Living and dying well. What does that mean particularly at the end of life?

Husband, father, author, former U.S. Senator and former university president Ben Sasse has much to say on living and dying well. In December 2025 at the age of 54, Sasse was terminally diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer with a prognosis of three to four months to live. Dying at 54 was nowhere on Sasse’s radar. Just a few weeks prior to receiving the grim diagnosis from his doctor, he was preparing for a triathlon. He had been wearing a 45-pound weight vest as part of his triathlon training and began experiencing serious back pain. Thinking the pain was being caused by the weight vest, he brushed it off for a couple of weeks. When the pain persisted, he visited his doctor who, after a full body scan was performed, told Sasse the unfortunate news that his “torso was chock full of tumors.” Five tumors, which have spread to his spine, lung, liver and elsewhere.

Sasse is using his diagnosis as a public platform to help others live and die well by focusing on what really matters: family, loved ones, community and serving. On June 2, 2026, Sasse spoke with courage, honesty and inspiration before 900 attendees (and many more online) during “A Conversation with Ben Sasse” hosted by The Trinity Forum at the Capital Turnaround in Washington, D.C. I was fortunate to attend the event and invite a dear sister in Christ whose dad is also persevering through Stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer—and outliving the initial prognosis given—due to prayers and a miracle drug, daraxonrasib, which Sasse is on as well. Sasse credits the many prayers and a new drug for shrinking the tumors by 76 percent. He has outlived the initial prognosis and expects more months. Daraxonrasib, developed by Revolution Medicines, “targets tumors driven by RAS gene mutations and acts as a RAS(ON) inhibitor, binding to overactive RAS proteins in the body to halt tumor growth. Clinical trials show that daraxonrasib nearly doubled overall survival for patients with advanced metastatic pancreatic cancer (mPDAC) compared to standard chemotherapy,” per this June 1, 2026 article published with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. In a May 31, 2026 statement posted on their website, The American Society of Clinical Oncology declared the results as “landscape-changing for metastatic pancreatic cancer patients with a KRAS mutation,” and they and others are “seeing unprecedented survival and efficacy in second-line treatment with an expected safety profile.” Sasse also has what he calls “an amazing oncology team” at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. He is grateful to have more time to love his family. He also says in humor, which he is much known for, “Morphine management makes my short-term memory crap,” particularly in trying to recall proper nouns.

When given the initial prognosis—a man devoted to his wife Melissa of 31 years, his 15-year-old son Breck and his two daughters Alex and Elizabeth in their 20s—people have asked Sasse if he is mad at God. Sasse responds to such questions with, “We are all terminal. Death is universal. The universal nature of the curse is real. Everyone has a death sentence because of the fall/the curse and death is our final enemy (which has been defeated, we gain victory through Christ Jesus who has overcome death and the grave). “People know death is real and yet there aren’t enough conversations about it. I have peace reflecting on Philippians 1:21, ‘For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.’”

Sasse approaches the diagnosis as an opportunity to use his remaining time on earth to further glorify God, seeing it as a win-win to help others live and die well—to live for what really matters and will last. Tears will be wiped away in the presence of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The shock and “punch” of his mortality gave Sasse a new vocation to speak authentically and winsomely about “death as a common grace blessing to shatter our self-idolatry” and using the opportunity to share this truth with others, which he says, “is an opportunity for all Christians.”

In contrast, assisted suicide proponents provide a very different narrative. A deceptive narrative that sells “death with dignity” through lethal prescriptions and thereby misuses the healthcare profession to skirt suffering—and the living and serving that can occur amid suffering. In serving alongside many of you, my advocacy team members and several of our public policy partners to protect the vulnerable from assisted suicide legislation, I have never seen conditions created by assisted suicide proponents that promote a reliance upon God and does not rob people of the living and dying well that is produced through suffering, through perseverance, and perseverance character, and character, hope, as described in Romans 5:3-4. Nor does it seek to observe the healthcare professional’s call to heal—not to kill, nor advocate for increased access to and better training in palliative care and hospice care. Our advocacy efforts to restrain evil and to protect the vulnerable from this deception continue even with 13 states and the District of Columbia having legalized assisted suicide.

Sasse displays a valor and virtue that is honorable and that, some would say, is rare. For the former U.S. Senator born and raised in a Christian home in the1,200-person small town of Plainview, Nebraska, he brought those values to Washington, D.C., where he served as a U.S. Senator representing Nebraska from 2015 to 2023. Mike Cosper called Sasse a “rare breed in today’s politics” in this May/June 2026 Christianity Today article. His daughter Alex Sasse wrote in the Free Press on how her parents raised her. She wrote that every day after coming home from school and at dinner, her parents would ask her, “Who did you serve?”  During the June 2 conversation with The Trinity Forum, Sasse spoke on government being a provisional, secular good to help restrain evil, but it is only a frame, not the golden apple, and we should never make government the center of our worldview.

With revolutionary miracle drugs like daraxonrasib in the fight against cancer, particularly Stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer which has a 97 percent death rate within 12 months, Sasse is hopeful “we can end cancer deaths within 30 years.” While this particular hope may not reverse Sasse’s prognosis, he lives and is motivated by a far greater hope—the hope of the resurrection—that he and his family share with people and patients during his treatments.

Seriousness and humor. Living publicly and serving sacrificially. Living and dying well. That is Ben Sasse.

You may view Ben’s conversation here with The Trinity Forum.