The Passion of Ben Sasse

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

Monday, April 13, 2026

 

Former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse is the first to tell you these days that he wasn’t ready for the fight in Washington, in some respects. He wasn’t a politician; honestly, the man is a nerd in the best of ways. He believed in the nobility of public service. During his time in office — he resigned early in his second term to become the president of the University of Florida — he was America’s much-needed civics teacher.

 

Sasse is currently dying of cancer. The experimental trial he’s on might not prolong his life significantly. These are precious days for, as Sasse understands it, “redeeming the time.” In a most recent interview with Ross Douthat for the New York Times, he appears bloodied. His face is broken. His skin isn’t healing. He tells Ross — whom I like to refer to as my former intern (at National Review) — that a pharmacist recently called him over to the consultation area; she was curious and concerned. “Did they do something electrical to you?” she asked. “Either acid or electric shocks produce a face that looks this hideous,” Sasse told Douthat, who in turn joked: “Well, you told her that you’d gotten on the wrong side of like six different mafias. And they’d all taken turns.”

 

Despite his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, Sasse has not lost his sense of humor, gratitude, love of God, and appreciation for the gift of participating in the American experiment. He reminds us — now he is living the premature sunset of his life — that life is a gift and is meant to be lived in love for God and His people. His priority is to share the wisdom that has been forced on him too early. Ross joked that pending death has Sasse at 54, “where Henry Kissinger was at 100.”

 

When the conversation turns to politics, Sasse predicts that contemporary America won’t be remembered for her insane politics. Instead, “What we’re going to talk about is the fact that we were living through a technological revolution that was creating economic and cultural upheaval, and we were living through institutional collapse, and way, way, way, way, way below that, there’s a whole bunch of political institutions that are part of that institutional collapse.” In part, we are letting screens do it to us. “These superdevices in our pockets,” Sasse says, “allow our consciousness to leave the time and place where we actually live, the places where we break bread, the people who are living next door to us, the people that you can physically touch and hug, the small platoons of real community, and we allow our consciousness to go really far away.”

 

About more eternal things, he says: “I believe in the Resurrection, and I believe in a restoration of this world.” At the same time, he’s honest about the human condition. “Death is terrible. We should never sugarcoat it. It is not how things are meant to be. But it is great that death can be called the final enemy. It’s an enemy, but it’s a final enemy, and there will then be no more tears.”

 

Nonetheless, Sasse grieves for his family. He and his wife have a teenage boy at home and two girls out of the house. He will not be around for his son during some of his pivotal years, he knows, and he will not walk his daughters down the aisle should they marry. “I felt a real heaviness about that,” Sasse recalls, when he learned that he had cancer. “I’ve continued to feel a peace about the fact that death is something that we should hate. We should call it a wicked thief. And yet, it’s pretty good that you pass through the veil of tears one time and then there will be no more tears, there will be no more cancer.”

 

Easter is a celebration of the defeat of death. (We Yankees can’t even bother with a federal holiday the day after. That’s okay. God works with us.) This year, we have a living paschal icon in Sasse, who is living the mysteries of salvation. He says: “I’m pretty grateful that cancer is a stake against my delusional self-idolatry.” This suffering is, moreover, “sanctifying.” He adds: “I now, in the midst of this disease, know much more the truth of my finitude than I ever let myself believe in the past.”

 

As I write, Sasse is still alive. And his soul will forever be so. The bloody — and grace-filled — way he is dying is a mercy for all who look and listen: Christianity will save us from the powers of hell, which are too real when we have no sense of the meaning of this time that we have been given. Sasse doesn’t have the luxury of more time. And we shouldn’t assume that we do, either. Every single day — every moment — is an unearned gift. Especially in the U.S., where we enjoy freedoms that others would die for. Give thanks.