Politics matters, and those called to work in that world serve God and their neighbors in doing so. But it’s not the only thing in life, or even the most important thing. Far from it. We can all thank God that, with the bird’s-eye view offered by the prospect of death, Ben Sasse has blessed us with a reminder of what matters most in life.

Ben Sasse is an accomplished man. He’s a devout Christian and proud husband and father. He has a PhD in History from Yale. He’s served for a decade or more in higher ed and another decade representing Nebraska in the U.S. Senate where he earned the sometimes-unenviable reputation for not fitting in with any of America’s increasingly polarized camps. 

He’s also a dying man. 

Back in December, he announced on X that he had pancreatic cancer. As he noted in a recent interview with The Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson, this is a disease with a 97% mortality rate, and he has a particularly aggressive case. His doctors gave him 90 days; he’s hoping to get a little more time with experimental treatments. 

This kind of thing can focus someone’s thinking about what really matters in life. As he put it, “[W]hether you have 90 days, or 12 months, or 12 years, or 75 years left to live, we’re all gonna be pushing up daisies.” But knowing that he has fewer days ahead than he’d expected, he said he’s determined to “redeem the time.” 

The entire interview is worth your time. It’s a profound conversation. Senator Sasse seamlessly and richly discussed the ideas of mortality, theology, education, technology, community, family, identity, and many other fields. What’s particularly interesting, given the years he dedicated to public service, he has one of the healthiest attitudes toward politics. He inculpated professional politicians of being more interested in becoming TikTok stars than doing their jobs and mourned the fact that for wider portions of the population, politics had become their meaning in life:  

Don’t pretend that politics is the center of the world.

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