No Cure for Being Human Book Summary - No Cure for Being Human Book explained in key points

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No Cure for Being Human summary

Name: No Cure for Being Human
Rating: 4.1 (251 reviews)
Author: Kate Bowler

Kate Bowler

(and Other Truths I Need to Hear)

4.1 (251 ratings)

32 mins

Brief summary

No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler is a memoir about her battle with cancer and the search for meaning in a world where bad things happen to good people. It offers poignant insights into the human experience and the importance of community in times of crisis.

Topics

Inspiration Christianity Diseases & Illnesses Alternative Perspectives Memoirs Trauma & Healing

Table of Contents

No Cure for Being Human
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Gain inspiration from one woman’s battle with cancer and the spiritual lessons she learned along the way.

Kate Bowler knew better than most that there’s no quick fix to the pain and messiness that comes from the simple fact of being human.

As a professor, she’d written books critiquing self-help gurus and evangelicals who insisted you could pray your way to your “best life.” In fact, she was absolutely certain the contemporary concept of “living your best life” was toxic and shallow.

Ironically enough, at the age of thirty-five Kate really was living her best life. She was happily married to her childhood sweetheart, mother to a much-loved toddler, Zach, and enjoying professional success in a competitive field.

And then Kate was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. Best case scenario? Two years.

Kate always knew her time on earth was finite. But she’d never imagined it might feel so finite, so soon. Critical as she was of the concept of “best life,” Kate was now faced with an urgent question: How could she best spend the life she had left?

In these blinks, you’ll learn

what the prosperity gospel and Peloton have in common;
the reason you should consider not making a bucket list; and
why pain doesn’t need to be framed as a learning experience.

A meltdown in the hospital gift shop.

As a rule, hospital gift shops are stocked with scrupulously inoffensive wares. Think tasteful potted plants, greeting cards with euphemistic messages about “recovery,” and books of the uplifting, spiritual variety.

So why is Kate Bowler standing in the gift shop of a North Carolina hospital, wearing a baggy cotton hospital gown and trailing her IV drip behind her, surrounded by a pile of books she has plucked from the shop’s shelves? And why is she, in no uncertain terms, telling the nonplussed teenage shop assistant that these books are inappropriate – no, outright offensive – reading material for a hospital gift shop?

The reason Kate is in the hospital is written clearly on her chart. After suffering through months of unexplained abdominal pain, nausea, and dramatic weight loss, Kate has at long last been diagnosed – with cancer. And it’s a particularly horrible form of cancer: Kate has stage four colon cancer. Her colon is riddled with tumors that have spread to her liver. The survival rate for this scenario is hardly promising, at 14 percent. And even that word, survival, is a bit of a misnomer; of the fourteen percent who do “survive,” most only live another two years. Despite her young age and her – until now – good health, Kate is living on borrowed time.

The reason she’s causing a scene in the hospital gift shop isn’t so immediately apparent. But if we take a look at the books she’s pulled from the shelves, it all starts to come into focus. They’re all Christian best-sellers, and they’re mostly written by those who preach the prosperity gospel.

The prosperity gospel teaches that if you serve God faithfully, you’ll reap the rewards: health, wealth, and happiness. This sounds simple enough, but scratch the surface of this superficially uplifting ideology and you’ll find a more sinister subtext. If God rewards those who have faith in Him, then those who suffer must have brought it upon themselves. If you’re poor, or sad, or sick, the thinking goes, your faith must be lacking. If you have stage four colon cancer, the thinking goes, then it’s your fault.

Kate’s a Christian herself, but she’s always found the teachings of the prosperity gospel antithetical to her own open-hearted, empathic, and accepting form of Christianity. And as a professor of the history of Christianity in North America, she’s spent a lot of time critiquing not just the prosperity gospel, but the broader industries of wellness and self-help that peddle the same essential idea: that, through a series of choices and behaviors, you can not only control your life, you can perfect it. You can avoid pain and suffering and misfortune altogether. Living your “best life” is within your grasp.

Now, of course, her issue with the idea of the best life isn’t purely academic. It’s personal.

What’s wrong with “living your best life,” anyway?

Let’s leave Kate in that hospital gift shop for a moment. Her story will pick up again in the next blink, where she grapples with her diagnosis. But to understand her story, it’s also important to understand exactly what the concept of “best life” is, and why Kate has pushed against it her whole career.

“I’m living my best life.” All of a sudden, it’s a phrase that’s all but ubiquitous. Wellness gurus, hip hop artists, and Peloton instructors alike exhort us to live our best lives. We’re targeted with ads for products from cleansing juices to productivity apps, each of them claiming to be the one thing we need to attain our best lives. Skimming the self-help section of any bookshop reveals all kinds of methods for achieving the elusive best life, from winning friends and influencing people to condensing our professional lives into a four-hour work week. And of course, once “best life” – or at least the appearance of it – is attained, it has to be scrupulously documented on social media. #blessed, as they say.

