The Dispatch: Ben Sasse and the Path Not Taken. by John Lewis:

Christmas merriment this year was tinged with sadness as we learned of former Sen. Ben Sasse’s advanced cancer diagnosis. In a lengthy social media post on December 23, he let the world know that he is “gonna die.” …

Sasse’s note on his cancer diagnosis sounds like it was written for a different era. It’s candid (“death is a wicked thief, the bastard pursues us all”), rejects superficialities (“not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength”), and unapologetically orthodox (“We hope in a real Deliverer—a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place”).

Missing from the post were any hints of vindictiveness or complaints about the unfairness of the world. There were no attempts to convince readers he had been right all along; there was no chest-thumping about all of his successes or his accomplishments. Instead, Sasse used his plight to remind others of the obvious, albeit haunting, truth: “I already had a death sentence before last week too—we all do.”

The philosopher Roger Scruton once wrote, “The loss of religion makes real loss difficult to bear; hence people begin to flee from loss, to make light of it, or to expel from themselves the feelings that make it inevitable.” With his diagnosis, Sasse is doing the opposite, tackling the reality of his situation head-on while pointing readers to what is sustaining him. “As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come,” he concluded. “Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective.”

Hope is powerful. If it can buttress the spirit in the face of eternity, it can certainly provide the strength to fight for temporal reforms despite disheartening setbacks. The state of our politics and political institutions is worse now than when Sasse delivered his maiden speech [text video] in the Senate. Without hope we might demand some assurance of success, or cling to the delusional vanity of short-term gains. Sasse points the way to a path not taken. It’s a difficult path, to be sure. It doesn’t guarantee your best life now, or policy wins. But it does fill the soul with a joy that even death can’t take away.

The Dispatch: Ben Sasse’s Greatest Lesson, by Daniel Darling (Southwestern Seminary):

[D]espite his years of public service, it’s the way Sasse announced his diagnosis that might be his most important contribution to American political life. It reflects the deep and serious theological beliefs that animate the former senator’s life. …

Christians really believe there is another world coming, that this broken reality will give way to a world made right by the one who made it. Christians really believe that because Jesus rose again after his death, we too will rise again, body and soul. This is the hope about which pastor Tim Keller wrote in his final days. It’s what allowed Dietrich Bonhoeffer to whisper, before he was executed by the Nazi government, “This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life.”

The hope of the eternal doesn’t erase the reality of cancer in a fallen world. True Christian hope is not flippant about death. The 11th chapter of the Gospel of John tells the story of Jesus, standing before the rotted corpse of his friend Lazarus, weeping and overcome with rage. Christian theology teaches that death is an aberration, an intrusion into God’s good creation, the work of an unseen enemy. It is an attack against God himself, who fashioned humans in his image. Even the most devout Christian doesn’t welcome a terminal diagnosis, doesn’t shrug when loved ones are taken early. Because we see humans as God sees them, we are repulsed by death, sickened by violence, and must be defenders of human life.

Sasse rightly pledged to fight his cancer and we should all pray that God, through the human instruments of advanced medicine, heals his body and gives him many more years. Death isn’t natural—to fight death with the materials of God’s creation—is the natural thing. Yet, the inevitability of what comes for us can be faced with an otherworldly kind of joy. 

Keller writes:

Christians have a hope that can be “rubbed into” our sorrow and anger the way salt is rubbed into meat. Neither stifling grief nor giving way to despair is right. Neither repressed anger nor unchecked rage is good for your soul. But pressing hope into your grief makes you wise, compassionate, humble, and tenderhearted. Grieve fully yet with profound hope! …

This is why Sasse, the college professor, might be offering the world perhaps his greatest lesson: how to face the prospect of death well. Sasse, whose discourses on civics on the Senate floor still inspire and whose books on American cultural maladies are widely read, is now offering his life as a template for millions of Americans who might walk a similar path.

Nobody, including Sasse, chooses to sign up for such suffering. Nobody would, as Sasse wrote, want to think that they may miss the milestones of life. Even among believers, few, if any, among us understand the complex mysteries of a God who allows cancer to take hold of some of our best people in the prime of life. Yet, such a sober reality can help clear the mind and focus the heart on the things that really matter. It can give us a gratitude for each day we are granted, for the little blessings we overlook. Our petty disagreements, our nonstop partisan bickering, our junior-high level social media dramas seem to melt away when faced with our own mortality. …

[I am] inspired by a man who, facing the worst days of his life, is meeting them with true Christian hope and joy. I’m moved by a husband and father who will fight this disease with courage and yet will cling to the Christian hope of the life to come. In facing death so publicly, Sasse may teach us, if we listen, how to really live.

Editor’s Note:  If you would like to receive a weekly email each Sunday with links to faith posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.