because I had been trying to
Speaker 1: write this little piece that was like, hey, sometimes I
Speaker 1: think I believed that everything was going to happen for
Speaker 1: a reason and that my life was going to have
Speaker 1: an order to it, And now I can see that
Speaker 1: sometimes you have to live without quite so many reasons
Speaker 1: for the things that happened to you. And then I
Speaker 1: got just like hundreds and hundred and thousands of messages
Speaker 1: of people explaining to me why I deserved what I got,
Speaker 1: and it was it ranged. It was a wide range
Speaker 1: of reasons for surely I have committed some terrible sin.
Speaker 1: God has just let me die. You know. God has
Speaker 1: created a mystery and I have to live inside it faithfully.
Speaker 1: So a lot of like that I am unfaithful for
Speaker 1: being angry at the unfairness of it. And then of
Speaker 1: course there's all that, just like um well meeting wellness
Speaker 1: people who are there to explain to me why every
Speaker 1: smovie or every failure to accept a nutritional supplement is
Speaker 1: like the reason for my impending death. So I guess
Speaker 1: like it's just funny because I had tried so hard
Speaker 1: to live without quite so many reasons. I feel like
Speaker 1: ever since, all I've been doing is drowning in them.
Speaker 1: We had a neighbor come to the door one day
Speaker 1: and try to lovingly bring food, but also explained to
Speaker 1: my husband oman that everything happens for a reason, like
Speaker 1: you know, she's sort of like a throw like, well,
Speaker 1: everything happens for a reason. And he just looked at
Speaker 1: her dead eyed and was like, oh, I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear it, like I'd love to hear the reason my
Speaker 1: wife is dying. And it was a good um, she's
Speaker 1: like scampered away and im and now now I say
Speaker 1: the obligatory. I'm sure she meant well, But the desire
Speaker 1: to poor reasons into the void. It's just like it
Speaker 1: feels irresistible, I think sometimes, and I think that's part
Speaker 1: of the insanity of living in this culture is every
Speaker 1: suffering person feels like we have to explain what's happening
Speaker 1: to us is if our lives are an indictment. It's
Speaker 1: it's also so striking to me because and correct me
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, but I'm I'm imagining that there's this
Speaker 1: influx of letters coming from people all over the world
Speaker 1: who are saying, okay, let me explain to you why yeah,
Speaker 1: And on the one hand, you feel so in your sensibilities,
Speaker 1: are so offended by all of this, like what the
Speaker 1: hell why are you no? Sorry, random person in ann Arbor,
Speaker 1: Like you don't actually get to explain my suffering, right,
Speaker 1: But then on the other hand, it feels like maybe
Speaker 1: pre cancer diagnosis, Kate might have wanted to do exactly
Speaker 1: the same thing that they were doing for you now,
Speaker 1: like maybe you would have wanted to explain away someone
Speaker 1: else is suffering, just to just right to find meaning
Speaker 1: in it, and it wouldn't and it might not even
Speaker 1: sound like oh what did they do? It might be like, well,
Speaker 1: how how old was she was she married? Did she
Speaker 1: have a kid? How many kids? How long has she
Speaker 1: been married? What does she do? Like just the accounting,
Speaker 1: the feeling that in times of suffering, everybody's an accountant
Speaker 1: trying to tally up each other's life and our significance,
Speaker 1: and therefore how sad they should be. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: quantifying the loss, it really is. Yeah, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: Were you able to again? I could imagine it's being
Speaker 1: infuriated by some of these messages like you know what
Speaker 1: you drink? The organic smoothe Okay, yeah, yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: I think I was most mad, and I think I
Speaker 1: was most out at other Christians because I felt like
Speaker 1: they were supposed to be my like my soft place
Speaker 1: to fall. We have great compassionate you know chunks of
Speaker 1: scripture that are four moments like this, like the Book
Speaker 1: of Job, you're supposed to be able to say like
Speaker 1: there are no words, there are no words for this
Speaker 1: kind of like undoing. But instead I got a lot
Speaker 1: of like, don't worry, Everything's going to be fine and
Speaker 1: soon you'll go home to heaven. And I just remember
Speaker 1: being like, oh, maybe you want to go home first.