Spending time when there’s hardly any time to spend.

Before cancer, Kate’s life was a series of carefully cultivated choices, all designed to add value to her existence. A lot of them were good, even great, choices. She’d chosen to marry her childhood sweetheart, Toban, who also happened to be the love of her life. Together, they’d chosen to start a family, and the result was their wonderful son, Zach.

Of course, each of these choices was once just a wish or a yearning. It was Kate’s hard work and relentlessly positive outlook that allowed her to bring them to fruition. Or so she always thought. Now, with the foundations of her life crumbling beneath her, Kate saw that each carefully crafted choice was also underpinned by sheer luck and random chance.

A life quantified in ten key experiences? The case against bucket lists.

Kate is sitting across from a mental health counselor called Caitlin, who is gently asking her if there are any experiences she’s always dreamed of having or skills she’s always wanted to acquire. Maybe she wants to take up oil painting or look down on Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower or finally dance the tango before . . . well, this last part is unspoken, but it hangs in the air between them. Before time runs out.

Then, Kate is offered a tiny glimmer of hope. She’s been invited to take part in an immunotherapy trial. She’s part of a small percentage of patients with colon cancer who might – potentially, just maybe, no promises – respond to a cutting-edge drug-treatment plan. For Kate, this means flying every week from North Carolina to Atlanta, to spend the day receiving a combination of chemotherapy and drug treatment while a team of doctors gathers data, asking her how much pain she’s in on a scale of one to ten.

Is working hard hardly working?

Math isn’t Kate’s strong suit. She’s a humanities scholar, specializing in the history of Christianity in North America. She can tell you all about the rise of the megachurch or the place of women in contemporary evangelism. But all of a sudden, her life is all about calculations. Impossible calculations in which, no matter how she tries to balance them, she can’t come up with a satisfactory answer.

She’s responded well to the immunotherapy trial. The tumors that once crowded her colon and liver have shrunk. But they haven’t disappeared. They are still a feature of every scan and every x-ray. In particular, there’s a nasty-looking tumor in Kate’s liver, nestled right next to a vital cord that transmits blood to her lower body.

On the pointlessness of pain, or why not everything needs to have a meaning.

First, there’s the good news: Kate opts for a liver resection, meaning a large, tumor-riddled chunk of her liver will be removed. The biggest tumor is deemed inoperable, but there’s hope it might respond to radiation.

Next, there’s the great news: at a follow-up meeting with her oncologist, the big, malignant, inoperable tumor has shrunk. It’s shrunk so much it’s barely discernible. At the next follow-up, it has vanished completely.

Superficial concerns and why they matter.

Kate’s cancer diagnosis brought her to the brink of death, and at the last minute, she was granted a miraculous reprieve. Does that mean she experiences life with a new clarity, focusing only on things that are truly meaningful and authentic?

Yes . . . and no.

A collective lesson: pain and suffering in the age of COVID.

At the start of her cancer treatment, Kate signs herself up for a clinical trial. She, and others with her diagnosis, are offered an unproven, untested course of immunotherapy. The study might offer its participants a better chance of survival, but this comes at a cost. They may be denied other courses of treatment or be subjected to unnecessary risks. Some participants will form a control group of people who are not given the therapy at all.

Now, nearly five years after she began her participation in the trial, its results have been published. They are sent to Kate in the mail. The envelope feels heavy in her hands before she opens it. How many of her fellow participants have survived?

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What is No Cure for Being Human about?

No Cure for Being Human (2021) is the thoughtful chronicle of Kate Bowler’s attempts to make the most of her life after a brutal cancer diagnosis at only 35. Part memoir, part critique of the widespread obsession with positivity, No Cure for Being Human is a poignant dispatch from the fragile border between life and death.

No Cure for Being Human Review

No Cure for Being Human (2022) explores the universal human experience of pain, suffering, and the search for meaning. Here's why this book is worth reading:

It offers deep insights into the human condition, addressing topics like mortality, resilience, and the complexities of existence.
Through vulnerable personal stories and thought-provoking anecdotes, the book allows readers to connect with the author's experiences and reflect on their own lives.
By blending humor, honesty, and raw emotion, the author creates a captivating narrative that keeps readers engaged and ensures that the journey of self-reflection is far from boring.

Who should read No Cure for Being Human?

Those who’ve supporting a loved one through a serious diagnosis, or have received one themselves
Critics of the prosperity gospel and impeccably curated Instagram feeds
Those grappling with the idea that they, too, might be incurably human

About the Author

Kate Bowler is a professor of the history of Christianity at Duke University. She’s published scholarly works on evangelism and the self-help industry while also gaining a popular following for her life writing with the New York Times best-selling title Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved) and her newest release No Cure for Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear).

Categories with No Cure for Being Human

Religion & Spirituality Biography & Memoir Motivation & Inspiration

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