Four months after revealing that he has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and was given just as much time to live, former Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska says he’s now much closer to God because of his diagnosis and is expected to live a little longer thanks to “providence, prayer and a miracle drug” called daraxonrasib.
Speaking in an interview with Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes” broadcast on Sunday, Sasse, 54, who quit the Senate in 2023 with four years left in his second term, shared thoughts about his faith, family, politics and the future of the country amid the ongoing digital revolution.
Among his biggest concerns is how the digital revolution continues to transform society and impact communities. While he personally believes faith in God is essential to building strong communities, he maintains that religious freedom should be protected in society.
“I am a literal Calvinist Christian who believes deeply in my theology. I don’t want the state to constrain theology at all because I don’t want it to compel or prohibit,” said Sasse.
“I want to defend the right of everyone to believe what they believe and to assemble with their co-religionists, whether I agree with it or not. The state’s job is to take violence out of the public square so people can wrestle with more important questions,” he told Pelley. “So in my view, yes, God is absolutely essential to all of these questions. But as Ben, the secular American citizen or office holder, my job is to prohibit violence so that all 330 million Americans come to the conversation on an equal plane to then have that debate.”
Sasse says he should have been dead by now after he was given just three to four months to live, but thanks to “providence, prayer” and daraxonrasib, he’s still alive despite his cancer spreading to his lungs, liver and vascular system.
“I have much, much less pain than I had four months ago when I was diagnosed, and I have a massive 76 percent reduction in tumor volume over the last four months. So maybe I’m gonna crank and live a year instead of a handful of months, and I feel incredibly blessed,” said the former senator.
When asked if he prays for a cure, Sasse admits he does, but praying for a longer life isn’t his primary prayer right now.
“It’s not my biggest prayer because mortality is not news, right? Like we’re all mortal. We’re all on the clock. We’re all going to be pushing up daisies eventually, and I think wisdom requires us to grapple with our death and our finitude early. But I do pray for a miracle as well,” he said.
Despite his prayers for a miracle and his impression of death as “wicked” and “evil,” Sasse doesn’t see his cancer diagnosis as evil.
“Me getting a cancer diagnosis … is pretty small on the grand scheme of things, but it’s a touch of grace because it forces me to tell the truth. And the lie I want to tell myself is that I’m the center of everything, and I’m going to be around forever and I can work harder and store up enough that I can atone for my own brokenness. I can’t,” Sasse said.
“I hate cancer, but I’m also grateful for it. I tell a lot more truth to myself than I used to when I thought I was super omni-competent and interesting.”
The former senator then quoted Tim Keller, the late senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, who died from Stage 4 pancreatic cancer in May 2023.
“He said, ‘I hate pancreatic cancer. I would never wish it on anybody, but I also would never want to go back to a time in life where I didn’t know the prayer of pancreatic cancer.’ And I feel that to be true,” Sasse said.
He recalled being symptomatic the last two weeks of October but not being able to get a formal diagnosis until mid-December because he thought he had just pulled some muscles.
“We had trouble figuring out what was going on because I was training for some sprint triathlons, and I was doing some stupid stuff in my training, and so I thought I’d pulled a bunch of muscles in my abdomen,” he explained.
“I was in really bad pain for a number of weeks. I’m now on a lot of morphine, and I’ve also got the benefit of this drug,” he added.
Sasse separately raised concerns that the country isn’t prepared for the impact of the digital revolution and thinks it will be “disastrous” for people who are caught unprepared to take advantage of it.
“We are going through a moment of profound confusion about what it means to be human. And we’re not preparing ourselves or the next generation for that. Our citizenry is going to need to do that together. Little bits and pieces of that are going to touch on politics, but the vast majority of it is going to be about grit, gratitude, entrepreneurship, family,” he said.
“I think the great coming divide is going to be between people who figure out how to use these tools and people who outsource their attention and their affections and their habits to these tools. And it’s going to be disastrous for the latter category,” he said about the digital revolution.
“I want that latter category to be small. I want all Americans to benefit from some of the glories that we’re going to get out of the digital revolution. But the idea that you could outsource your attention and your affections and your habits to these things is disastrous,” he continued.
“A casino might be a fun place to go for March Madness weekend, but it would be a hellacious place to live. And we’re all walking around with casinos in our pockets right now. And they want to steal our attention and reduce our humanity. And I think we need to have a big, shared project where we lock arms.”
Contact: [email protected] Follow Leonardo Blair on Twitter: @leoblair Follow Leonardo Blair on Facebook: LeoBlairChristianPost