Speaker 1: It just feels like so snarky about after you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean I wouldn't want to get in your way here,
Speaker 1: I think especially, Um, it just kind of raised a
Speaker 1: lot of questions for me about like what what what
Speaker 1: would a faithful person do in a situation like this,
Speaker 1: Like if I was more faithful, would I have a
Speaker 1: certain kind of peace or confidence? Would I would I
Speaker 1: be more able to let go? And I it just
Speaker 1: felt like a lie though to me that I should
Speaker 1: look at my my like little toddler with his giant,
Speaker 1: guppy eyes, that like I was supposed to look a
Speaker 1: look at him and say that like his life would
Speaker 1: still somehow be as good if I weren't there to
Speaker 1: be his mom and I They're just the like hollowness
Speaker 1: of all those reasons just made the whole thing um
Speaker 1: just so like deeply like spiritually emotionally like unsatisfying. So
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, I mean you can say all
Speaker 1: kinds of things, but like, don't lie to me, Like
Speaker 1: there's no world in which I shouldn't be this kid's mom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, Kate, whether um, it was a diagnosis itself
Speaker 1: that led you to kind of examine what lies you
Speaker 1: had believed up until that point, or whether it was
Speaker 1: having these beliefs kind of aggressively thrown in your face
Speaker 1: through this op ed that that most led you to challenge.
Speaker 1: And maybe they both played a role, but not as
Speaker 1: many people get that second experience where all the things
Speaker 1: that they might have thought to want to do for
Speaker 1: others or themselves is suddenly in your face from others,
Speaker 1: in the throes of your own horrible, horrible experience, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to be like the observer of and then the subject
Speaker 1: of immediately, And it did really become both like a
Speaker 1: source of tremendous pain but also like a real I
Speaker 1: feel like all for me, any good project, like something
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in trying to understand and study, also
Speaker 1: feels like it's it's the heart of a question that
Speaker 1: I'm openly struggling against. And for me, it was how
Speaker 1: much how much truly is in our control? Like what
Speaker 1: kind of account of agency are we allowed to give
Speaker 1: in a moment where like all odds are against you?
Speaker 1: Because I wanted to know the answer, like how much.
Speaker 1: Am I supposed to save my own life right now?
Speaker 1: Or am I just supposed to, you know, let go
Speaker 1: and let God? And because over the next couple of years,
Speaker 1: what I would eventually find is that I would have
Speaker 1: to try to save my own life a million more times,
Speaker 1: and that like surrender was just never going to be
Speaker 1: just like wise, Yeah, you know, it's interesting, Kate, because
Speaker 1: I feel like, um, at some point I did away
Speaker 1: with the view that things in my life are happening
Speaker 1: for a reason. It's it's been so long now I
Speaker 1: no longer I no longer even remember what it was
Speaker 1: like to have that kind of psychological safety net in
Speaker 1: a moment of crisis. And I'm curious to know, you
Speaker 1: know that that discovery was more recent for you, And
Speaker 1: I just wonder what it's what it's like to to
Speaker 1: no longer have that. I mean, yeah, it's so comforting.
Speaker 1: It's so comforting, and it's it's like one of those
Speaker 1: things where like I thought about this, and I wonder
Speaker 1: if you've had similar thoughts. It's like, Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: believe everything happens for a reason, but like what I
Speaker 1: secretly want my kid to believe it, just for their
Speaker 1: own sake, like what I want Zach? Like, do I
Speaker 1: kind of want Kate's son Zach to believe this just
Speaker 1: just so that he can ease like it can ease
Speaker 1: the death of his pain. Yeah. I think the problem
Speaker 1: with that everything happens for a reason is that hypersynthetic
Speaker 1: coherence that it demands that everything have. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: I do believe in a big story about love, you know,
Speaker 1: in which like in our worst moments we are promised
Speaker 1: the love of one another, but we can like show
Speaker 1: up and be the person that brings socks and dumb presents,
Speaker 1: and you know, like I have such an intense belief
Speaker 1: now that love is one of the only guarantees in
Speaker 1: the awful times. And I guess I always think of
Speaker 1: that now is like what is you know after or
Speaker 1: like the after we've cleared away all that everything happens
Speaker 1: for a reason. Like I really I believe that in
Speaker 1: the worst moments of our life the love is there.
Speaker 1: I have never fallen and not felt it, like even
Speaker 1: when I hit the ground. So that is that feels
Speaker 1: to me like not just a hope, but like a
Speaker 1: like a thing I'd be willing to guarantee. My kid
Speaker 1: is like even if I was gone, even if the
Speaker 1: worst thing happened, Like even if I don't get to
Speaker 1: arrange a future in which we all get to be together,
Speaker 1: like I know that love will be there and that
Speaker 1: that feels like a truth well earned. Wow. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. Um. And it sounds like you're you're still
Speaker 1: in the business at least of constructing meaning for yourself, right, Like,
Speaker 1: like to find the for a reason in the everything happened,
Speaker 1: you know, even at the universe necessarily, even if universe
Speaker 1: necessary didn't necessarily have that is a plan for you, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. It's a really perfect way of putting it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, because on the other side of hyper
Speaker 1: causality is not like nialism or despair. I think it's
Speaker 1: just like more empathy for one another. Like if we
Speaker 1: really know that there is not like a fail safe
Speaker 1: rescue plan for everybody's pain, I think we would sure
Speaker 1: as hell show up a little faster for one another
Speaker 1: and believe in systems and good policies that prevent so
Speaker 1: much of human suffering in the first place. Yeah, would
Speaker 1: you say that, you know, one of the goals of
Speaker 1: your book and being a religious historian is is showing
Speaker 1: that you can also find some safety and permanence in
Speaker 1: a world where you don't have those beliefs. Has that
Speaker 1: been kind of your mission? Okay, yes, yeah, I really
Speaker 1: like that. Also, just aside, you're so smart, and it's
Speaker 1: just so fun to talk to such a smart personal.
Speaker 1: I'm serious, it makes it so fun. Like I just
Speaker 1: like it makes you stop. I'm like stopping all the
Speaker 1: time because I want to come up with a better answer.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't deserve a shitty answer. I want
Speaker 1: to have a better one. Sweet, But like I want
Speaker 1: people to not need a prosperity gospel to move forward.
Speaker 1: I really do that. I think that we have outsourced
Speaker 1: solutions to each other's pain when we forgot that we
Speaker 1: belonged to each other, assuming that if there's enough for everybody,
Speaker 1: that we don't have to make more for each other.
Speaker 1: I think with the right when you, when you can
Speaker 1: pour in other people, you can pour in the knowledge
Speaker 1: that you will never be really truly be alone, that
Speaker 1: there is love there waiting for you. I don't think
Speaker 1: we'll need quite so many reasons anymore. Kate and I
Speaker 1: recorded this conversation in early twenty twenty two, six years
Speaker 1: after she was first diagnosed. Kate continues to respond positively
Speaker 1: to her immunotherapy treatments and receives scans every six months.
Speaker 1: Join me next week when I talked to Ethan Cross,
Speaker 1: an expert on the science of introspection and how our
Speaker 1: inner voice can be a double edged sword. He gives
Speaker 1: us strategies for how we can reign in that inner
Speaker 1: voice when it turns negative and becomes what he calls chatter.
Speaker 1: So something bad happens, we turn our attention in. We're
Speaker 1: to try to make sense of the problem, but we
Speaker 1: get stuck in a negative thought loop. That's what I
Speaker 1: call chatter. You keep on trying to think and work
Speaker 1: through the problem, but you don't make any progress. A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans is created written an executive produce
Speaker 1: by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change Family includes Tyler
Speaker 1: Green our senior producer, Emily Rosteck, our producer and fact checker,
Speaker 1: Jan Guera, our senior editor, Ben Holliday, our sound engineer,
Speaker 1: and Neil Lavelle, our executive producer. Louis Skara wrote our
Speaker 1: theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: So big thanks to everyone there, including Nicolemrano, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Heather Faine, and Carly Nigliori, and of course
Speaker 1: a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow
Speaker 1: a slight change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya
Speaker 1: Schunker Tyler's Back. So I feel like there's an audio issue.
Speaker 1: This one has headphones and this one is looks like
Speaker 1: a microphone. I'm gonna sing all by myself while I
Speaker 1: do it. Just see you can get this come oh
Speaker 1: baa s has this feeling? Does it change at all?
Speaker 1: I don't want to be oh by helping. It's really
Speaker 1: helping when I'm singing, and I feel